8am. Raining. Not exactly the weather one wants when planning to pick fiddleheads, but then in such a situation as nature dictates there is little room to wait since the season is approximately 3 weeks. This makes the fiddlehead the one true wild, seasonal vegetable. In the morning's damp dripping powerful silence I realized that it is something that I have never saw being imported in January, unlike asparagus. Picking, eating or bathing with them makes the experience a privileged one even with the stinging nettles against the skin. And who can deny the incredible beauty and elegant unfurling of the fern itself?
Local wisdom one should follow : do not pick everything you see. They grow in tightly packed bunches, and it is best to pick only half of them. All this will ensure that the following year there will be more. I am told that a properly respected area of edible fern will last a hundred years.
And where does one find them? Like certain people with their fishing spots, I suddenly felt the same about this beautiful fiddlehead patch I was standing in. I love sharing artisans, promoting very small farms, but now and again we all have a secret, and this tiny land with its unfurling fern is one of them. Remember, part of the search is part of the acute pleasure....
Many varieties of fern exist, but the ostrich fern is the only edible one in Canada. It differs from the cinnamon fern or royal fern by its rib which looks a lot like young celery. 'Under no circumstances should fiddleheads be eaten raw' a health Canada site warns....Personally I am still alive, but they are pretty bitter raw, so it is best to cook them anyway.
May 1, 2011
the good sheppard, the cheesemaker and the farmer
Morning. Driving through Bois Franc region's serene countryside from the river's edge to the church at the top of a steep hill a sort of longing takes hold for some vague moment of simplicity, purity and tranquil harmony. I do not think it was particularly due of my lingering hang over.
Pulling into La Moutonniere's parking lot across from the village St-Helene de Chester's church I was greeted by a family already waiting with another couple to partake in being a Sheppard for a day at one of the first sheep cheese makers of Québec.
10am greetings from owners Lucille and Alastair. Introduction of the farm, their history, their philosophy. Slip on hair nets, wrap ourselves in plastic aprons, and awkwardly fit funny blue plastic slippers over our shoes; not unlike going to the dentist in the winter.
10.20am visit the fromagerie. Explains the process the equipment. Here the equipment is not silent. We use a smaller metal container which is already full of the morning's pasteurized milk. She adds the rennet mixture, heating the mixture to 38 degrees C approximately, and we wait 20 minutes for the magical effects to take form. Pressing a finger in the mix gives the impression of a sort of huge panna cotta. The next step is to cut this initial mass which splits it into petit lait or what people know as whey which will go into making ricotta, the moist solids which will eventually become one of their aged cheese. We are a witness in the process but not removed, as we each take turns stirring the mass which is being slowly transformed, slowly `building` something we are more familiar with. Our hands are oily, as if by some incredible moisturizer. We each taste this initial mix and are surprised at how sweet it is.
10.45 am drain the whey into buckets. We each, in an impressive spontaneous team work, press the remaining solids in plastic molds with filters and fit them horizontally on a press. This cheese, our cheese, will be ready in 2 months.
12.45 am wash the metal container. Strain the whey (petit lait) into it and heat to approximately 82%. Only 8% of this liquid will become ricotta, the rest will be fed to the pigs, the chickens, the animals.
1.15pm lunch. a copious intermission of homemade dishes, a lot of conviviality, a little vino and generous amounts of their own cheeses.
2.00pm check ricotta, strain it. Drive out to their farm to shear, feed the sheep and lambs. Clear the hay, fill the feed troughs, step in sheep shit, listen to the loud plaintive cries of the new born. Hold a baby lamb which was born at 5 in the morning. Get pissed on. And yet, I have never seen so many constant smiles, and have rarely felt so happy doing something, learning something.
4pm milking the sheep. The sheep walk up a ramp onto a platform, and we below, the naive, the novices have to attach the plastic suction tubes to their teats. Intensive, intimate labour which solidifies the group, as we all realize that at the end of our day as farmer cheese makers, we are really at the beginning again. Full circle with appreciation and a better understanding of what we are eating.
Although La Moutonniere have this sort of 100% moutons heureux certification which is not related to any organism, their openness to have their customers explore every inch and crook of their routine on their farm I think is an interesting way to gain 'certification'. If the engaged client is convinced, and questions and engaging we were, there has to be some foundation to their claim. But, as most of us know, theirs is one of the rare exceptions, but one in which is precious because of its realism. One thing is for certain; having passed a day on La Moutonnière's farm I can attest that there are a dozen people every month who are 100% happy when they leave, and that is the ease in which the owners share their day. As for the simplicity, purity and tranquil harmony felt earlier in the day, it does in fact exist, alongside a lot of hard work, patience, giving and understanding...and a little pot of freshly made sheep's milk ricotta cheese.
Pulling into La Moutonniere's parking lot across from the village St-Helene de Chester's church I was greeted by a family already waiting with another couple to partake in being a Sheppard for a day at one of the first sheep cheese makers of Québec.
10am greetings from owners Lucille and Alastair. Introduction of the farm, their history, their philosophy. Slip on hair nets, wrap ourselves in plastic aprons, and awkwardly fit funny blue plastic slippers over our shoes; not unlike going to the dentist in the winter.
10.20am visit the fromagerie. Explains the process the equipment. Here the equipment is not silent. We use a smaller metal container which is already full of the morning's pasteurized milk. She adds the rennet mixture, heating the mixture to 38 degrees C approximately, and we wait 20 minutes for the magical effects to take form. Pressing a finger in the mix gives the impression of a sort of huge panna cotta. The next step is to cut this initial mass which splits it into petit lait or what people know as whey which will go into making ricotta, the moist solids which will eventually become one of their aged cheese. We are a witness in the process but not removed, as we each take turns stirring the mass which is being slowly transformed, slowly `building` something we are more familiar with. Our hands are oily, as if by some incredible moisturizer. We each taste this initial mix and are surprised at how sweet it is.
10.45 am drain the whey into buckets. We each, in an impressive spontaneous team work, press the remaining solids in plastic molds with filters and fit them horizontally on a press. This cheese, our cheese, will be ready in 2 months.
12.45 am wash the metal container. Strain the whey (petit lait) into it and heat to approximately 82%. Only 8% of this liquid will become ricotta, the rest will be fed to the pigs, the chickens, the animals.
1.15pm lunch. a copious intermission of homemade dishes, a lot of conviviality, a little vino and generous amounts of their own cheeses.
2.00pm check ricotta, strain it. Drive out to their farm to shear, feed the sheep and lambs. Clear the hay, fill the feed troughs, step in sheep shit, listen to the loud plaintive cries of the new born. Hold a baby lamb which was born at 5 in the morning. Get pissed on. And yet, I have never seen so many constant smiles, and have rarely felt so happy doing something, learning something.
4pm milking the sheep. The sheep walk up a ramp onto a platform, and we below, the naive, the novices have to attach the plastic suction tubes to their teats. Intensive, intimate labour which solidifies the group, as we all realize that at the end of our day as farmer cheese makers, we are really at the beginning again. Full circle with appreciation and a better understanding of what we are eating.
Although La Moutonniere have this sort of 100% moutons heureux certification which is not related to any organism, their openness to have their customers explore every inch and crook of their routine on their farm I think is an interesting way to gain 'certification'. If the engaged client is convinced, and questions and engaging we were, there has to be some foundation to their claim. But, as most of us know, theirs is one of the rare exceptions, but one in which is precious because of its realism. One thing is for certain; having passed a day on La Moutonnière's farm I can attest that there are a dozen people every month who are 100% happy when they leave, and that is the ease in which the owners share their day. As for the simplicity, purity and tranquil harmony felt earlier in the day, it does in fact exist, alongside a lot of hard work, patience, giving and understanding...and a little pot of freshly made sheep's milk ricotta cheese.
April 16, 2011
Sur le highway avec mes oreilles de crisse
spring. grey and soggy lands. dead leaves and last years roadkill appear. Food for the underground. Spring in Quebec means a lot of things, but the smell of wood fires, maple and pork fat are some of the most defining. Paying the full tank at a gas station I noticed all these baggies of oreilles de crisse next to the cheese curds. The curds are present all year, but the pork crispies are not. When they appear, you know it is spring, but not yet Easter.
Eating through my bag of Christ's ears I wondered how maniacal it is how these terms come about. I really could imagine sitting at a big wooden table and the King of kings saying "Take these and eat them, for these are my ears." Crunch, crunch....
And then there is Francois and Pascale Pirson of Porcherie Ardennes. Both from Belgium...both from agricultural families. Pascale is from the heart of Bouillon. Born on a farm, one of eleven kids. She saw her future differently, rather as a nurse (for those who have not read other blogs there is a long deep trend here). Her brother owned a butcher shop in Liege, 150km away, and at the age of fifteen Pascale went to help him with washing dishes. One day, one of the counter girls was sick and Pascale was told to put on an apron and serve customers, meaning she suddenly found herself slicing slabs of meat for clients a la minute. She loved it. After that, every congé scholaire, summer, Toussaint, Christmas, Easter she spent helping her brother, serving clients, learning the trade. So instead of becoming a nurse she became a butcher, with the Patronet degree. She met Francois, and they wanted land of their own. They spent 5 years looking. At first they were considering dairy, but with the price of the quota and how closed banks were to lending they decided in 1990 to buy a small place in Quebec near Mont St-Grégoire with 95 maternal pigs. It was part of the dream but Francois had to keep working for someone else, namely Robitaille. In 1997 they took control of the engraisement, pouponnière, élevage au complet. In 1999, meunière. 2000, they cultivate their own cereals. 2001 saw an incredible thing, they became Pied de Cochon's pig of choice. Picard helped them beyond what they ever dreamed of, and are extremely grateful.
With 2500-2800 heads a year, 4 kids, Pascale on the committee of Slow Food and hard working in Marcel's butcher shop Saucisson Vaudois and PR, certified NaturPorc, Francois hard working in the field, and together a powerful presence in their community, Porcherie Ardennes is not only a place I source from, but a place I like to visit for inspiration, for common sense, and for the love of good conversation and food.
As for the deep fried pork rind, they don't sell any, I did not even bother asking. It seemed that it was a good thing that oreilles de Christ were available en masse a short period of the year, but good quality pork all year round.
Eating through my bag of Christ's ears I wondered how maniacal it is how these terms come about. I really could imagine sitting at a big wooden table and the King of kings saying "Take these and eat them, for these are my ears." Crunch, crunch....
And then there is Francois and Pascale Pirson of Porcherie Ardennes. Both from Belgium...both from agricultural families. Pascale is from the heart of Bouillon. Born on a farm, one of eleven kids. She saw her future differently, rather as a nurse (for those who have not read other blogs there is a long deep trend here). Her brother owned a butcher shop in Liege, 150km away, and at the age of fifteen Pascale went to help him with washing dishes. One day, one of the counter girls was sick and Pascale was told to put on an apron and serve customers, meaning she suddenly found herself slicing slabs of meat for clients a la minute. She loved it. After that, every congé scholaire, summer, Toussaint, Christmas, Easter she spent helping her brother, serving clients, learning the trade. So instead of becoming a nurse she became a butcher, with the Patronet degree. She met Francois, and they wanted land of their own. They spent 5 years looking. At first they were considering dairy, but with the price of the quota and how closed banks were to lending they decided in 1990 to buy a small place in Quebec near Mont St-Grégoire with 95 maternal pigs. It was part of the dream but Francois had to keep working for someone else, namely Robitaille. In 1997 they took control of the engraisement, pouponnière, élevage au complet. In 1999, meunière. 2000, they cultivate their own cereals. 2001 saw an incredible thing, they became Pied de Cochon's pig of choice. Picard helped them beyond what they ever dreamed of, and are extremely grateful.
With 2500-2800 heads a year, 4 kids, Pascale on the committee of Slow Food and hard working in Marcel's butcher shop Saucisson Vaudois and PR, certified NaturPorc, Francois hard working in the field, and together a powerful presence in their community, Porcherie Ardennes is not only a place I source from, but a place I like to visit for inspiration, for common sense, and for the love of good conversation and food.
As for the deep fried pork rind, they don't sell any, I did not even bother asking. It seemed that it was a good thing that oreilles de Christ were available en masse a short period of the year, but good quality pork all year round.
March 12, 2011
Saputo and Kraft vs. cheese: respect for Justice Robert Mainville
Cheese, it seems to me is something simple. Take a lait cru from Au Gré des Champs Le Péningouin, a very young delicious cheese. Ingredients? Lait Cru entier bio, présure, sel, cultures bactériennes. Ok, let us go a little further, say, Germany, Bergader, a Bavarian blue cheese. Ingredients? Solide de lait, présure, pennecilium roqueforti, culture bacterienne, sel. Simple, no? After that it is technique, temperature, time. Kraft singles? Well...
Cheese has standards and government regulations are there to protect them in a corporeal and legal sense. Business seems to work a little differently. Saputo recently is in the process of acquiring Fairmont Cheese Holdings for 270.5 million dollars. Big. For those out of the loop, Saputo is Canada's largest dairy processor and ranks 12th globally. No comment on Kraft aka is it edible?
Recently we have seen an attempt by Kraft Canada and Saputo to overturn Canadian government standards on the composition of cheese. It has been dismissed by Justice Robert Mainville of the Federal Court of Appeal. Kraft and Saputo objected to the standards, arguing that they really aim to penalize dairy processors. Court documents state that the companies assert that the “essential or dominant purpose” of the regulation is “to effect an economic transfer in favour of dairy producers to the detriment of dairy processors by requiring the use of additional liquid milk in the production of cheese.”
