Chabichou du Poitou AOP - The Exceptional Goat’s Cheese From the Old French Region of Poitou-Charentes

from
Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman

behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

 

A young Chabichou du Poitou AOC/AOP
 
Chabichou du Poitou is a 29% fat, firm, creamy, very white, goat’s milk cheese. It is made with unpasteurized milk in the old region of Poitou-Charentes that comprises the departments of Charente, Charente-Maritime, Deux-Sèvres, and Vienne. The natural rind is white in the youngest cheeses and then turns to a light blue and grey as the cheese matures. Over 600 farms provide the milk for the cheese with six farm dairies, two co-operative dairies and two commercial dairies making the cheese.

Chabichou du Poitou AOP

The home of the Chabichou Poitou-Charentes

From the French Revolution onwards Poitou-Charentes was a French administrative region (somewhat like a State in the USA or a County in the UK).  Then on 1-1-2016 in a move aimed to reduce costs and bureaucracy France reduced the number of mainland administrative regions from twenty-two to thirteen and Poitou-Charentes was included in the new super region of Nouvelle-Aquitaine. Poitou-Charentes, nevertheless,  remains as part of the quality label for many products and produce.

The Poitou-Charentes Region with the Atlantic Coast to the west.

Choosing a Chabichou du Poitou cheese by age.

The cheese comes in the shape of a truncated cylinder called a "bonde," approximately 6 cm in diameter at the bottom and 6cm high, and weighing 150 grams (5 ounces). The youngest cheeses sold are smooth and creamy with a natural crinkly rind with small gray patches and will have been aged for at least ten days.  From then on until the cheese is 20 days old it will primarily be seen in salads or cooked products with a taste that is sweet and mildly salty.  Then as the cheese matures at four weeks it is called demi afinei (or demi-sec which means half-dry) and will be on the cheese plate or trolley, it is beginning to become crumbly and has a savory and slightly spicy taste and is best accompanied by a dry white wine. At six weeks the cheese is sharper and referred to as afinei (or sec meaning dry) and that's when the cheese’s aficionados may choose a red wine. At eight weeks the cheese is at its strongest and called tres affine or (tres sec meaning very dry) and then its only accompaniment will be a very strong red wine or Cognac.
  
Three ages in Chabichou du Poitou

For a 100% local experience you may accompany a Chabichou du Poitou with one of the three local AOP wines or choose from the two IGP wines:

Charentais IGP red, white and rosé wines. 
Deux-sèvres IGP red, white, and rosé wines.
Haut-Poitou AOP white, and rosé wines
Saumur de la Vienne AOC red, white and rosé wines. 
Thouarsais AOP reds, whites and rosé wines.


    
Haut-Poitou AOP wines

Chabichou du Poitou on French menus :

Chabichou du Poitou et ses Fruits Secs – A cheese plate of Chabichou du Poitou served with dried fruits.

Chabichou du Poitou Fondu,  Petite Salade au Noix – A meltimg Chabichou du Poitou served with a small walnut salad.
  


The melon of Haut-Poitou

Le Burger de Patates Douces, Boulgour, Avocat et Chabichou du Poitou de Marie Pascreau  –  A vegetarian burger of sweet potatoes, Bulgur wheat, avocado, and Chabichou du Poitou cheese from the farm of Marie Pascreau.  French Bulgur wheat is cracked whole grains of wheat that have been partially pre-cooked. Cracked means whole grains that have been passed through rollers until they have been reduced to about one-quarter the size.
 
Le Burger de Sanglier au Chabichou du Poitou et Tomates Confites -  A wild boar meat burger prepared with Chabichou du Poitou and a tomato confit, a tomato jam.
   
A burger with Chabichou du Poitou

Tartine de Chabichou du Poitou, Radis, Tomates Vertes et Coulis de Basilic An open sandwich with Chabichou du Poitou, radishes and green tomatoes flavored with a basil purée.

Millefeuilles de Betteraves à la Mousse de Chabichou du Poitou, Pignons et Arômes Radis -  Interleafed thin slices of beetroot and a Chabichou du Poitou moose with added pine nuts all little lightly spiced by thin wedges of radish.

Millefeuille means a thousand leaves with the term originally describing thin leaves of pastry dividing a cream or other filling. In the dish above the millefeuille will include thin leaves (slices) of beetroot replacing the pastry. The inclusion of pine nuts, pine seeds, in the dish above confirms that texture is just as important as taste in French cuisine and fresh pine nuts add texture with a soft buttery taste. Toasted or grilled pine nuts add a slight crunch and a nutty flavor.

