from
Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman
behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com
Comté AOP cheese.
Comté or Gruyère de Comté is a firm, semi-hard 31.3% fat,
yellow, rich, nutty-tasting, unpasteurized, cow’s milk cheese. The cheese comes
from the high pastures in the Jura Massif mountain range, in the new super-region of
Bourgogne-Franche-Comté.
Comté has been produced for over 700
years, some claim 1,000 years, and it was the first cheese with a substantial
and well-organized production to be awarded an AOC.
Furthermore, Comté is one of the few cheeses where each and every cheese is
checked and graded before being permitted to carry the AOC/AOP
label.
The AOP logo
The flora in the Jura Massif is
extraordinarily diverse. Depending on where the Montbeliarde or Simmental
cows that provide the milk graze there will be grasses with different wild
flowers and herbs. These differences are reflected in the milk and,
ultimately, in slightly varying flavors and colors of the cheese. In
their winter barns, the cows are fed the local grasses collected in the summer
and a limited amount of grain. No silage can be fed to these cows at any time
and French law forbids any use of coloring additives for all its cheeses and
butter. So in the summer, the Comté cheese will be a bright yellow from
the milk as the cows graze in the high pastures; while cheeses produced by the
same cows in the winter will be lighter in color. The calves must be
raised by their mothers, and antibiotics and growth hormones are forbidden at
any time. The slightly different tastes in the cheeses produced at different
times of the year and in from different herds will not be noted except by
the experts who buy the cheese for distribution, and, of course, some real
cheese mavens.
A leading member of
the Montbeliarde Comté production team
www.flickr.com/photos/ylliabphoto/26290088954/
Comté cheese on French menus:
Cordon
Bleu de Veau au Comté - A veal
escalope wrapped around a slice of boiled ham and cheese.
Traditionally that is a French Gruyere, and Comté’s other name is the Gruyère
du Jura. After wrapping the escalope is breaded and fried. Cordon
Bleu de Veau and the same dish made with chicken breast are recipes
from the mid-20th century; however, the Cordon Bleu, the award of the blue
ribbon, is much older. The Cordon Bleu was part of an award created by King
Henry III of France, in 1578, for outstanding service to the French Crown.
Croque
Monsieur au Comté - Croque
Monsieur; a simple but tasty French fast food. This is a toasted sandwich
made with Pain de Mie, French sandwich bread, cooked ham, and cheese. The
sandwich is soaked in beaten egg and then fried gently or toasted until the
outside is golden brown and the cheese inside melts. Croque Madame is the same
recipe with an added fried egg. In France Croque Monsieur is nearly always made
with Comté or French Gruyere.
Fondue
Savoyarde (2 Personnes Minimum), Comté, Beaufort et Emmental,
Accompagnés De Salade – A Savoy
cheese fondue from (for a minimum of two persons) made with three cheeses,
Comté, Beaufort and
Emmental and accompanied by a small green salad. Recipes for dishes similar to
this cheese fondue date back two or three-hundred years, but cheese fondues
only became famous internationally with the growth of winter sports in the
1950’s. Today’s Fondue
Savoyarde will usually include three Savoie cheeses. The first two
will be Beaufort AOP and Comté AOP the third will be chosen from among the Abondance, Emmental
de Savoie or French
Gruyère cheeses. The Fondue Savoyard calls for the cheeses to be
melted in white wine with a light touch of garlic. Since the taste of the
fondue changes with the percentages of the different cheeses used every
restaurant’s fondue has its own unique taste. There are also cheese fondues
made with additions of the Savoie’s much-appreciated kirsch
cherry liquor.
Fondue Savoyarde
www.flickr.com/photos/pcerqueira/5402321948/
Risotto d'Épeautre
au Comte – A risotto made with spelt and
Comté cheese. Spelt
or Dinkel wheat is a relatively coarse, but mild, and slightly nutty
flavored ancient member of the wheat family; it is the forerunner of modern
wheat. In France, spelt is grown commercially in Provence, and there it may be
cooked like a rice dish, prepared as a risotto as in this recipe, served as a
vegetable or used to give body to a soup or stew.