Agriculture minister Gerry Ritz said: “Canadians expect cheese to be made of real milk and this decision will ensure it is. We are proud of our record standing up for consumers.”
amen.
Cheese has standards and government regulations are there to protect them in a corporeal and legal sense. Business seems to work a little differently. Saputo recently is in the process of acquiring Fairmont Cheese Holdings for 270.5 million dollars. Big. For those out of the loop, Saputo is Canada's largest dairy processor and ranks 12th globally. No comment on Kraft aka is it edible?
Recently we have seen an attempt by Kraft Canada and Saputo to overturn Canadian government standards on the composition of cheese. It has been dismissed by Justice Robert Mainville of the Federal Court of Appeal. Kraft and Saputo objected to the standards, arguing that they really aim to penalize dairy processors. Court documents state that the companies assert that the “essential or dominant purpose” of the regulation is “to effect an economic transfer in favour of dairy producers to the detriment of dairy processors by requiring the use of additional liquid milk in the production of cheese.”
Mainville said that new technologies which reduce the use of liquid milk in cheese may affect taste, texture and smell. He agreed with the initial judgment that the new standards intend to protect consumers by ensuring that cheese, is well, just that, cheese. In this we must recognize what Justice Robert Mainville has done, with much respect. And as for greed, let us not forget that it too fights and threatens and thrives to overthrow the very things we cherish, and in this case the love of good honest cheese.
Agriculture minister Gerry Ritz said: “Canadians expect cheese to be made of real milk and this decision will ensure it is. We are proud of our record standing up for consumers.”
amen.
January 15, 2011
there is no Evil ghost behind the horns of these goats
There is a strange moment in the Eastern Townships when the highway you are driving on, the surrounding land, the points of reference alter, becoming more wild, savage, clean and uncertain. Not everything feels exploited, the unexpected exists suddenly as if it were tangible, what is natural is more easily grasped.
A little on the outskirts of Sawyerville is the home of MariePascal Beauregard and Francis Landry and their artisanal goat farm Caitya du Caprice Caprin. Caitya means Temple in Sanskrit. I found myself not only in this temple of goats, but the temple of something humble. Marie Pascals was destined towards a career in mental health and then....that great change came. That great change some call a revelation, others call a mid life crisis or une prise de conscience. Their products are a simple selection of fresh cheese, and later this year will be adding some aged cheese to their product list. They used to sell meat, but as she explained, she is not a butcher, and there is only a select few people who eat it, as well as the milk. The clients will be loyal for a few weeks and then disappear, or only buy cheese. While there is not a large selection, what there is pleases. Ethics make up for a lot more though. As she took us to see their animals I noticed that all of them had horns. I have witnessed horn burning on the young leaving two burnt craters, and other methods. Almost all the goats I have seen in Quebec are hornless. Most say that their reasons are that they harm each other, pierce their bellies etc...it is for their own good. Is this not the same logic behind tail docking in pigs, debeaking in chickens? The issue is space. In the ten plus years that they have had their animals Marie Pascal tells me there has rarely ever been an incident. Two goats strike each other with their horns, another is busy rubbing their horns on a metal plate screwed to the wall. Doing what goats do....
There is no evil ghost behind goat horns. They are natural and healthy. The only evil specter is born of a certain human 'tendence' ,what we hate seeing in the more popular chickens and pigs...over crowded conditions.
A little on the outskirts of Sawyerville is the home of MariePascal Beauregard and Francis Landry and their artisanal goat farm Caitya du Caprice Caprin. Caitya means Temple in Sanskrit. I found myself not only in this temple of goats, but the temple of something humble. Marie Pascals was destined towards a career in mental health and then....that great change came. That great change some call a revelation, others call a mid life crisis or une prise de conscience. Their products are a simple selection of fresh cheese, and later this year will be adding some aged cheese to their product list. They used to sell meat, but as she explained, she is not a butcher, and there is only a select few people who eat it, as well as the milk. The clients will be loyal for a few weeks and then disappear, or only buy cheese. While there is not a large selection, what there is pleases. Ethics make up for a lot more though. As she took us to see their animals I noticed that all of them had horns. I have witnessed horn burning on the young leaving two burnt craters, and other methods. Almost all the goats I have seen in Quebec are hornless. Most say that their reasons are that they harm each other, pierce their bellies etc...it is for their own good. Is this not the same logic behind tail docking in pigs, debeaking in chickens? The issue is space. In the ten plus years that they have had their animals Marie Pascal tells me there has rarely ever been an incident. Two goats strike each other with their horns, another is busy rubbing their horns on a metal plate screwed to the wall. Doing what goats do....
There is no evil ghost behind goat horns. They are natural and healthy. The only evil specter is born of a certain human 'tendence' ,what we hate seeing in the more popular chickens and pigs...over crowded conditions.
January 9, 2011
what's in the butter... motherfuckers?
Homemade butter. Easy. 1 liter of cream. Beat it like any whipped cream, but continue, steady and agitatingly, until it splits. Remove the liquid, the buttermilk, put the solids in a passoire and let it drip. Chill the solids and add a bit of fleur de sel to it (if you like salted butter) et voila. Gripped in the early morning with the desire to make butter I went sleepy eyed to the local store in my area. There are only a few brands there, Québon, Lanctatia....Without thinking I grabbed a few 500ml of Québon cream and rushed home. I leave it out for a couple of hours to reach room temperature, have a few coffees, and then start beating, and beating and beating and then started wondering about what was written on the carton; 'country style cream'. What is that supposed to mean? Obviously, I thought, this is not normal cream. I kept on beating the cream and the texture while stiff was bizarre. The fucking thing would not break! I pick up the carton and read the ingredients: cream, milk, carboxymethyl cellulose, guar gum, carob bean gum, mono and diglycerides, carrageenan. Cream for dummies.
I was...a little pissed off. It seemed ridiculous that something called country cream was not doing what cream should do-make butter and buttermilk! All these ingredients were obviously stabilizers and emulsifiers, some that are found in K-Y jelly to boot. And milk as an ingredient! It was all too much for something as basic and simple as making butter. I stood in front of my bowl of K-Y cream, thick and bound, but tainted, not exactly natural, determined to get something real. Now I could have went to some specialty organic store in Montréal, but opted for a quiet drive through the January country side up to Compton to visit La Ferme Groleau, 100% certified organic. If there is a place for butter sanity, and life in general, it is there.
Diane Beaulieu, co-owner with her husband Jean Noel Groleau, is one of the most outspoken people I know. There is no metaphysics or fla fla surrounding their organic farm. Here is a product of common sense, arms deep in the shit of hard work. Not only a farm of 70 heads of Jersey, Canadienne, Suisse Brune, Holstein cows and 250 or so Toggenburg, LaMancha and Saanen goats, but also a strong voice within a group of 30 plus artisans called Saveurs des Cantons (produitsdelaferme.com), whom she more than happily helps distribute in no less than 160 establishments around Québec...and the time she takes to school you in her boutique on the ABC's of milk, of butter and probably the tastiest cottage cheese known to mankind, can only be described as something akin to passion.
Back home, making butter was suddenly a pleasure, real, pleasant. tak, tak, tak. Of course there is something magical about the process, but there is something extremely physical about the act also that we often forget about.
I have heard people call Patrimoine's milk unstable. I can only say that this is the voice of the global market which has lost the capacity to modify and understand. I would prefer to call their milk very fresh and as close to raw milk as one can legally get. Real milk is not a can of peas that bounces around the planet or sits in your fridge for a month. It lives, is volatile and fragile. Their milk is not homogenized, there is a layer of cream stuck to the lid, do not boil it, and is pasteurized at very low temperatures to preserve the taste. Ingredients? Milk. And their cream? 45%. Ingredients? Cream. Labeled as Crème à l'ancienne, with no milk added, no K-Y substances, no additives. Now, who is one to believe? The choice is often simple...when we have one.
I was...a little pissed off. It seemed ridiculous that something called country cream was not doing what cream should do-make butter and buttermilk! All these ingredients were obviously stabilizers and emulsifiers, some that are found in K-Y jelly to boot. And milk as an ingredient! It was all too much for something as basic and simple as making butter. I stood in front of my bowl of K-Y cream, thick and bound, but tainted, not exactly natural, determined to get something real. Now I could have went to some specialty organic store in Montréal, but opted for a quiet drive through the January country side up to Compton to visit La Ferme Groleau, 100% certified organic. If there is a place for butter sanity, and life in general, it is there.
Diane Beaulieu, co-owner with her husband Jean Noel Groleau, is one of the most outspoken people I know. There is no metaphysics or fla fla surrounding their organic farm. Here is a product of common sense, arms deep in the shit of hard work. Not only a farm of 70 heads of Jersey, Canadienne, Suisse Brune, Holstein cows and 250 or so Toggenburg, LaMancha and Saanen goats, but also a strong voice within a group of 30 plus artisans called Saveurs des Cantons (produitsdelaferme.com), whom she more than happily helps distribute in no less than 160 establishments around Québec...and the time she takes to school you in her boutique on the ABC's of milk, of butter and probably the tastiest cottage cheese known to mankind, can only be described as something akin to passion.
Back home, making butter was suddenly a pleasure, real, pleasant. tak, tak, tak. Of course there is something magical about the process, but there is something extremely physical about the act also that we often forget about.
I have heard people call Patrimoine's milk unstable. I can only say that this is the voice of the global market which has lost the capacity to modify and understand. I would prefer to call their milk very fresh and as close to raw milk as one can legally get. Real milk is not a can of peas that bounces around the planet or sits in your fridge for a month. It lives, is volatile and fragile. Their milk is not homogenized, there is a layer of cream stuck to the lid, do not boil it, and is pasteurized at very low temperatures to preserve the taste. Ingredients? Milk. And their cream? 45%. Ingredients? Cream. Labeled as Crème à l'ancienne, with no milk added, no K-Y substances, no additives. Now, who is one to believe? The choice is often simple...when we have one.
December 20, 2010
the cold hard facts of eating locally
Fog, snow, ice. A recipe for a weekend inside of baking, oysters and wine...and reading. Although the flour from my pizza dough was Québecois, the olive oil is from Palestine, the wine, Chablis, and the anchovies, Morocco, oysters... PEI. So although eating locally in Québec is possible, when not an absolute purist, an imported wine is not a sin. La Via Campesina by Annette Aurélie Desmarais, a teacher at the University of Regina, has written a book about a peasant movement which now has 148 member organizations from 69 countries, including Québec's Union Paysanne, addresses in fact what local really means.
'La Via Campesina promotes a model of peasant or family-farm agriculture based on sustainable production with local resources and in harmony with local culture and traditions. Peasants and farmers rely on a long experience with their locallyavailable resources. We are capable of producing the optimal quantity and quality of food with few external inputs. Our production is mainly for family consumption and domestic markets.' Via Campesina website.
Anyone interested in eating from local farms is eventually going to realize how close Monsanto or Dupont really are, how restraining and sometimes corrupt government regulations really are, and how fragile the diversity of what we eat still is and probably will continue to be as long as these corporations continue to exploit local laws, ruin local peasants, as they forcefully create systems of dependency. Desmarais' book is a great read for the end the year, uplifting and dedicated, as we all should be. Happy New Year.
'La Via Campesina promotes a model of peasant or family-farm agriculture based on sustainable production with local resources and in harmony with local culture and traditions. Peasants and farmers rely on a long experience with their locallyavailable resources. We are capable of producing the optimal quantity and quality of food with few external inputs. Our production is mainly for family consumption and domestic markets.' Via Campesina website.
Anyone interested in eating from local farms is eventually going to realize how close Monsanto or Dupont really are, how restraining and sometimes corrupt government regulations really are, and how fragile the diversity of what we eat still is and probably will continue to be as long as these corporations continue to exploit local laws, ruin local peasants, as they forcefully create systems of dependency. Desmarais' book is a great read for the end the year, uplifting and dedicated, as we all should be. Happy New Year.
December 5, 2010
the world of the great storytelling miller Sylvain Lafortune
Snow everywhere. 4.30 pm and the sun has already disappeared. We stood in front of a huge square silo, a sole lonely light illuminating a part of its belly and part of a sign, Le Moulin Bleu. To the right the boutique is as dark as Jonah must have experienced a long time ago. We walk up to the door; Saturdays they close at noon. Next time. Turning around I see a man walking towards us, in overalls, a torn comfy looking sweater, wild salt and pepper hair and a big bushy mustache. Holy shit, it is George Brassens! Without hesitation he opens the shop telling us that exceptions are what keeps us young.
He excuses himself for his dusty, ragged appearance. The miller, owner Sylvain Lafortune asks us if we have ever visited a mill before. Nope. He turns and off we walk into something more complex than I expected from flour.
Sylvain is one of those very few animated, talkative individuals you meet who are a pleasure to listen to, like Brassens. Only here in the cold humid belly of the mill, which is built above the Saint Esprit river, we were given a history of milling in the world, a history of Lanaudière region, his genealogy and the complex process of making stone ground artisanal buckwheat, not to mention the history of near extinction of some South American wood (Guayacan?) and Hydro Québec. The mill was built around 1860. The mill is not blue but in fact red (there are 4 or 5 theories for that one). The process of séchage, dépoussiérage, cribblage, épièrage, the trillage of size, machine after machine in something as simple as flour, the storing and the series of tubes going just about everywhere makes for something wonderful. This huge complex processing tonnes of buckwheat to be ground by two stones more ancient than any of us or our memories. The mill has been indirectly in the family (St-André, Henri, Lafortune) passed on from the woman`s side since it's inception except for a brief problem with the Seigneur de St-Roch in what was then the Fief of Bailleul, but one has to relive it through the great storytelling miller.
