Pied-de-Vent

This week's fromage is Pied-de-Vent, from the Îles-de-la-Madeleine. It's a "soft, surface-ripened cheese made from the raw milk of a single dairy herd." Sound delightfully and desolately rural? That's because it is! The islands are quite isolated out in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.  It has a faintly esrom-ish flavour though in texture is closer to a brie, although less moist. I made a mushroom risotto with Pied-de-Vent in place of parmesan, and while it melted very nicely and added extra creaminess, I had to add far more salt than I normally would because it simply didn't have the kick that parmesan does. This cheese costs around $5.45 per 100 grams.

 

Le cru des érables

I just moved to Montréal this past summer, and I couldn't help but notice the great variety of Québec cheeses on display at my local épicerie. So I decided to start buying one new cheese per week and blogging about it. That's my story.

This week's cheese is Le cru des érables ("maple wine"). This is a soft-ish cheese that's "ripened for 60 days in the cellar of the family's sugarhouse with a port wine made from maple sap." In theory this sounds very interesting, though I couldn't detect any maple or wine flavourings in the cheese at all. What I did detect was a strong flavour reminiscent of Limburger, though Le cru des érables is not nearly as soft or moist as the German-Belgian-Dutch cheese. It was very pleasant, in that familiar smells-like-someone's-dirty-feet way that a good sample of Limburger presents. But the pleasantness of this cheese on its own was nothing when compared to how it fared when grated and tossed onto pasta with a dash of salt and a splash of olive oil. Wow. Seriously amazing stuff. It costs about $5.25 per 100 grams.