Soupe
à l'Oignon Gratinée au Comté - Paris and Lyon claim the original recipes
for French
onion soup and both are outstanding. Here the menu listing fails to
note the recipe's origins but the soup will have been made with toasted bread
with Comté cheese on top and browned under the grill.
French onion soup glistening with the cheese on top.
www.flickr.com/photos/hdv-gallery/6992212974/
.
Comté Vieux de la Fruitière et sa
Confiture de Cerises - A “vieux” matured Comté direct from
the fruitière, the dairy, and served with a cherry preserve,
a cherry jam. Since all Comté cheeses are matured for at least four
months this menu listing will be for a cheese that has been matured for at
least one year.
The Comté production
With Comté’s huge popularity it is not a
simple matter to control the production. The regulations require the milk
to be made into cheese within 24 hours and the cows are milked twice a day. The farmers keep the dairies working round the
clock and so it will be extremely rare for milk to wait even 12 hours before
the cheese making process begins.
To keep to that tough schedule, the
farmers use co-operative dairies called fruitieres. Each fruitiere serves
fifteen to twenty farmers, and none will be more than 25 km (16 miles), from
each farmer’s herd. The cows do not go on holiday so every fruitiere must
work 365 days a year.
Aging Comté cheese
Nevertheless, the dairy, the fruitiere,
that makes the cheese does not do the aging. The fruitiere does, however,
choose the aging cellar; the maison d’affinage. To add to the decision-making
process, each maison d’affinage has different qualities, and each group of
cheeses may differ. The changes occur all the time, and each aging cellar
is chosen for the heat and humidity level that it offers. Comté cheeses
are aged for a minimum of 4 months with the best cheeses being aged for one to
two, or even more years. The registers showing where last week’s cheese
and the cheese from two years ago is aging, and that can create transport
scheduling headaches. Comté like other firm yellow cheeses, including Salers
AOP, English Cheddar, and others are
best when well-aged. On a restaurant’s list of cheeses or in a
fromagerie, a cheese shop, look for a Comté Vieux, an old Comté or
a Comté Affinée an aged Comté Good cheese shops will offer you
a sliver of two different Comtés to compare before buying and you can't do that
in a supermarket.
Comté Vieux – Aging Comté Cheese.
www.flickr.com/photos/barneymoss/9520659622/
The testing of every
single cheese labeled Comté AOP.
Every single Comté cheese is tested, and
that includes organoleptic tests. Organoleptic tests cover taste and smell.
While the taste makes for some 50% of the grading the external appearance of
the cheese and defects such as external cracks and holes also affect the final
grade. Cheeses with over 15 points, out of a maximum of twenty, earn the
right to use a green label and to be called Comté Extra. Cheeses with grades of
12 to 15 points are labeled with brown labels and marked Comté AOP.
Cheeses with less than 12 points may not be sold as Comté and will be sold to
commercial cheese producers for cheese spreads and other cheese flavorings.
Green labeled Comté cheese
Green is not necessarily better than brown.
Comté and Comté
Extra
Many French men and women also automatically
assign a better taste to the green label and the words Comté Extra.
Despite that, the taste of the brown labeled Comté cheese is rarely very
different to the green. Do not pay more, without tasting, for that green
label. Within the grading system, the shape and appearance of the outside
of the cheese can add one or more points, and a poor looking cheese can have a
fine taste but lose a point or two because of a poor exterior surface. A cheese
marked Comté Extra, and a less valued Comté AOP may have the same taste.
N.B. Within all Comté cheeses, there are usually small holes; this is a natural
part of the cheese-making process and seen in all French
Gruyère type cheeses and does not affect the taste in any way.