Proud of his craft, deeply rooted in the region of Lanaudière along this tiny river, Sylvain tells us that buckwheat came as a response of massive industry takeovers of the flour industry, and with this love and respect of a more traditional approach and perseverance we are given the gift of buckwheat, which is neither grass nor a cereal but a plant first cultivated around 6000 years ago.....
BUCKWHEAT PANCAKES!
185g buckwheat flour
185g whole wheat flour
1/2 teaspoon of salt
3 tbs brown sugar
2 tea baking soda
1 1/3 cup milk approx.
2 eggs
4 tbs of clarified butter for cooking the pancakes
mix all ingredients except for the butter. Let rise for 5 minutes. Cook in the clarified butter like any other pancake. Serve with maple syrup and butter.
He excuses himself for his dusty, ragged appearance. The miller, owner Sylvain Lafortune asks us if we have ever visited a mill before. Nope. He turns and off we walk into something more complex than I expected from flour.
Sylvain is one of those very few animated, talkative individuals you meet who are a pleasure to listen to, like Brassens. Only here in the cold humid belly of the mill, which is built above the Saint Esprit river, we were given a history of milling in the world, a history of Lanaudière region, his genealogy and the complex process of making stone ground artisanal buckwheat, not to mention the history of near extinction of some South American wood (Guayacan?) and Hydro Québec. The mill was built around 1860. The mill is not blue but in fact red (there are 4 or 5 theories for that one). The process of séchage, dépoussiérage, cribblage, épièrage, the trillage of size, machine after machine in something as simple as flour, the storing and the series of tubes going just about everywhere makes for something wonderful. This huge complex processing tonnes of buckwheat to be ground by two stones more ancient than any of us or our memories. The mill has been indirectly in the family (St-André, Henri, Lafortune) passed on from the woman`s side since it's inception except for a brief problem with the Seigneur de St-Roch in what was then the Fief of Bailleul, but one has to relive it through the great storytelling miller.
Proud of his craft, deeply rooted in the region of Lanaudière along this tiny river, Sylvain tells us that buckwheat came as a response of massive industry takeovers of the flour industry, and with this love and respect of a more traditional approach and perseverance we are given the gift of buckwheat, which is neither grass nor a cereal but a plant first cultivated around 6000 years ago.....
BUCKWHEAT PANCAKES!
185g buckwheat flour
185g whole wheat flour
1/2 teaspoon of salt
3 tbs brown sugar
2 tea baking soda
1 1/3 cup milk approx.
2 eggs
4 tbs of clarified butter for cooking the pancakes
mix all ingredients except for the butter. Let rise for 5 minutes. Cook in the clarified butter like any other pancake. Serve with maple syrup and butter.
November 28, 2010
a pleasure of something honest in this culture of crisis and obssesive trends
End of November. Patches of snow everywhere. I do not know about most people, but I begin to panic, my body begins to make reserves, I check my cupboards often. There is a sadness in watching this Québec land slowly being buried with the snow, the intense maniacal cold taking over. As most I am sure, I cannot help thinking about our ancestors who decided to make this place home. In 1985, Fabienne (Suisse) and Frédéric Guitel (Normand) did exactly that. There was practically no land available in Switzerland and land in France was beyond cost unless you had abundant riches stashed away. Québec had land and reasonably priced.
They bought a farm. Pigs. 4 years of injections and the strange business surrounding it and they quickly realized it was not them, it was not what they wanted, they were not happy. Land they had, but there was suddenly the internal dilemma about what direction to take. They met some people who wanted to make a fromagerie of goat cheese and needed milk. Fantastic. 180 goats later and the project never came to fruition. They struggled. For a while they dealt with Damafro but the demand for their milk was not consistent. Delivery of fresh milk was also expensive. Then the loss of of a huge batch of fresh milk from not being able to sell it. Enter the cheese. Frédéric took a course in Joliette in 1992 for cheese making, raved about it, and Fabienne followed. Cows also followed and in 1995 the fromagerie was born.
I listen to a few customers coming in. They each have different stories, but I realize that they are saying something very similar. They don't want to be lied to, they do not want to be cheated. And this space, this fromagerie in a sense, what it felt like was a space to be able to discuss what that meant. It felt like a space to criticize society while doing something about it.
Two of their cheeses, Grand Manitou and Funambule were recipes purchased from the now non existent fromagerie La Voie Lactée, which was in Assomption, shortly after the whole listeria fiasco in Québec. There are a few such who disappear, but Fabienne and Frédéric bought these two recipes from La Voie Lactée in a sort of solidarity.
Funambule-goat cheese. nice runny insides. strong smell of goat, roasted butter, floral. taste a little acidity, butter, hazelnuts....really amazing with a 2002 Tannat wine from Uruguay (go figure the odds of that one).
Freddo-pale yellow to orange crust. smell of fresh paris mushrooms, cheddar, fresh milk, taste smoothe, butter, fatty. 60 days washed rind, semi ferme presée.
Le Sabot de Blanchette-fresh goat cheese in pyramid form, taste of hay, chives, floral, very creamy, amazing mouthfeel. Great with 2008 vin de glace Riesling from Cote d`Ardoise.
Grand Manitou-goat, cow, ewe cheese. smell of hay, goat, fresh mushrooms and nuts. Soft taste, toasted cereal, mushrooms.
Le Petit Poitou-lobster, umami, mushroom soup, wet hay. taste of mushrooms, good length, almost leaning of truffles, duxelles. type of camembert.
In 1985, when they arrived farmers were seen as, well, uneducated and...as shit. Thirty years later a different mood has settled. There is more respect for them as artisans contrasted with the wealthy multinational farmer non farmer.
North America. Welcome to the land of endless diets, fads, endless new foods, endless identity crisis' where tradition has always been pierced, beaten, violated and killed. Talking with Fabienne I realize they are descendants of a long line of agriculturalists who have been there longer than the obsessive, demented trends America is capable of, and I am happy for it, because here are people who have something more to share than artisanal cheese, and that is the pleasure of something honest.
They bought a farm. Pigs. 4 years of injections and the strange business surrounding it and they quickly realized it was not them, it was not what they wanted, they were not happy. Land they had, but there was suddenly the internal dilemma about what direction to take. They met some people who wanted to make a fromagerie of goat cheese and needed milk. Fantastic. 180 goats later and the project never came to fruition. They struggled. For a while they dealt with Damafro but the demand for their milk was not consistent. Delivery of fresh milk was also expensive. Then the loss of of a huge batch of fresh milk from not being able to sell it. Enter the cheese. Frédéric took a course in Joliette in 1992 for cheese making, raved about it, and Fabienne followed. Cows also followed and in 1995 the fromagerie was born.
I listen to a few customers coming in. They each have different stories, but I realize that they are saying something very similar. They don't want to be lied to, they do not want to be cheated. And this space, this fromagerie in a sense, what it felt like was a space to be able to discuss what that meant. It felt like a space to criticize society while doing something about it.
Two of their cheeses, Grand Manitou and Funambule were recipes purchased from the now non existent fromagerie La Voie Lactée, which was in Assomption, shortly after the whole listeria fiasco in Québec. There are a few such who disappear, but Fabienne and Frédéric bought these two recipes from La Voie Lactée in a sort of solidarity.
Funambule-goat cheese. nice runny insides. strong smell of goat, roasted butter, floral. taste a little acidity, butter, hazelnuts....really amazing with a 2002 Tannat wine from Uruguay (go figure the odds of that one).
Freddo-pale yellow to orange crust. smell of fresh paris mushrooms, cheddar, fresh milk, taste smoothe, butter, fatty. 60 days washed rind, semi ferme presée.
Le Sabot de Blanchette-fresh goat cheese in pyramid form, taste of hay, chives, floral, very creamy, amazing mouthfeel. Great with 2008 vin de glace Riesling from Cote d`Ardoise.
Grand Manitou-goat, cow, ewe cheese. smell of hay, goat, fresh mushrooms and nuts. Soft taste, toasted cereal, mushrooms.
Le Petit Poitou-lobster, umami, mushroom soup, wet hay. taste of mushrooms, good length, almost leaning of truffles, duxelles. type of camembert.
In 1985, when they arrived farmers were seen as, well, uneducated and...as shit. Thirty years later a different mood has settled. There is more respect for them as artisans contrasted with the wealthy multinational farmer non farmer.
North America. Welcome to the land of endless diets, fads, endless new foods, endless identity crisis' where tradition has always been pierced, beaten, violated and killed. Talking with Fabienne I realize they are descendants of a long line of agriculturalists who have been there longer than the obsessive, demented trends America is capable of, and I am happy for it, because here are people who have something more to share than artisanal cheese, and that is the pleasure of something honest.
November 24, 2010
for those about to revolt, we salute you.
It was between making a film or becoming a terrorist" Hugo Latulippe explains in his documentary: Bacon Le Film. Although the theme is that greed begets greed and the big only get bigger there was another message, more heartening and assuring; that by creating coalitions of the smaller, something much stronger is founded than the big multinational standing alone. In short, it is also a documentary of hope.
The issue? Mega pork farms which have been popping up everywhere in Québec. With the mirage of having to compete in a global market, but in the end, as so often, making a very few individuals very wealthy whose byproduct of pollution is out of control. And again who is paying to clean up the mess of these mega mono pork farms? Us. The citizen's taxes who pay. We subsidize the profits they pocket. Old hat. This by now is standard policy in North America. But not everyone accepts this with a shrug and defeatist libertarian's approach.
Enter Roméo Bouchard. Québec's José Bové, ex-farmer, writer, militant against the UPA monopoly, founder of Sauver les Campagne and co-founder of Union Paysanne. This is someone who understands the ridiculous nature of efficiency and profit driven business. "The world cannot support infinite growth." But this is exactly the image we are presented with by most leaders, multinational CEO's and rationalists. Absurd. This documentary is about that meeting point of the absurd logic behind mega farms and monocultures, and the real family farms and citizens of the countryside. We are taken through the strange world of pigs in cages no bigger than themselves so that they do not get too much exercise (food costs money), injections, no sex, no natural expression, live castrations, tail cuttings, under water pollution, abuse, government turned mafia (read Fast Food Nation). We are taken to the frontier where the mind of man thinks that it can turn the whole of nature into a laboratory, where the farm simply becomes another meat shop with no link to life, hostile to nature...the balance heavily upset.
Another issue is that the UPA, Union des Producteurs Agricoles, without forcing farmers to sign on as a member, nonetheless forces on each a payment annually varying between 300 and 600 dollars. Even if you refuse to pay on principle they dock it off your milk production, your meat, your land. More than 5000 farmers have been legally pursued by UPA for refusing to pay on the basis of principal. Québec is the only place in the western world to still maintain this sort of monopoly. Autonomy? This issue is so deep that I have yet to meet a farmer who has had anything good to say about the UPA. Stories I have heard included some subtle tactics and threats towards certain people concerning their future and the future of their kids. Shit, if that is not a mafia....
The issue? Mega pork farms which have been popping up everywhere in Québec. With the mirage of having to compete in a global market, but in the end, as so often, making a very few individuals very wealthy whose byproduct of pollution is out of control. And again who is paying to clean up the mess of these mega mono pork farms? Us. The citizen's taxes who pay. We subsidize the profits they pocket. Old hat. This by now is standard policy in North America. But not everyone accepts this with a shrug and defeatist libertarian's approach.
Enter Roméo Bouchard. Québec's José Bové, ex-farmer, writer, militant against the UPA monopoly, founder of Sauver les Campagne and co-founder of Union Paysanne. This is someone who understands the ridiculous nature of efficiency and profit driven business. "The world cannot support infinite growth." But this is exactly the image we are presented with by most leaders, multinational CEO's and rationalists. Absurd. This documentary is about that meeting point of the absurd logic behind mega farms and monocultures, and the real family farms and citizens of the countryside. We are taken through the strange world of pigs in cages no bigger than themselves so that they do not get too much exercise (food costs money), injections, no sex, no natural expression, live castrations, tail cuttings, under water pollution, abuse, government turned mafia (read Fast Food Nation). We are taken to the frontier where the mind of man thinks that it can turn the whole of nature into a laboratory, where the farm simply becomes another meat shop with no link to life, hostile to nature...the balance heavily upset.
Another issue is that the UPA, Union des Producteurs Agricoles, without forcing farmers to sign on as a member, nonetheless forces on each a payment annually varying between 300 and 600 dollars. Even if you refuse to pay on principle they dock it off your milk production, your meat, your land. More than 5000 farmers have been legally pursued by UPA for refusing to pay on the basis of principal. Québec is the only place in the western world to still maintain this sort of monopoly. Autonomy? This issue is so deep that I have yet to meet a farmer who has had anything good to say about the UPA. Stories I have heard included some subtle tactics and threats towards certain people concerning their future and the future of their kids. Shit, if that is not a mafia....
