In the Pézenas supermarket the butter counter presents a dilemma: beurre d’Isigny or beurre des Charentes? I have the luxury of choice. I also have the luxury of not being obliged to choose. I can have both.
Beurre d’Isigny comes from Normandy where, so the locals say, the grass grows overnight, the meadows magically renewed as fast as the cows eat them. The pastures are lush and verdant, soft and tender, and give a particular savour to the milk, cream, butter and cheese. You can taste the characteristic flavour in the buttery apple tarts and crumbly sablé biscuits from Normandy pâtisseries. Beurre des Charentes is produced in the Poitou-Charentes region further south, and is less pronounced in flavour. Both are unsalted; only Brittany butter is salted, more often demi-sel, lightly salted. Some French prefer Normandy butter, others the Charentais brands.
In the households of Nizas, butter is still not commonplace. At the Co-op it comes in tiny 100-gram packets. In the Midi people use oil for cooking. Two hundred years ago, when the new post-Revolution government sent public servants all over France with a standardised form to record food prices, the official sent to Avignon wrote, next to the space for butter, ‘on n’en nye mengue pas’, people here don’t ever eat any. Even now at the Pézenas supermarket, the selection is restricted but varied enough for me to do a side-by-side of Elle & Vire from Normandy and l’Escure from Charentes.
Butter-tasting is a serious test demanding much concentration and quantities of baguette. I focus my senses, searching for differential nuances of flavour and texture. In the end, I cast my vote in favour of Elle & Vire but every so often, to avoid cellar palate, I buy l’Escure.
Exploring through food offers another way of getting to understand this new environment. A whole vocabulary of new tastes awaits, with so much unfamiliar to our palates that we almost need a spreadsheet to plan a series of scientific experiments and methodically record the results. After butter comes fromage frais, a light, delicately flavoured fresh cheese the consistency of softly whipped cream. It can vary in fat content from 40% and 60%, as in Petit Suisse, to 0% in brands such as Jockey and Taillefine. This no-fat version is the fromage frais championed by chef Michel Guérard in the low-calorie dishes of his cuisine minceur. I sample them all, from 0% and 5% mg (matière grasse, fats) through to 15%, 20% and 30%, and settle on 20% as the perfect partner to dollops of apricot jam on slices of baguette. The Co-op, I am delighted to discover, has a fantastic apricot jam, big chunks of apricot in a thick, syrupy gel. It might not be very French to eat bread and jam and fromage frais but I haven’t yet lived here long enough to have become blasé about baguettes.
The Pézenas supermarket also has a range of pâtés and I start by buying the cheapest. To a novice it is amazingly good. With baguette and pâté for lunch every day I could be in the Land of Cockaigne. Gradually I progress up the price scale, sampling ever more expensive versions of the same soft, smooth-textured delicacy, and start to appreciate the subtle variations from one to the other. As much as I consider my tests objective, the inevitable conclusion is that the most expensive pâté is distinctly superior. It is impossible to go back to the cheap one. This teaches me an important lesson: in France and in food, quality and price have a direct relationship.
This generalisation applies to fish, too, where price depends on the species and its desirability. Loup de mer, or sea bass, has lovely white flesh, few bones and is easily filleted. It’s upper class, ‘an admirable fish,’ writes Alan Davidson. Mackerel is working class, a popular species. At Sète loup de mer costs 30 francs per kilo, mackerel only 6 francs. I buy one of each. The comparison is unfair since they are so very different, the fine, clean flavour of the sea bass contrasting with the slight oiliness and coarseness of the mackerel. I understand why sea bass costs five times as much as mackerel but for me, each has its appeal.
Increasingly I begin to appreciate the subtleties of quality in food in France. In Australia there are different brands of butter and cheddar cheese but discerning a difference from one brand to another is almost impossible. Similarly, chicken is always the same standardised product regardless of brand, regardless of origin. Here in France the variations are multiple. I can choose a poulet fermier, a free-range chicken, at the market, or I can buy a branded chicken from the supermarket or butcher. And among brands I can choose my chicken according to breed, diet and region of production, the label giving me all the details I need. The butcher recommends yellow-skinned corn-fed chickens as having a superior flavour, as well as chickens from the odd-looking ‘Cou nu’ breed with knobbly red necks.
It’s with cheese that flavour variations are most evident, and especially camembert. Is it made with raw milk, or pasteurised? In Normandy or in Lorraine, on the other side of the country? Industrially, or by hand? Moulé à la louche, says the label on my Normandy camembert, meaning the curd has been scooped out and turned into the mould by hand. Does this make a difference? I’m not sure, but there’s no doubting the superiority of Normandy raw milk camemberts.
Although price gives vital clues to quality and place in the French food hierarchy, I’m not content to rely on price alone or on other people’s judgments (unless, of course, it’s the butcher). I need to taste and assess for myself in order to understand, to develop my own discerning palate. As a wine judge cultivates his skill by tasting and reflecting and remembering, so must I. And cheese is as good a place as any to start.
Here in the Hérault it’s obligatory to eat the almost-local cantal, which comes in three stages of maturity. I sample them all. The youngest is cantal jeune, mild and milky and springy-soft, the sort of cheese that might have been called soapy by my parents when they expected a sharper, more mature cheddar. After eight months or so it hardens and the colour becomes more intense, especially close to the rind; this is the tangy, peppery cantal vieux. In between, having a bet both ways, is cantal entre-deux, firmer than cantal jeune but not so strong as the aged version. Like Goldilocks, I prefer the in-between option. Cantal jeune is an acquired taste, but I later learn to like it in the traditional pairing with fresh chasselas grapes.
I buy cantal because it is possibly the closest cheese to cheddar, which Stephanie insists on for her melted cheese on toast. If not cantal, then mimolette, a spherical orange-red cheese from the region of Lille, in the very north of the country. She is very definite in her tastes and, although I have to make do with only two gas rings and no toaster, I manage to supply her favourite food for breakfast every morning. At this stage she rejects comté and won’t even look at brie or camembert or any of the other cheeses that I avidly consume.
Each week there’s a different selection. Over a couple of months our cheese board is a moveable feast: garlic-studded gaperon; camembert and coulommiers; ash-sandwiched morbier and a vine-wrapped bandol; saint-ambray and saint-nectaire; saint-marcellin, crottin, picodon and other goat cheeses undistinguished by name; and a palette of blues: bleu d’Auvergne, bleu des causses, bleu de Bresse plus three different ages of roquefort. We taste and compare and discuss, and then taste again. Which means another sip of wine.