Where does Comté
come from
The Comté’s appellation covers parts of
five French departments: Ain, Doubs, Jura, Saône-et-Loire, and
Haute-Savoie. Other great French cheeses come from here, and they
include Bleu
de Gex AOP, Mont
d’Or AOP, and Morbier
AOP, Charolais
AOP, Maconnais AOP, Chevrotin AOP, Tomme des Bauges AOP, Reblochon
AOP, Abondance
AOP, Beaufort
AOP, Tomme
de Savoie IGP and French
Gruyere. They may all be tasted and enjoyed when traveling in the area
Lunchtime for the production crew
www.flickr.com/photos/ylliabphoto/17473436186/
The Comté cheese
roads.
If you are traveling to the Jura you
arrive, or even before you leave home, call the French Government Tourism
Office; ask for a copy of their Les Routes du Comté, the Comté cheese
roads.
The official Comte website that gives
information on the cheese roads is only in French. Nevertheless using the Bing
and or Google translate apps make the website clearly readable.
The cheese roads offer access from all
parts of the cheese making areas. The roads take you past farms, dairies and
maturing cellars, as well as vineyards, wineries, local cheese museums, and of
no less importance, a variety of restaurants. Combine this map with the
well-designed Jura
wine road; called La
Route Touristique des Vins. A lot of thought went into planning this
wine route; it includes, apart from vineyards and vintners, cheese producers
and other places of agricultural, gastronomic and historical interest along
with nature walks and much more. See how these maps interconnect and then
take the combined route.
Like the cheese road, the website for the
wine road is only in French, but Google, Bing and others translate the website
very well.
The wines that will be recommended to
accompany Comté and other local cheeses are the two most famous sweet wines of
the Jura: the Vin Jaune, their yellow wine, and their Vin de Paille,
their straw wine. To accompany your meals try their Arbois AOC, reds,
roses and whites along with their sparkling Cremant de
Jura their Vins de Franche-Comté IGP and for your digestif cherry liquor
the Kirsch de
Fougerolles AOC or the Macvin AOC.
The Macvin AOC comes with an ancient
tradition, and from my investigations, it is so ancient that no one seems to be
very clear about it when it all began! The Macvin AOC is
produced in a similar manner to the Pineau
de Charente from the Cognac region and Pommeau from the Calvados apple
brandy.
The Jura in summer.
Photograph courtesy of deepakhere.mypixels
www.flickr.com/photos/7164796@N04/7890070334/
To add to your enjoyment of the
breathtaking scenery in the center of the French Jura are beautiful lakes and this is one of the less traveled parts of France. Even the
Prefecture of Jura, the provincial capital, Lons-le-Saunier, has only 20,000
inhabitants. The Jura Massif includes most of the region of Franche-Comté and
part of the departments of Saone-et-Loire in Burgundy and Ain and
Haute Savoie in the Rhone-Alpes. Visit the regional Jura park, the Parc Naturel
Regional du Haut-Jura.
The Jura in Winter.
Photograph courtesy of kbxxus
www.flickr.com/photos/kbxxus/16284772250/
If you arrive in winter you may still
enjoy the cheese, but the mountains and valleys of the Massif will be
covered with snow; so take your skis. The Jura provides some of the best
skiing in France
Taking Comté AOP
cheese and other French cheeses home.
f you wish to take a whole Comté
AOP cheese home, you may have some difficulty with one of these cheeses in your
hand luggage. The average Comté AOP cheese weighs between 30 to 48 kilos
(66 – 105 lbs)! In a fromagerie, a cheese shop, anywhere in France, order
a one-kilo wedge, or more if you wish, and have the shop vacuum pack the
cheese. Failing the availability of vacuum packing use plenty of tightly
wrapped plastic wrap.
At home, the Comté AOP cheese will keep
well when refrigerated like other hard yellow cheeses but never freeze it; it
will lose its taste. See the post: Buying
Cheese in France. Bringing French Cheese Home.
--------------------------------
Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman
behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com
Copyright 2010, 2012, 2013, 2017, 2019
For information on the unpublished book
behind this blog write to Bryan Newman
at
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