November 20, 2010
Under the counter meat. friends of the people and well being, Mont St-Hilaire
On the summit of Mont St-Hilaire with my good friend Marie Josée we looked out over a strange landscape. There was farm land; some of it industrial, some small scale, probably not much artisanal. There was the Richelieu river swerving through it all, probably a little polluted. And then Beloeil. Not much to say, except surreal. Mid november at 15 degrees we could not be happier. Our bellies were full of fresh apple juice, goat cheese and a local bread. Before climbing the mountain we had just witnessed the short zany copulation of a billygoat and his mate. After strange tongue movements reminiscent of 80`s rock band members and a shuffle and a dance, BAM! One swift shot which took, 2 seconds. We were stunned. No pleasure there. I can see how being called a buck could perhaps be insulting. I asked what they did with the meat. They don`t advertise their meat, and keep it for those who....well, all I can say is that the trunk of my car began quickly filling up. One thing I could not help noticing was that most of the goats had their horns. Delicate, since they do fight quite a bit, and regularily impale one another. They find it a tough moral decision. Instead of burning off the horns though he is experimenting with a pretty innovative trick. A tight rubber band around the base of the horn. Blood is cut off, the horn falls. That is it. And they respect the natural cycle of their animals, no artificial lighting, no artificial nothing. How simple is that. No compromise. A lot less cheese in the winter but a little time of rest. That is that. It does not get more normal than that.
Coming down the mountain we were ready to visit the ice cider Cryo.
Although Hugo, the owner of Cryo, was not there we were nonetheless given the grand tour. She explains the two different types of ice cider: Cryo concentration which represents about 90 percent of the production which is essentially apples picked in autumn, frozen out doors and then slowly pressed for the concentrated juice. The second method is cryo extraction which is when the apple is frozen on the tree itself, picked weather and wind beaten on a crazy minus too many degrees Québec winter day and then pressed frozen. Courtland is usually the apple for this. For both of these methods the essential characteristic is that the process of freezing is completely natural. We talked about how the Chinese have understood this method and are trying to do the same but by using freezers. Enter industrialization. This led once again to the talk of AOC`s in Québec to protect products which are pure in their approach and definite in the character of the terroir. Put this way, winter looks a little different.
mi Cryo-Spartan, Mcintosh and Empire. 8.7% nice balance between sugar and acidity giving way to apple. Fresh.
Cryo cidre de glace-11% soft, spices, honey. Not too sweat leading to apricots, with subtle oxidation, buttery with a nice apple finish.
Prestige-2008 10%-apples picked in mid-january. Crazy irony that the immediate fruit on the nose is litchi with a little pineapple with toasted nuts. Excellent big taste of compoted Courtland.
The trunk full again with meat, drink, apples, blue squash....I could only be thankful for my friends and the artisans who are holding on to values which hopefully will multiply in their intensity and respect not only for the nature but for each of us.
Coming down the mountain we were ready to visit the ice cider Cryo.
Although Hugo, the owner of Cryo, was not there we were nonetheless given the grand tour. She explains the two different types of ice cider: Cryo concentration which represents about 90 percent of the production which is essentially apples picked in autumn, frozen out doors and then slowly pressed for the concentrated juice. The second method is cryo extraction which is when the apple is frozen on the tree itself, picked weather and wind beaten on a crazy minus too many degrees Québec winter day and then pressed frozen. Courtland is usually the apple for this. For both of these methods the essential characteristic is that the process of freezing is completely natural. We talked about how the Chinese have understood this method and are trying to do the same but by using freezers. Enter industrialization. This led once again to the talk of AOC`s in Québec to protect products which are pure in their approach and definite in the character of the terroir. Put this way, winter looks a little different.
mi Cryo-Spartan, Mcintosh and Empire. 8.7% nice balance between sugar and acidity giving way to apple. Fresh.
Cryo cidre de glace-11% soft, spices, honey. Not too sweat leading to apricots, with subtle oxidation, buttery with a nice apple finish.
Prestige-2008 10%-apples picked in mid-january. Crazy irony that the immediate fruit on the nose is litchi with a little pineapple with toasted nuts. Excellent big taste of compoted Courtland.
The trunk full again with meat, drink, apples, blue squash....I could only be thankful for my friends and the artisans who are holding on to values which hopefully will multiply in their intensity and respect not only for the nature but for each of us.
November 7, 2010
picnic of raw milk cheese on the summit of the mini mountain St-Grégoire (a reprieve from douche bags)
Upon waking I wanted to climb a mountain. A nice steep hike to work off last nights oyster's and wine, and 5 course meal and beer....I also needed cheese for the restaurant. I looked at a map and without hesitation I knew it was going to be the Mont St-Grégoire area. I have always drove past it, always admiring its bulk among the flat farm lands.
I can see the mountain as I drive down rang Saint Édouard, a powerful presence, an unmistakable point of reference. The plan was to buy some cheese at Au Gré des Champs and then picnic on the peak of that powerful bulk. Some cattle are indoors an open barn where the chew and wait, some are outside just standing around, almost as if scheming, occasionally taking a dump. Behind them about 5 km away I can see Mont St Grégoire's lonely presence rising out of the flat land. A dog starts barking, a protetive natural warning. Daniel Gosselin sticks his head out of the door, says hi, asking if I needed anything. Just watching the cows. He understands, waves and I continue. How ingenious that the sun should burst into plants and grass, these enormous beasts should eat them, we milk them and with the magic of a little salt, cheese. A way to preserve the otherwise quickly spoiling milk (unless pasteurized). Here no. This is straight up organic raw milk. Fromage fermier. Auto-sufficient farmer's cheese, meaning that they control all levels of production. Inside, the boutique is represented a dozen or so other artisans, mostly organic, and even a dozen or so cheeses from other fromageries around Québec, a good reminder of solidarity. Also one can observe through a window into the production room where there is about 20 plastic rounds slowly dripping. I am told that this is a mix of last night and this morning's milking and will end up becoming three months from now their famous Gré des Champs cheese. One meule per cow. The farm was taken over by Daniel from his father who also operated a dairy farm, and with his wife Suzanne Dufresne decided who used to work for the commission scholaire they slowly replaced the Holsteins with the Suisse Brunes, replanted the land with many varieties of flowers, studied, learnt and pushed towards their first two cheeses, Gré des Champs and Iberville in 2000. Monnoir followed and now two fresh raw milk cheeses unheard of before. Most raw milk cheese by law has to be aged for a minimum of 60 days. Not these. With another permit they are able to produce a 5 day fresh cheese and a 15 day one. Each with incredible intensity. Au Gré de Champs work on this level is to be admired.
Along the way on chemin de la Montagne I see a little kiosk selling apples and other things. Last chance. I am greeted by a guy with a big hunting gun. Hello. I oddly felt like I was back in Lebanon for a second. He goes and gets a woman who is responsible for the kiosk. He disappears. I buy some apples and a jar of apple jelly she makes which I think will go great with the younger floral cheeses.
Not far from there is the entrence to the mini moutain. I pay the three dollars to the Non profit organization CIME who protects the place and its wildlife. I walk up the steep flank of the mountain, ok, 251 meters. This is not Everest at 8848 meters, but nonetheless this mini mountain delivers an impressive view and a solid donkey kick to the heart. Along with Mont Yamaska, Shefford, Mont Rougemont, Saint Hillaire and Saint Bruno they all represent the same event when the North American Plate moved westward 124 million years ago. I sat down on something millions of years old, looking at what was once an immense wild forest below. All this dense forest in such a short time has become the clean cut ownership lines of farm land spreading out as far as the naked eye can see. Grey rectangles, rust coloured orchards, beige rectangles, off green rectangles. The mini mountain was once named Mount Johnson after John Johnson owner of the monnoir and Seigneurie in 1795. The named changed in 1923 after Grégoire le Grand (540-604). I can only imagine why. I watch the movement of the passing clouds' shadows over the fields below and pull out the cheese, the apple jelly and the bread.
Pont Blanc. 15 days, raw milk organic. Along with the Peningouin it is the first raw milk cheese under sixty days in Canada. Pungent, very floral, creamy. Excellent with the apple jelly I bought from that little kiosk.
Gré des Champs. 3 months and up. Rotten oatmeal looking crust, smell of a damp cave, orangish tint. Soft taste of mushrooms, hazelnuts, flowers, cooked butter.
Iberville-2 month old. semi firm, light orange crust, very floral, herbal, creamy, toasted notes with a slight bite.
Le Monnoir-good hard rotten crust, damp forest floor speckled with penicilium candium. This one from a winter milk, slightly drying, not as fatty. Light tasting, hazelnuts, butter, herbal. 6 months.
I was happy to be able to appreciate all this beauty, great cheese, good health. I thought of all the farms below that I do business with, all part of this fragile fabric in the face of multinationals, yet still persevering. I wanted everyone to be here with me suddenly, including my late father, brother, grandfather, grandmother and uncle. I was grateful to my mom's efforts, my stepfather's love and patience, and somewhere the God we all refer to even if divided. I was happy, and yet knew that in about 30 minutes driving back to Montréal I would be angrily cursing humanity and stupidity again.
I can see the mountain as I drive down rang Saint Édouard, a powerful presence, an unmistakable point of reference. The plan was to buy some cheese at Au Gré des Champs and then picnic on the peak of that powerful bulk. Some cattle are indoors an open barn where the chew and wait, some are outside just standing around, almost as if scheming, occasionally taking a dump. Behind them about 5 km away I can see Mont St Grégoire's lonely presence rising out of the flat land. A dog starts barking, a protetive natural warning. Daniel Gosselin sticks his head out of the door, says hi, asking if I needed anything. Just watching the cows. He understands, waves and I continue. How ingenious that the sun should burst into plants and grass, these enormous beasts should eat them, we milk them and with the magic of a little salt, cheese. A way to preserve the otherwise quickly spoiling milk (unless pasteurized). Here no. This is straight up organic raw milk. Fromage fermier. Auto-sufficient farmer's cheese, meaning that they control all levels of production. Inside, the boutique is represented a dozen or so other artisans, mostly organic, and even a dozen or so cheeses from other fromageries around Québec, a good reminder of solidarity. Also one can observe through a window into the production room where there is about 20 plastic rounds slowly dripping. I am told that this is a mix of last night and this morning's milking and will end up becoming three months from now their famous Gré des Champs cheese. One meule per cow. The farm was taken over by Daniel from his father who also operated a dairy farm, and with his wife Suzanne Dufresne decided who used to work for the commission scholaire they slowly replaced the Holsteins with the Suisse Brunes, replanted the land with many varieties of flowers, studied, learnt and pushed towards their first two cheeses, Gré des Champs and Iberville in 2000. Monnoir followed and now two fresh raw milk cheeses unheard of before. Most raw milk cheese by law has to be aged for a minimum of 60 days. Not these. With another permit they are able to produce a 5 day fresh cheese and a 15 day one. Each with incredible intensity. Au Gré de Champs work on this level is to be admired.
Along the way on chemin de la Montagne I see a little kiosk selling apples and other things. Last chance. I am greeted by a guy with a big hunting gun. Hello. I oddly felt like I was back in Lebanon for a second. He goes and gets a woman who is responsible for the kiosk. He disappears. I buy some apples and a jar of apple jelly she makes which I think will go great with the younger floral cheeses.
Not far from there is the entrence to the mini moutain. I pay the three dollars to the Non profit organization CIME who protects the place and its wildlife. I walk up the steep flank of the mountain, ok, 251 meters. This is not Everest at 8848 meters, but nonetheless this mini mountain delivers an impressive view and a solid donkey kick to the heart. Along with Mont Yamaska, Shefford, Mont Rougemont, Saint Hillaire and Saint Bruno they all represent the same event when the North American Plate moved westward 124 million years ago. I sat down on something millions of years old, looking at what was once an immense wild forest below. All this dense forest in such a short time has become the clean cut ownership lines of farm land spreading out as far as the naked eye can see. Grey rectangles, rust coloured orchards, beige rectangles, off green rectangles. The mini mountain was once named Mount Johnson after John Johnson owner of the monnoir and Seigneurie in 1795. The named changed in 1923 after Grégoire le Grand (540-604). I can only imagine why. I watch the movement of the passing clouds' shadows over the fields below and pull out the cheese, the apple jelly and the bread.
Pont Blanc. 15 days, raw milk organic. Along with the Peningouin it is the first raw milk cheese under sixty days in Canada. Pungent, very floral, creamy. Excellent with the apple jelly I bought from that little kiosk.
Gré des Champs. 3 months and up. Rotten oatmeal looking crust, smell of a damp cave, orangish tint. Soft taste of mushrooms, hazelnuts, flowers, cooked butter.
Iberville-2 month old. semi firm, light orange crust, very floral, herbal, creamy, toasted notes with a slight bite.
Le Monnoir-good hard rotten crust, damp forest floor speckled with penicilium candium. This one from a winter milk, slightly drying, not as fatty. Light tasting, hazelnuts, butter, herbal. 6 months.
I was happy to be able to appreciate all this beauty, great cheese, good health. I thought of all the farms below that I do business with, all part of this fragile fabric in the face of multinationals, yet still persevering. I wanted everyone to be here with me suddenly, including my late father, brother, grandfather, grandmother and uncle. I was grateful to my mom's efforts, my stepfather's love and patience, and somewhere the God we all refer to even if divided. I was happy, and yet knew that in about 30 minutes driving back to Montréal I would be angrily cursing humanity and stupidity again.
October 26, 2010
the strange world of the elk, turtle blood and deer penis
I was invited by a friend to visit an elk farm in southern Québec. Fantastic I thought. It was my birthday and that seemed perfect. Turning off the 202 (note previous blogs), we head down the old Dutch. A beautiful winding country road threading through wild and cultivated landscapes. Arriving at Wapitis Val-Grand-Bois the first thing we see are those wild turkeys. Out of the car we quietly follow them for a short distance, observing their nervy little hyper walk maneuvers. All I could think was I wish I had a sling shot or a gun. (I was later informed that it takes not only one permit but two, and that you are allowed one day and one bird.). We return back to the house, which is pretty secluded. Across the country road is the huge area for the elks, and from where we stand we can count 8. We are greeted by a tiny woman Francine, with, something I would call, curious, kind energy. Inside the boutique which is tiny room off the living and dinning room, the first thing I see is a bottle of Wapifor pills. I was in backwoods Québec, but also suddenly confronted with the intense and barely understood world of Chinese medicine. Before coming I was reading about Elk antler velvet which is said to relieve symptoms of arthritis, increase's blood flood and also said to have good results for men who lack the confidence of a firm sex drive. In traditional Chinese medicine it is only second to ginseng in importance. This naturally led to reading about even Hippocrates having recommended deer penis. Then deer penis wine. Then turtle blood. Then a ban of these products in the 2008 Summer Olympics. I thought, there must be some truth to this if they are being banned! Already, deer penis wine sounds a lot better than Coca Cola (let us think origins). And given the Chinese the benefit of the doubt with 2000 years of experience.....
But here I was in Québec. We went through the usual introductions and then instead of getting to `business' we sat down in a sort of sun room and began to talk. She and her husband Raymond bought this property 23 years ago, which in its origin was a little run down and abandoned. They took another couple of years to try to decide what it was that they would do. 16 years ago Elk came into the picture. They began with two females (with the aid of ever present Mark Hebert who was the model for all subsequent elk farmers). They built the area all the while taking their needs into consideration. Even the large forest area at the back was planned for the winter months when the elk like to huddle in the thick of the wild. The goal, she admitted was obviously less the meat than for the antlers which fetched extremely high prices from China and Korea. They slowly built their troop, cautiously because all the while they were learning what it meant to live with elks. They learnt slowly through observation, and the occasional help of veterinarians, and other members of the Association des Éleveurs de Wapiti du Québec. Raymond kept working at what is referred to as Le Shoppe but I did ask any specifics. Then came the infamous 2001, mad cow disaster. This changed everything. The borders closed. The market became difficult. There was a commercial 'antler dryer' in Gaspésie that was supposed to pan out but took a lot of time, and there is some non payment gossip surround this too. I am sure given also the lucrative nature of this kind of enterprise there is another story behind all this. So now they concentrate their energies on all the foires, marchés and artisanal markets. But at 60 years of age, they are finding this difficult. In 23 years they have never taken a vacation and were now thinking of Italy. We then moved to the products, and while describing the rillettes and terrines and elk meat I realized that I was more than famished. I really had something like an urge to run out in the field and grab one of those wild turkeys and take a bite out of one. I told her what I was going to do, and instead, telling me that she was also hungry that she had soup, some cheese (Fritz Kaiser), elk charcuterie (Saucisson Vaudois) and some raw sliced garden peppers. Ten minutes later inside of her house we are eating, talking about the pleasures of Italy, her son, Olivier who took photos for a book on beer which was to be out the next day. Then the talk of regrets. They wonder if they have failed doing what they did because nothing really seems to some of it. They had a plan and it never really materialized. This final note affected me. And at 60, they wondered was it worth continuing. I could not answer, rather thinking that it seemed that this was the essential question at all periods of our lives. We talked. (I will edit that part). There was something more profound here than what I came for. I found something more than elk meat and pills.... No marketing, no bullshit. But questions, yes. A desire to do things correctly, yes. Conscience, yes. Living correctly. Without hesitation I bought huge quantities of elk meat for the restaurant and will be back for as long as they are there. I asked about the pills but she laughed saying that I was still young and instead offered me a jar of her home made fir extract jelly (amazing with elk rillettes!) And if they really decide to go to Italy, I am more than happy for them and will definitely expect a postcard. And as a birthday it will be one of the more memorable.
But here I was in Québec. We went through the usual introductions and then instead of getting to `business' we sat down in a sort of sun room and began to talk. She and her husband Raymond bought this property 23 years ago, which in its origin was a little run down and abandoned. They took another couple of years to try to decide what it was that they would do. 16 years ago Elk came into the picture. They began with two females (with the aid of ever present Mark Hebert who was the model for all subsequent elk farmers). They built the area all the while taking their needs into consideration. Even the large forest area at the back was planned for the winter months when the elk like to huddle in the thick of the wild. The goal, she admitted was obviously less the meat than for the antlers which fetched extremely high prices from China and Korea. They slowly built their troop, cautiously because all the while they were learning what it meant to live with elks. They learnt slowly through observation, and the occasional help of veterinarians, and other members of the Association des Éleveurs de Wapiti du Québec. Raymond kept working at what is referred to as Le Shoppe but I did ask any specifics. Then came the infamous 2001, mad cow disaster. This changed everything. The borders closed. The market became difficult. There was a commercial 'antler dryer' in Gaspésie that was supposed to pan out but took a lot of time, and there is some non payment gossip surround this too. I am sure given also the lucrative nature of this kind of enterprise there is another story behind all this. So now they concentrate their energies on all the foires, marchés and artisanal markets. But at 60 years of age, they are finding this difficult. In 23 years they have never taken a vacation and were now thinking of Italy. We then moved to the products, and while describing the rillettes and terrines and elk meat I realized that I was more than famished. I really had something like an urge to run out in the field and grab one of those wild turkeys and take a bite out of one. I told her what I was going to do, and instead, telling me that she was also hungry that she had soup, some cheese (Fritz Kaiser), elk charcuterie (Saucisson Vaudois) and some raw sliced garden peppers. Ten minutes later inside of her house we are eating, talking about the pleasures of Italy, her son, Olivier who took photos for a book on beer which was to be out the next day. Then the talk of regrets. They wonder if they have failed doing what they did because nothing really seems to some of it. They had a plan and it never really materialized. This final note affected me. And at 60, they wondered was it worth continuing. I could not answer, rather thinking that it seemed that this was the essential question at all periods of our lives. We talked. (I will edit that part). There was something more profound here than what I came for. I found something more than elk meat and pills.... No marketing, no bullshit. But questions, yes. A desire to do things correctly, yes. Conscience, yes. Living correctly. Without hesitation I bought huge quantities of elk meat for the restaurant and will be back for as long as they are there. I asked about the pills but she laughed saying that I was still young and instead offered me a jar of her home made fir extract jelly (amazing with elk rillettes!) And if they really decide to go to Italy, I am more than happy for them and will definitely expect a postcard. And as a birthday it will be one of the more memorable.
October 18, 2010
the buried lambs head that was not to be
I was watching workers in the Kawa Ijen region of east Java in Indonesia ceremoniously carry a lamb head to bury in the accumulated sulfur deposits on the side of the volcano. Once a year they performed this ritual to avoid unwanted accidents. I was impressed by the act. I understood it as something like a physical prayer. The ritual began because a friend of one of the workers had a dream which scared him, with many omens and demanded of him somewhere in the waking hours the need to bury the head. There was a meeting. They decided. One day, before the incredibly difficult labour of carrying kilos of sulfur stones in baskets balanced on their shoulders down the side of the volcano, they buried the head of a lamb and the rest they ate.
Driving up the Saint Joseph du Lac mountain I was wondering if I would bury my own lamb`s head. I received a call from Brigitte, one of the owners of Fromages Du Verger telling me that this years animals were ready. Last year I had put my name down in a waiting list for the yearly slaughter. The orchards are all empty and closed. A sure sign that winter is coming. I turn onto rue de la Pommeraie, a quite, rural road with a few bungalows and much bigger homes, and after a minutes drive pulled into their driveway. The one thing I note is that there already a 6 degree difference between here and the town of St Joseph du Lac. Instead of going into the boutique I decide to walk around their land first. The orchard is quiet. The whole land is surround by woods which has cut the strong wind to a whisper. The sun is intense and hot here. Beside the orchard there is the barn where the sheep are divided by age with an exit which gives onto a large pasture. A few apples are half eaten here and there. Their myriad faces stare at me with those curious eyes, ears punching out like wings. Here are a cross breed of East Friesian and Lacaune sheep. The first from Northern Germany with an extremely high yield of milk and the second from the south of France which is predominately used for the famous Roquefort cheese. The crossbreed favoured in these parts of North America. The collective murmur of burping, bleating, grunting, snorting, scratching against the wooden fences, farting and pissing takes on its momentum again. I watch them feeling somewhat intense about the fact that I was going to eat on of them. And one of them really was staring at me so intensely that I almost told him 'sorry'. Following a group of them to open pasture I notice that most of the trees have lost their leaves but there still remain a few lone apples clinging to the bare branches.
I found it incredible that when Brigitte told me that she and her husband Michel worked in the pharmaceutical industry...this was something happening more and more. Like most, they wanted to start off on their own. But the idea of continuing in their own trade exhausted them. They thought of making pret a manger meals but neither of them were cooks, they also considered wild mushrooms, but that was too much for them. Cheese on the other hand seemed to be a natural transition. They took a cheese making course at the Institut de Technologie Agroalimentaire in Saint Hyacinthe. What kind of cheese they hand to decide. They found goats too nervous and enervating, but sheep were calm and quiet, essential with very little maintenance. After having searched for 9 months for a location they had found this orchard which at that time was called Le Verger de la Tentation. They purchased it in 2007. They bought 60 head from M. Goyette in Cantons de l'Est and built a barn next to the orchard, which for two ex-pharma heads was as one can imagine quite the undertaking. Then they had to build the fromagerie. In the meantime they were able to rent a space at the ITA in order to develop their style of cheese. I listened, amazed at the sudden and so recent transition that these two have went through. The conversation veered into all the strange ingredients one finds in food. Milk powder especially. A lot of cheeses out there use it, she tells me. At 1/3 the price. More profit. Instead they took the ethical stance many are taking. She shows me the ingredient label of her yogurt-Pasteurized sheep's milk and bacterial culture. That is it. No ultra filtered milk or milk powder with how many vitamins and pro-biotic additions or whatever the trends are now. This is a solid 6% fat content yogurt. More or less the real thing.
le Pommé-firm cheese with a wax rind to remind one of the apple used in the recipe. Taste of toasted butter, subtle in taste with hints of apples and pears.
Le Bohème-firm cheese with herbal and good acid accents reminding one of a good aged cheddar. Subtle hints of pear, hazelnuts.
Le Louché-like a faisel, thicker than yogurt, less salty than labne, less acid. Perfect with some fresh fruit.
Brebichon-winner of 2010 Caseus award. Soft apple washed rind, strong mushroom and toasted nuts on the nose, creamy floral almost roasted chestnut tart shell taste-pretty tasty with a Saint André de Figuière Cote de Provence Rosé 2009.
There were more and more clients coming in wanting to taste their cheeses. I could feel a bit of stress. It is only the two of them running the show. Time to go. I quickly paid for my 62lbs of lamb as they quickly described all the cuts that were already prepared for me...neck, rack, belly, testicles, but no tongue, meaning no head. Maybe it was processed somewhere into cat food or something. Walking to the car I thought how stupid it was to bury the head anyway, one could make a wonderful roast with it or stock. We all have our priorities, and I suppose mine was that I felt safer eating their cheese and meat knowing it was virtually free of anything than what it was. As for the world of the spirit, I suppose it was enough to know that they cared that much to have chosen their new profession with less greed and avarice than many other do.
Driving up the Saint Joseph du Lac mountain I was wondering if I would bury my own lamb`s head. I received a call from Brigitte, one of the owners of Fromages Du Verger telling me that this years animals were ready. Last year I had put my name down in a waiting list for the yearly slaughter. The orchards are all empty and closed. A sure sign that winter is coming. I turn onto rue de la Pommeraie, a quite, rural road with a few bungalows and much bigger homes, and after a minutes drive pulled into their driveway. The one thing I note is that there already a 6 degree difference between here and the town of St Joseph du Lac. Instead of going into the boutique I decide to walk around their land first. The orchard is quiet. The whole land is surround by woods which has cut the strong wind to a whisper. The sun is intense and hot here. Beside the orchard there is the barn where the sheep are divided by age with an exit which gives onto a large pasture. A few apples are half eaten here and there. Their myriad faces stare at me with those curious eyes, ears punching out like wings. Here are a cross breed of East Friesian and Lacaune sheep. The first from Northern Germany with an extremely high yield of milk and the second from the south of France which is predominately used for the famous Roquefort cheese. The crossbreed favoured in these parts of North America. The collective murmur of burping, bleating, grunting, snorting, scratching against the wooden fences, farting and pissing takes on its momentum again. I watch them feeling somewhat intense about the fact that I was going to eat on of them. And one of them really was staring at me so intensely that I almost told him 'sorry'. Following a group of them to open pasture I notice that most of the trees have lost their leaves but there still remain a few lone apples clinging to the bare branches.
I found it incredible that when Brigitte told me that she and her husband Michel worked in the pharmaceutical industry...this was something happening more and more. Like most, they wanted to start off on their own. But the idea of continuing in their own trade exhausted them. They thought of making pret a manger meals but neither of them were cooks, they also considered wild mushrooms, but that was too much for them. Cheese on the other hand seemed to be a natural transition. They took a cheese making course at the Institut de Technologie Agroalimentaire in Saint Hyacinthe. What kind of cheese they hand to decide. They found goats too nervous and enervating, but sheep were calm and quiet, essential with very little maintenance. After having searched for 9 months for a location they had found this orchard which at that time was called Le Verger de la Tentation. They purchased it in 2007. They bought 60 head from M. Goyette in Cantons de l'Est and built a barn next to the orchard, which for two ex-pharma heads was as one can imagine quite the undertaking. Then they had to build the fromagerie. In the meantime they were able to rent a space at the ITA in order to develop their style of cheese. I listened, amazed at the sudden and so recent transition that these two have went through. The conversation veered into all the strange ingredients one finds in food. Milk powder especially. A lot of cheeses out there use it, she tells me. At 1/3 the price. More profit. Instead they took the ethical stance many are taking. She shows me the ingredient label of her yogurt-Pasteurized sheep's milk and bacterial culture. That is it. No ultra filtered milk or milk powder with how many vitamins and pro-biotic additions or whatever the trends are now. This is a solid 6% fat content yogurt. More or less the real thing.
le Pommé-firm cheese with a wax rind to remind one of the apple used in the recipe. Taste of toasted butter, subtle in taste with hints of apples and pears.
Le Bohème-firm cheese with herbal and good acid accents reminding one of a good aged cheddar. Subtle hints of pear, hazelnuts.
Le Louché-like a faisel, thicker than yogurt, less salty than labne, less acid. Perfect with some fresh fruit.
Brebichon-winner of 2010 Caseus award. Soft apple washed rind, strong mushroom and toasted nuts on the nose, creamy floral almost roasted chestnut tart shell taste-pretty tasty with a Saint André de Figuière Cote de Provence Rosé 2009.
There were more and more clients coming in wanting to taste their cheeses. I could feel a bit of stress. It is only the two of them running the show. Time to go. I quickly paid for my 62lbs of lamb as they quickly described all the cuts that were already prepared for me...neck, rack, belly, testicles, but no tongue, meaning no head. Maybe it was processed somewhere into cat food or something. Walking to the car I thought how stupid it was to bury the head anyway, one could make a wonderful roast with it or stock. We all have our priorities, and I suppose mine was that I felt safer eating their cheese and meat knowing it was virtually free of anything than what it was. As for the world of the spirit, I suppose it was enough to know that they cared that much to have chosen their new profession with less greed and avarice than many other do.
October 17, 2010
highway 202, sculptures in the autumn vineyard
Like probably most Quebecois there is a strange affinity to highway 202. I realize that over the years I have travelled this 150 km stretch in bits and pieces, ever returning, ever enjoying, if not the landscapes, than the incredible amounts of artisans who line it. I was not exactly in the mood to visit much this sunday; the grey sky, dramatically windy, half of the leaves fallen off the trees, but a tiny sense of solidarity pushed me off. One does not really have to plan visits when on 202. This time I limited myself to the tiny area close to Dunham. Orpailleur, Cidrerie fleurs de pommiers and Domaine des Cotes d'Ardoise.
I have always resisted visiting the vingnoble Orpailleur, probably one of Québec's most popular wineries, but today I found myself in their large tasting room cum museum cluttered with the ABC's of wine. Out the corner of my ear I heard some people tasting, no, rather drinking. Looking around I realized that probably most of these people (a pitiful judgment based on half reliable experience) have a bottle or two of baby duck stashed in their fridges. (Baby Duck was a sparkling cheap product of the Canadian Andres vineyard which sold around 8 million bottles a year in the 70`s and 80's which was often described to please a wider range of people with relatively unsophisticated palates.) I suddenly felt surround by exactly that. I think the girls giving the tastings also, because they seemed a little broken and mechanical. In fact everyone seemed to be treated as some numbskull moronic tourist. I always found it strange when a business crosses that line of mass appeal. The one interesting product I tasted though was their Vin gris (a white made with the red grapes although Orpailleur uses Seyval, New York Muscat and Geissenheim (white). This is pale rosé wine, more pearl coloured, and described as a semi sweet grey wine. On the nose intense fruit (peaches, melons, apricots) and herbs, with a fairly round mouth feel, buttery and pleasant. Good for an apéro. The experience as in many places was equally frustrating because there are no spittoons.
Right next door was the Cidrerie Fleurs de Pommiers. This time I ask for a spittoon before any tasting started and she laughingly made the comment that she was up late too. Good start. I was taken through the tasting with La Réserve and Blanc de Pomme which were a dry and light cider which were fresh enough to drink with some raw scallops are some such thing. I was even told that I could warm it up like sake...well, sure, the low end kind! We blitzed through some fruit flavored ciders which I could tell were remnants of another age of approach to drinking(think Baby Duck) and then finally their Pommeau d'or. This is a sweet apple liqueur made in a similar way to maple syrup. An intense caramelized apple, baked pastry nose with a butter baked apple flavour without being too sweet makes for a very interesting product. They are one the few to use this method and I saw it marry well with some intense blue cheese. I am informed though that the business was sold and would be changing its names, although the Pommeau d'or would survive the purges. I spit, feeling awkward because so few do in Québec.
Not too far along route 202 I drive into Domaine des Côtes d'Ardoise. I sit there a moment not exactly certain that I want to taste anything. I notice though some sculptures in the vineyard and this motivates me. I take a quiet walk through supposedly Québec`s first vineyard. Exposed are the sculptures of some 50 artists. Walking along the tiny paths being introduced to these Québec artist is a pleasant surprise.
They are one of the few to use the Riesling grape in Québec and their white wine is exactly what this climate gives, something quite sec, acidic with little sweetness, and for a Riesling it is quite surprising. Their riesling ice wine with light tones of litchis, pears and floral, fairly sweet, lightly smoky, pears peaches and dead leaves is very good. I suddenly wished I had a spare piece of creamy blue cheese to taste it with, and as hunger imposed itself I decided to leave the rest of 202 to other hopefully many days to come.
I have always resisted visiting the vingnoble Orpailleur, probably one of Québec's most popular wineries, but today I found myself in their large tasting room cum museum cluttered with the ABC's of wine. Out the corner of my ear I heard some people tasting, no, rather drinking. Looking around I realized that probably most of these people (a pitiful judgment based on half reliable experience) have a bottle or two of baby duck stashed in their fridges. (Baby Duck was a sparkling cheap product of the Canadian Andres vineyard which sold around 8 million bottles a year in the 70`s and 80's which was often described to please a wider range of people with relatively unsophisticated palates.) I suddenly felt surround by exactly that. I think the girls giving the tastings also, because they seemed a little broken and mechanical. In fact everyone seemed to be treated as some numbskull moronic tourist. I always found it strange when a business crosses that line of mass appeal. The one interesting product I tasted though was their Vin gris (a white made with the red grapes although Orpailleur uses Seyval, New York Muscat and Geissenheim (white). This is pale rosé wine, more pearl coloured, and described as a semi sweet grey wine. On the nose intense fruit (peaches, melons, apricots) and herbs, with a fairly round mouth feel, buttery and pleasant. Good for an apéro. The experience as in many places was equally frustrating because there are no spittoons.
Right next door was the Cidrerie Fleurs de Pommiers. This time I ask for a spittoon before any tasting started and she laughingly made the comment that she was up late too. Good start. I was taken through the tasting with La Réserve and Blanc de Pomme which were a dry and light cider which were fresh enough to drink with some raw scallops are some such thing. I was even told that I could warm it up like sake...well, sure, the low end kind! We blitzed through some fruit flavored ciders which I could tell were remnants of another age of approach to drinking(think Baby Duck) and then finally their Pommeau d'or. This is a sweet apple liqueur made in a similar way to maple syrup. An intense caramelized apple, baked pastry nose with a butter baked apple flavour without being too sweet makes for a very interesting product. They are one the few to use this method and I saw it marry well with some intense blue cheese. I am informed though that the business was sold and would be changing its names, although the Pommeau d'or would survive the purges. I spit, feeling awkward because so few do in Québec.
Not too far along route 202 I drive into Domaine des Côtes d'Ardoise. I sit there a moment not exactly certain that I want to taste anything. I notice though some sculptures in the vineyard and this motivates me. I take a quiet walk through supposedly Québec`s first vineyard. Exposed are the sculptures of some 50 artists. Walking along the tiny paths being introduced to these Québec artist is a pleasant surprise.
They are one of the few to use the Riesling grape in Québec and their white wine is exactly what this climate gives, something quite sec, acidic with little sweetness, and for a Riesling it is quite surprising. Their riesling ice wine with light tones of litchis, pears and floral, fairly sweet, lightly smoky, pears peaches and dead leaves is very good. I suddenly wished I had a spare piece of creamy blue cheese to taste it with, and as hunger imposed itself I decided to leave the rest of 202 to other hopefully many days to come.
October 14, 2010
Jean Francois Millet. A little cheese and a prayer.
All I could think about driving to La Chevriere de Monnoir was Millet. Jean Francois Millet, the famous french painter. Along the quiet morning roads in the countryside I watched the cows and sheep feeding in the fields, close to one another. I pulled over, got out of the car and listened to the strange sounds of them munching on the grass. Millet became one of the founders of the Barbizon school which was in a sort of defiance to the Romantic movement, opting more for what many saw as Realism. I stood there thinking about his paintings The Angelus and the Shepardess and her Flock which I had seen at the musée Orsay while doing culinary stages with Ducasse and El Bulli. Incredible paintings, often describing a universe in which man has a definite place. It was also a nature which was already heavily manipulated by human intervention by fraught with hardship. The Angelus, that early morning peace of prayer came back with especial intensity. That moment before intense toil which we all feel, before the difficult interaction with the free, seemingly wild motives of humanity. That particular painting seemed purged of greed and envy, or rather it captures that moment before they appear. I got back into the car and wondered at the fact that every generation has a dominant movement that we question and oppose. I started thinking of all the fast food restaurants out there and the motives behind them....
Driving into the La Chevriere de Monnoir I see a few rabbits in a large cage, some chickens, a lama in a fenced in area beyond, and a really strange looking goat. All this is a little staged, almost surreal. When I enter the fromagerie a woman is there. I ask her how is everything. Not so good she replies with a direct honesty. Why? Part of her dairy facilities burnt as well as part of the flock. She forced a smile. No one was hurt. She managed to explain to me that most of the cheese that she sells is made from the Chaput familly. She delivers her goat milk to them. This was more like a French system of fromagers.
Champagnole, good sharp taste with notes of hazelnuts, semi ferme, yet melts upon tasting. Washed rind, aged for 6 months.
Artisan Romantique, white croute, creamy to runny with a good dose of buttery bitter taste.
Prestige-goat cheese, not compact, good caprine notes with hints of pear. ashlike rind.
Fleurs des Monts-distinctly floral, Parmesan style.
There was also a smoked saucisson of chevre made by Saucisson Vaudois. A good solid smoky garlic sausage. Marie France Marchand also sells eggs from their chickens which takes the zoo like quality away from the area. Outside the crisp autumn air is chilly. I think of work, the stress of having to feed so many, to keep quality up, to worry about resto critics, the fierce competition, tense about food costs, to manage so many others with so many other interests and wandering attentions. I think of Millet's Angelus, and stand there with a little prayer, as if it were reminding me to be thankful to have tasted these cheeses, to be alive and a witness these autumnal colours, the pleasure of good crazy friends and an exceptional girlfriend.
Driving into the La Chevriere de Monnoir I see a few rabbits in a large cage, some chickens, a lama in a fenced in area beyond, and a really strange looking goat. All this is a little staged, almost surreal. When I enter the fromagerie a woman is there. I ask her how is everything. Not so good she replies with a direct honesty. Why? Part of her dairy facilities burnt as well as part of the flock. She forced a smile. No one was hurt. She managed to explain to me that most of the cheese that she sells is made from the Chaput familly. She delivers her goat milk to them. This was more like a French system of fromagers.
Champagnole, good sharp taste with notes of hazelnuts, semi ferme, yet melts upon tasting. Washed rind, aged for 6 months.
Artisan Romantique, white croute, creamy to runny with a good dose of buttery bitter taste.
Prestige-goat cheese, not compact, good caprine notes with hints of pear. ashlike rind.
Fleurs des Monts-distinctly floral, Parmesan style.
There was also a smoked saucisson of chevre made by Saucisson Vaudois. A good solid smoky garlic sausage. Marie France Marchand also sells eggs from their chickens which takes the zoo like quality away from the area. Outside the crisp autumn air is chilly. I think of work, the stress of having to feed so many, to keep quality up, to worry about resto critics, the fierce competition, tense about food costs, to manage so many others with so many other interests and wandering attentions. I think of Millet's Angelus, and stand there with a little prayer, as if it were reminding me to be thankful to have tasted these cheeses, to be alive and a witness these autumnal colours, the pleasure of good crazy friends and an exceptional girlfriend.
October 2, 2010
Consumerism, what art thou?
I was reading an article about Brian Brett. Farmer. Salt Spring Island. Very small. Outspoken defender of terroir. I felt like taking an airplane right then from Montreal and meet him, roast some of his lamb and eat. In the end it seemed ridiculous to do such a thing. "You're such a fucking consumerist', my old punk rock roots were yelling at me. Yeah. Fuck. What is it? Can I help it that I want to know quality? 'Buy, buy, buy, fucking bourgeois scum!' It is true, I consume vast amounts of food, cheese, wine, beer, charcuterie, music, art etc....but, consumerism, what art thou?
I was suddenly very defensive. By myself in the car suddenly in the vast hinterland of inquiry. I mean I chase some odd shit at times, find myself with bizarre cravings and seek out with much means and energy in satisfying these whims, but I never saw these in terms of consumerism. Was the problem when it is something empty? Even the greatest products, the greatest masses may be attended, the greatest books read without any profound effect. But even so, this seems less a problem of 'consumerism' than being human, that slow, sometimes painful, act of getting it, of understanding even if a little after the fact?
I was on highway 251, which disappeared, as did the asphalt, and I slowed the car down to watch 20 odd wild turkeys doing who knows what on the dirt road. I turned the engine off. The smell of wood smoke was in the air. No signs, no billboards. The only sound were the turkeys and the leaves agitated by a small wind blowing through the area of Sainte-Edwidge-de-Clifton. Or is consumerism simply defined as everything we consume, or take, or have that is beyond our needs. The thing which remains is sorting out what we need. I watched the wild turkeys and wished I had a gun. What a meal I thought. They begun to slip into the woods. I was impressed by how incredibly camouflaged the suddenly became. Standing on the dirt road I looked around at the vast spaces, wild and cultivated which felt like the edge of humanity, the edge of civilization. Part wish I guess. I remember reading in Fast Food Nation how one soft drink firm 'needed' to sell 25% more drinks in order to meet sales projections. Projections! This feels like only part of it. In order to sell those drinks was more aggressive marketing so people drank more.
I continue down the road, and find myself at Fromagerie La Germaine. Well...less fromagerie and more farm. Réjean Theroux makes cheese yes, but there is not much of a boutique to speak of, there are none of the kitchy trapping of agrotourism here. A lot of bric a brac, paper with a futon in the entrance. No music, no young girl at the counter. No counter. No perfectly placed angled coloured something to influence my buying choices. No major highway, he tells me, so next to no one visits. Lots of land, his own hay, 30 odd cows and a desire which led to commercializing his first cheese in 2000. How did you get into the cheese I ask him? Do you have a formation? These questions are always slightly unfair because we can often find a disguised formulaic answer which fulfills our demands. Réjean loves cheese. He also knows as every other cheese maker that you make perhaps 4 times the money than your sale of milk. Like selling grapes and selling wine. He has a little formation, and made up the rest with conseillers which have helped him in producing his three cheeses (I purposely avoid saying perfecting because we all are in that state...) . When I asked about the choice to go with Raw milk cheese his answer summed everything up 'It just seems obvious.' That is the great thing about......there is little of the marketing, next to no bullshit. He is not 'selling' something. Humble? Honest? Simple? Innocent? He brings up some cheese and we do a tasting off a kind night stand. We start with the Caprice des saisons, his first cheese which is Camembert style. Rich, creamy, butter and butty notes, slightly woody, mushroom scents. All I could think of was that this was cheese. Straight, simple delicious cheese. The second was his Caprice des Cantons, a washed rind. A nice orange reddish rind with smell of hazelnuts and a complexity of sub herbal notes. He suggests trying a similar cheese but in his opinion a little dryer, in a sense a defect, but to compare. These are always the privileged moments, to share in the understanding of why one product is the way it is. The 'defectuous' one was less aromatic although the rind looked redder, more developed. He explains that humidity got to it too quickly, the time of aging was disturbed. Next, Réjean's Brie. It tasted just like that, a really good Brie. In large part this is because of the raw milk. When I think consumerism out here, on this farm, I thought of all the shit cheeses out there, all those overly manipulated, processed and reprocessed oblong shapes we find everywhere. A packaged yellow and orange kind of lie. I knew I was not going to define what consumerism meant but this was a beginning; to cherish something, like artisanal cheese, and then to protect it.
We do not do this alone. I thought of Brian Brett on the other side of the country, fighting to protect small farms versus factory farming. "It's a labour of love. I'm not even going to talk about making a living; I'm just talking about making real food. Let's start with that premise, and then worry about making a living!" Brett said in an interview by Joanne Will. Réjean takes me to see his cows, and especially the hay that they just finished harvesting and are storing for the winter. He talks about his father's farm which was near here, he talks about his mother who the Fromagerie is named after, he talks about his land, all of it excited, intense, which seemed to say, see if we all had the chance to do what we loved, imagine what we could do? We shook hands and I left remembering that all those years of punk rock were greater but we never ate very well, and now I do. I still express a certain anger towards the big corporations, but only this time I have the means to support the other side.
I was suddenly very defensive. By myself in the car suddenly in the vast hinterland of inquiry. I mean I chase some odd shit at times, find myself with bizarre cravings and seek out with much means and energy in satisfying these whims, but I never saw these in terms of consumerism. Was the problem when it is something empty? Even the greatest products, the greatest masses may be attended, the greatest books read without any profound effect. But even so, this seems less a problem of 'consumerism' than being human, that slow, sometimes painful, act of getting it, of understanding even if a little after the fact?
I was on highway 251, which disappeared, as did the asphalt, and I slowed the car down to watch 20 odd wild turkeys doing who knows what on the dirt road. I turned the engine off. The smell of wood smoke was in the air. No signs, no billboards. The only sound were the turkeys and the leaves agitated by a small wind blowing through the area of Sainte-Edwidge-de-Clifton. Or is consumerism simply defined as everything we consume, or take, or have that is beyond our needs. The thing which remains is sorting out what we need. I watched the wild turkeys and wished I had a gun. What a meal I thought. They begun to slip into the woods. I was impressed by how incredibly camouflaged the suddenly became. Standing on the dirt road I looked around at the vast spaces, wild and cultivated which felt like the edge of humanity, the edge of civilization. Part wish I guess. I remember reading in Fast Food Nation how one soft drink firm 'needed' to sell 25% more drinks in order to meet sales projections. Projections! This feels like only part of it. In order to sell those drinks was more aggressive marketing so people drank more.
I continue down the road, and find myself at Fromagerie La Germaine. Well...less fromagerie and more farm. Réjean Theroux makes cheese yes, but there is not much of a boutique to speak of, there are none of the kitchy trapping of agrotourism here. A lot of bric a brac, paper with a futon in the entrance. No music, no young girl at the counter. No counter. No perfectly placed angled coloured something to influence my buying choices. No major highway, he tells me, so next to no one visits. Lots of land, his own hay, 30 odd cows and a desire which led to commercializing his first cheese in 2000. How did you get into the cheese I ask him? Do you have a formation? These questions are always slightly unfair because we can often find a disguised formulaic answer which fulfills our demands. Réjean loves cheese. He also knows as every other cheese maker that you make perhaps 4 times the money than your sale of milk. Like selling grapes and selling wine. He has a little formation, and made up the rest with conseillers which have helped him in producing his three cheeses (I purposely avoid saying perfecting because we all are in that state...) . When I asked about the choice to go with Raw milk cheese his answer summed everything up 'It just seems obvious.' That is the great thing about......there is little of the marketing, next to no bullshit. He is not 'selling' something. Humble? Honest? Simple? Innocent? He brings up some cheese and we do a tasting off a kind night stand. We start with the Caprice des saisons, his first cheese which is Camembert style. Rich, creamy, butter and butty notes, slightly woody, mushroom scents. All I could think of was that this was cheese. Straight, simple delicious cheese. The second was his Caprice des Cantons, a washed rind. A nice orange reddish rind with smell of hazelnuts and a complexity of sub herbal notes. He suggests trying a similar cheese but in his opinion a little dryer, in a sense a defect, but to compare. These are always the privileged moments, to share in the understanding of why one product is the way it is. The 'defectuous' one was less aromatic although the rind looked redder, more developed. He explains that humidity got to it too quickly, the time of aging was disturbed. Next, Réjean's Brie. It tasted just like that, a really good Brie. In large part this is because of the raw milk. When I think consumerism out here, on this farm, I thought of all the shit cheeses out there, all those overly manipulated, processed and reprocessed oblong shapes we find everywhere. A packaged yellow and orange kind of lie. I knew I was not going to define what consumerism meant but this was a beginning; to cherish something, like artisanal cheese, and then to protect it.
We do not do this alone. I thought of Brian Brett on the other side of the country, fighting to protect small farms versus factory farming. "It's a labour of love. I'm not even going to talk about making a living; I'm just talking about making real food. Let's start with that premise, and then worry about making a living!" Brett said in an interview by Joanne Will. Réjean takes me to see his cows, and especially the hay that they just finished harvesting and are storing for the winter. He talks about his father's farm which was near here, he talks about his mother who the Fromagerie is named after, he talks about his land, all of it excited, intense, which seemed to say, see if we all had the chance to do what we loved, imagine what we could do? We shook hands and I left remembering that all those years of punk rock were greater but we never ate very well, and now I do. I still express a certain anger towards the big corporations, but only this time I have the means to support the other side.
September 26, 2010
Picking your own. Garden of Eden or Avalon?
Mister Jason, this is Pierre from the Vergers Philion calling to tell you that your pear ice cider is ready. Last year I had left my coordinates with Pierre because their Poiré Gaia had sold out. It has already been a whole year already I thought. A whole year and now I can finally taste it. Outside is grey and wet. With motivation at a low I move sluggishly to the car and drive towards Hemmingford in Montérégie, the apple ice cider capital of Québec. Once I slip into the countryside on the 202, a tiny rolling highway hedged in by dense forests, orchards and farmland I feel more awakened. The colours of leaves are already changing, the balad of autumn begins.
I realize that being a stranger in the country is always easier than in the city. I am greeted by 4 generations of the Philion family who are all together in front of their boutique either playing or talking with their neighbours. Hubert, Pierre's son, represents the fifth generation of the Vergers Philion and it is he who introduced the apple ice cider 5 years ago and the Poiré 4 years ago. Together these represent about 2500 half liter bottles a year. Tasting both, which are exceptional, I noted that neither was intense in sugar nor with that syrupy texture we often find with ice ciders. I ask him why this is. Method. His is juice extracted fresh from five apple varietals which he keeps separate, he then makes his blend and freezes the juice in containers outside during the cold months on the north side of his land, which remains the coldest. I ask him about purists who say that the only true ice cider is picked off the tree. By doing it his way, he explains, as opposed to either picking frozen apples, or freezing apples whole in crates in the winter, he obtains a purer taste of the juice and of course with something less sweet. Less decomposed, oxidized notes. As for the pear, they use only Beauté Flammande. This pear variety planted 25 years ago has proved to be the most cold resistant. Difficult to say what rules will be imposed on the fabrication of ice ciders, but for now taste I suppose will dictate the market.
It is early, the orchard is quiet. Walking through the wet grass the smell of fresh apples intermingles with the brown oxidized smell of the rotting ones. The final harvest period of the year begins. Part sleep, part death. I stood there in the orchard thinking that this all this life does end. Seasons, driving skills, belching and our appreciation of dew on a spider’s web. Some people may think that these are morbid thoughts, but death is far from that. I pull an apple off a tree, a Northern Spy, and eat. Poor apples, I think. How did they receive one of the most deranged symbols known to mankind? Pears on the other hand have remained essentially unscathed. In my bible there is no mention of apples as the forbidden fruit. All that is mentioned is fruit, point. Yet, most of us grew up knowing Adam and Eve’s act as gyrating around an apple. Any walk through any of the world’s museums would indicate similar evidence. The Garden of Eden would therefore have been found in Northern Hemisphere of apple growing cultures, and everywhere else was punishment. Maybe the garden was in Québec somewhere and not along the Oronoco river as Christopher Columbus once thought! Although who the hell would walk around naked in minus 40 weather? Ok, let us not question God’s ways, but rather the strange, ominous identity apples were given. Maybe it is an extension of the butter and olive oil debate.Or a propaganda campaign against the idea of Avalon. Oh well, I began filling my basket with different varieties amazed at how the fruit grows on a tree. I was awestruck by this complex structure, these mysterious oddly shaped trees with these bright balls stuck all over them. Nature at once bizarre and wonderful, and at that moment it struck me as most bizarre.
Lobo –nice texture, toothsome, mild sweetness and mild acidity. Balanced.
Red delicious-slightly bitter, herbal with less juice than the lobo with bright red skin and shape
Yellow delicious-honeyed, sweep, crisp, good structure.
Courtland-intense apple, sweet with a little acidity.
Northern Spy-fresh, juicy, good acidity and lightly starchy.
Spartan- really juicy, crisp, refreshing, low acidity
Back at the boutique they weigh my paper bag bulging with apples. Hubert and his family is busy greeting everyone. I can see now that after telling me that after having obtained his diploma in agricultural engineering and science he worked for two 'private' companies, and that was enough experience to convince him of where he really belongs. There are families everywhere, groups of friends, tasting, picking, talking in the dégustation room, in the orchards, something incredibly alive, closer to what sustains our lives, not to mention the reassuring, empowering satisfaction of picking something off a tree and eating it other than off of a supermarket shelf.
I realize that being a stranger in the country is always easier than in the city. I am greeted by 4 generations of the Philion family who are all together in front of their boutique either playing or talking with their neighbours. Hubert, Pierre's son, represents the fifth generation of the Vergers Philion and it is he who introduced the apple ice cider 5 years ago and the Poiré 4 years ago. Together these represent about 2500 half liter bottles a year. Tasting both, which are exceptional, I noted that neither was intense in sugar nor with that syrupy texture we often find with ice ciders. I ask him why this is. Method. His is juice extracted fresh from five apple varietals which he keeps separate, he then makes his blend and freezes the juice in containers outside during the cold months on the north side of his land, which remains the coldest. I ask him about purists who say that the only true ice cider is picked off the tree. By doing it his way, he explains, as opposed to either picking frozen apples, or freezing apples whole in crates in the winter, he obtains a purer taste of the juice and of course with something less sweet. Less decomposed, oxidized notes. As for the pear, they use only Beauté Flammande. This pear variety planted 25 years ago has proved to be the most cold resistant. Difficult to say what rules will be imposed on the fabrication of ice ciders, but for now taste I suppose will dictate the market.
It is early, the orchard is quiet. Walking through the wet grass the smell of fresh apples intermingles with the brown oxidized smell of the rotting ones. The final harvest period of the year begins. Part sleep, part death. I stood there in the orchard thinking that this all this life does end. Seasons, driving skills, belching and our appreciation of dew on a spider’s web. Some people may think that these are morbid thoughts, but death is far from that. I pull an apple off a tree, a Northern Spy, and eat. Poor apples, I think. How did they receive one of the most deranged symbols known to mankind? Pears on the other hand have remained essentially unscathed. In my bible there is no mention of apples as the forbidden fruit. All that is mentioned is fruit, point. Yet, most of us grew up knowing Adam and Eve’s act as gyrating around an apple. Any walk through any of the world’s museums would indicate similar evidence. The Garden of Eden would therefore have been found in Northern Hemisphere of apple growing cultures, and everywhere else was punishment. Maybe the garden was in Québec somewhere and not along the Oronoco river as Christopher Columbus once thought! Although who the hell would walk around naked in minus 40 weather? Ok, let us not question God’s ways, but rather the strange, ominous identity apples were given. Maybe it is an extension of the butter and olive oil debate.Or a propaganda campaign against the idea of Avalon. Oh well, I began filling my basket with different varieties amazed at how the fruit grows on a tree. I was awestruck by this complex structure, these mysterious oddly shaped trees with these bright balls stuck all over them. Nature at once bizarre and wonderful, and at that moment it struck me as most bizarre.
Lobo –nice texture, toothsome, mild sweetness and mild acidity. Balanced.
Red delicious-slightly bitter, herbal with less juice than the lobo with bright red skin and shape
Yellow delicious-honeyed, sweep, crisp, good structure.
Courtland-intense apple, sweet with a little acidity.
Northern Spy-fresh, juicy, good acidity and lightly starchy.
Spartan- really juicy, crisp, refreshing, low acidity
Back at the boutique they weigh my paper bag bulging with apples. Hubert and his family is busy greeting everyone. I can see now that after telling me that after having obtained his diploma in agricultural engineering and science he worked for two 'private' companies, and that was enough experience to convince him of where he really belongs. There are families everywhere, groups of friends, tasting, picking, talking in the dégustation room, in the orchards, something incredibly alive, closer to what sustains our lives, not to mention the reassuring, empowering satisfaction of picking something off a tree and eating it other than off of a supermarket shelf.
September 11, 2010
death to the generic! The subculture of honey where varieties abound
In the boutique of Miel Morand in Saint Thomas Québec I had a sort of flash, a sort of regret, and excitement all in one instant. Although Miel Morand is at much serious honey making as it is marketing, I was thinking about Le petit Jardin de l'abeille which I visited last summer in Maria Gaspésie. Only now I realized how intense and integrating their work is. My regret was that wished I would have stayed longer and learnt more. My excitement was that although it may take me longer than other people I sometime's get it, albeit in a delayed sort of way. Whereas Morand has three varieties of honey, Trèfle, Sarrasin and Fleurs Sauvage with no presence to really explain much, Le Petit Jardin known as Au Rucher des Framboisiers has 9 to 10 and a wealth of overwhelming information. I love Morand's honey, without a doubt, but at that moment I had an urge to be back in Maria close to the Baie des Chaleurs tasting each honey as one does a wine while listening to the owner John Forest tell us about the medicinal qualities of each varietal. Forest's raw, unpasteurized, certified organic honey was incredibly tasteful, each one with its distinct character and expression. I also remember as he explained each step of the season's floral production to us that there was something defiant in his approach. This subculture, I realized, was not about the mere act of producing honey, it was about a way of living, about a way of defying the generic.
Forest's varieties are bleuets, centaurée, épilobe, fleurs sauvages, framboise, pissenlit, sarrasin, trèfle, verge d'or with its taste between trèfle and sarrasin. These varietals each come with their distinctive nose, taste and colour. The reason for this control is in part the immense garden that John and his wife Panyong have been planting. This passion for horticulture has brought together one of the largest concentration of melliferous plants, which is obviously reflected in the honey, and the ability to have so many varietals. One is as important as the other, knowing the plant is knowing the honey. Then there was discussion of how honey was made with incredible statistics, such as for 1kg of honey, there is a traveled distance of about 40 000km and 5.5 million flowers involved. As with most things, a good local, unpasteurized honey is everything but generic.
I told him that my favorite honey was the intensely dark sarrasin with woodsy earth tones. He smiled and told me that it was very good for my bone structure and blood circulation and as an aside whispering that it was also good for hypertension and hemorrhoids. I did not ask about internal or external application, content to know that between the wine and the honey my blood must be flowing pretty nicely.
As with the Corsican honey, the only one with an AOC, I hope one day to see Forest's honey with a similar appelation as an expression of the Gaspésienne ecosystem and his intense work with varietals.
I also remembered talking to Gilles Baillargeon, apiculteur professionnel from Ste Geneviève de Berthier, and as I was leaving his house he said to me that a tablespoon of honey a day will ensure me long life. I do not think he was trying to sell me a lifetime's supply of nectar because I had bought his last jar, but rather there it was again, that sort of cult with many beekeepers, a sort of ancient on going subculture, the subculture of honey, and I felt proud to be a partake in it.
Forest's varieties are bleuets, centaurée, épilobe, fleurs sauvages, framboise, pissenlit, sarrasin, trèfle, verge d'or with its taste between trèfle and sarrasin. These varietals each come with their distinctive nose, taste and colour. The reason for this control is in part the immense garden that John and his wife Panyong have been planting. This passion for horticulture has brought together one of the largest concentration of melliferous plants, which is obviously reflected in the honey, and the ability to have so many varietals. One is as important as the other, knowing the plant is knowing the honey. Then there was discussion of how honey was made with incredible statistics, such as for 1kg of honey, there is a traveled distance of about 40 000km and 5.5 million flowers involved. As with most things, a good local, unpasteurized honey is everything but generic.
I told him that my favorite honey was the intensely dark sarrasin with woodsy earth tones. He smiled and told me that it was very good for my bone structure and blood circulation and as an aside whispering that it was also good for hypertension and hemorrhoids. I did not ask about internal or external application, content to know that between the wine and the honey my blood must be flowing pretty nicely.
As with the Corsican honey, the only one with an AOC, I hope one day to see Forest's honey with a similar appelation as an expression of the Gaspésienne ecosystem and his intense work with varietals.
I also remembered talking to Gilles Baillargeon, apiculteur professionnel from Ste Geneviève de Berthier, and as I was leaving his house he said to me that a tablespoon of honey a day will ensure me long life. I do not think he was trying to sell me a lifetime's supply of nectar because I had bought his last jar, but rather there it was again, that sort of cult with many beekeepers, a sort of ancient on going subculture, the subculture of honey, and I felt proud to be a partake in it.
September 5, 2010
ancient drive through and the great organic debate
Driving through the Québec countryside, or almost anywhere for that matter, I am always awestruck by the extent in which we can manipulate land. From the front yards, to the rows of trees to arable parcels and the highway we drive on. The idea of manipulation is more powerful here I believe because of the immensity of the fenced in, defined and structured space. Driving along highway 158 towards Sainte Sophie I was remembering how last week I bought tomatoes which were in bags according to type left outside on a cheap shelve at the end of someone's driveway. On the side of the shelve it was written 'Organic tomatoes'. Seeing all this in a sudden flash, without reason really interfering I slammed the breaks. I pulled the car over into some grass and walked over to this strange sort of archaic drive through. 5 bucks a bag, thank you for your honesty it read in paint on the top. I opened the mini chest on the top shelf where a few crumpled 5 dollar bills sat on a carpet of change. I put my 5 in and grabbed a bag. Back in the car I began wondering about this organic thing. The tomatoes looked great. So did all the land around me at that moment. But who the hell can look around and say this is organic? I thought that the relation of trust was in itself empowering, and is without a doubt a fundamental basis of all our relations, so although we all probably put our five dollars into the cute chest, are they being honest with us?
I pull into the driveway of Les Fromagiers de la Table Ronde. It is crisp, cold afternoon, with an early September sun whispering of autumn. Cows are outside feasting on the grass either side of the main building. Instead of going in, I walk up to where the cows are. This is where all great cheese begins I murmured. They stop and stare, I stare back. I notice one who'se back is turned to me, full udders...I shake me head. J, seriously, these are not grapes! It is a cow's asshole and boobs! Too much time hanging out in the vineyards lately I suppose. Although I am sure that there are some people who would be able to tell if the cheese is going to be good by looking at...I decide to go inside. I am greeted by Ronald, of the Alary family, whose farm has been redefining itself for 4 generations now. Although no longer making raw milk cheese, they nonetheless are still certified organic which was obtained in the year 2000.
le Ménestrel-pressed, aged for 9 months with a great rusty croute, with subtle tastes of toasted hazelnuts, lightly floral. Excellent with a late harvest Sauvignon Blanc.
Fou du Roy-good barn smell on the croute, less salty than all the other cheeses, less intense taste of butter, smell of hay, taste is subtle with an incredibly creamy texture.
Courtisane-good toasted butter smell. floral in the mouth, butter and nutty, with a creaminess reminiscent of camembert. discreet and physical.
La Galette-soft cheese. Mushroom, cave and cellar scents with hints of raw chocolate. Creamy taste, cacao, bitter chocolate, herbal. Intense, alive...
Fleuron-a great mildly intense blue cheese. Piquant. Notes of a damp barn, floral, hay, with herbs present throughout. Delicious with a late harvest Vidal.
Rassembleu-a mild blue cheese I suspect with the charm for beginners.
We talk a bit of what it means to be organic. Surprise visits from inspectors, a few thousand dollars extra a year, and obviously a little more work. Talking with Ronald there was no doubt that this kind of control was absolutely necessary for the appelation. It is not because the rest of us are gullible, but we are all susceptible to being manipulated by beautiful words and scenery. A cow outside is a good sign but does not mean organic. At this point anyone can say organic, and maybe they really think it is , but in the end bullshit is bullshit, and there are people who think that their limit, even by spraying a little here and there, or some cheaper chemicals used 'very sparsely and conscientiously' constitute as enough. Advertising and words can never be enough. So although my tomatoes tasted great, with trust being an incredible thing, the question of whether they were organic constantly swelled as I was eating them. What difference does it make if they tasted so good? I could not help mocking my distrust, wishing that I could wholly trust someone's scribbled words on a painted wooden shelf on the side of the highway, but the matter is that many times it is what we do not see or read that affects us the most. In the end, if everyone was honest we would not need to have any certification, not to mention governments, mafias, police, borders, prayers or poetry, but for the time being I guess they will have to do.
I pull into the driveway of Les Fromagiers de la Table Ronde. It is crisp, cold afternoon, with an early September sun whispering of autumn. Cows are outside feasting on the grass either side of the main building. Instead of going in, I walk up to where the cows are. This is where all great cheese begins I murmured. They stop and stare, I stare back. I notice one who'se back is turned to me, full udders...I shake me head. J, seriously, these are not grapes! It is a cow's asshole and boobs! Too much time hanging out in the vineyards lately I suppose. Although I am sure that there are some people who would be able to tell if the cheese is going to be good by looking at...I decide to go inside. I am greeted by Ronald, of the Alary family, whose farm has been redefining itself for 4 generations now. Although no longer making raw milk cheese, they nonetheless are still certified organic which was obtained in the year 2000.
le Ménestrel-pressed, aged for 9 months with a great rusty croute, with subtle tastes of toasted hazelnuts, lightly floral. Excellent with a late harvest Sauvignon Blanc.
Fou du Roy-good barn smell on the croute, less salty than all the other cheeses, less intense taste of butter, smell of hay, taste is subtle with an incredibly creamy texture.
Courtisane-good toasted butter smell. floral in the mouth, butter and nutty, with a creaminess reminiscent of camembert. discreet and physical.
La Galette-soft cheese. Mushroom, cave and cellar scents with hints of raw chocolate. Creamy taste, cacao, bitter chocolate, herbal. Intense, alive...
Fleuron-a great mildly intense blue cheese. Piquant. Notes of a damp barn, floral, hay, with herbs present throughout. Delicious with a late harvest Vidal.
Rassembleu-a mild blue cheese I suspect with the charm for beginners.
We talk a bit of what it means to be organic. Surprise visits from inspectors, a few thousand dollars extra a year, and obviously a little more work. Talking with Ronald there was no doubt that this kind of control was absolutely necessary for the appelation. It is not because the rest of us are gullible, but we are all susceptible to being manipulated by beautiful words and scenery. A cow outside is a good sign but does not mean organic. At this point anyone can say organic, and maybe they really think it is , but in the end bullshit is bullshit, and there are people who think that their limit, even by spraying a little here and there, or some cheaper chemicals used 'very sparsely and conscientiously' constitute as enough. Advertising and words can never be enough. So although my tomatoes tasted great, with trust being an incredible thing, the question of whether they were organic constantly swelled as I was eating them. What difference does it make if they tasted so good? I could not help mocking my distrust, wishing that I could wholly trust someone's scribbled words on a painted wooden shelf on the side of the highway, but the matter is that many times it is what we do not see or read that affects us the most. In the end, if everyone was honest we would not need to have any certification, not to mention governments, mafias, police, borders, prayers or poetry, but for the time being I guess they will have to do.
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