Tarte Sablée au Parmesan, Mousse de Chabichou du Poitou et Déclinaison de Betteraves –  A shortcrust pastry pie, with Parmesan cheese, a moose of Cabichou du Poitou decorated with beetroot.

The Chabichou cheese road.
  
The Route du Chabichou et des Fromages de Chèvres, the Chabichou cheese road travels through the four departments of Charente, Charente-Maritime, Deux-Sèvres, and Vienne. The road passes close to the farms that produce the milk for the Chabichou du Poitou and other farms that are home to many other products and wines; plus all the Cognac produced in France. All the farms on the road may be visited. Apart from the Chabichou du Poitou cheese the same region provides 20% of France’s goat cheeses, (that’s more than all the cheeses of Provence) and so along the road you will encounter some of the 25 plus, branded, mostly IGP rated goat's and sheep’s cheeses, along with many unique but unbranded single farm cheeses and villages that produce the Charentes-Poitou AOC butter, one of France's three AOP butters.   There are close to 30 entrances and exits to the cheese road spread throughout the region and so wherever you are staying there is an entrance close by. 
  

Other products that may be on restaurant menus.
  
Apart from farms, the road passes close to restaurants that may be serving Marennes Oléron Oysters, the only French oysters that have a Label Rouge, red label rating, and there also there are also mussels, saltwater fish and seafood. On the menu may be local freshwater fish and some of France’s best caviar that comes from sturgeon farms along the River Charentes.  The most famous aperitif of the area is the Cognac-based Pineau des Charentes AOP and menus will offer other local Label Rouge, red label, IGP products and produce.  Look out for Poitou-Charentes Lamb, Parthenaisie beef, Mille Ventes farm raised rabbits, Saffron d'Angoumois, Melon du Haut-Poitou, and in season France’s famous new potatoes from the island l'Île de Ré.   If you are staying in a self-catering apartment make sure that you seek out and buy for breakfast the regions unique bronze and golden Marans chicken's eggs. There is much more to this region and a must is a visit to the town of Cognac home to the area’s most famous product.
  
Hine “Talent” Cognac.
Photograph courtesy of Gilles de Beauchêne from Hine Cognac.

Depending on where you join the route you may be near the Maison des Fromages de Chèvre – the House of Goat Cheese which for a small donation to the local economy explains to visitors the history of goat cheese in the region and its production, followed by an opportunity to taste some of the named goat’s cheeses of the area. The House of Goat Cheese is in the small town of Celles-sur-Belle in the department of Deux-Sèvres. Close by is the mostly reconstructed Abbaye Royale Notre-Dame de Celles-sur-Belle. The abbey has a French-language website that is easily understood using the Bing and Google translate apps:



The official website of Chabichou du Poitou in French but easily understood using the Bing and Google translate apps.


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by
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behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

Copyright 2010, 2019.


Crabe Royal – King Crab. King Crab is an Imported Delicacy but Holds an Important Place in French Cuisine.

from
Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman

behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

 
The Alaskan Red King Crab.
Photograph courtesy of Jet-Fresh

The King Crab also called the Alaskan King Crab, Kamchatka King Crab or Red King Crab has just as many names on French Menus: Crab Royal, Crabe Royal d’Norvege or Crabe Royal de Kamchatka.

France loves crab and the white meat of one or more of these tasty crustaceans will be on the menus of nearly all French seafood restaurants. The locally caught crabs, the Crabe Tourteau, the Edible Brown Crab, and the Crab Araignée, the European Spider Crab are the most popular; they are tasty and relatively inexpensive. The Snow Crab, the Crabe de Neige, follows on as the leading imported crab. The most highly rated imported crabs are the expensive King Crabs. King Crabs, with their snowy white meat and very special taste and texture, has no competition at the top of the popularity polls.


Red King Crab legs on sale in a market.
Photograph courtesy of fictures
www.flickr.com/photos/fictures/7099468/
 
A whole king crab will not be on the menu.

Until the early 2000s, most Red King Crabs (Alaskan) arrived in France in cans at very high prices; all these King Crabs came from the Northern Pacific.  Even now with the Alaskan Red King Crabs coming from Norway, (which is a long way from Alaska) you are unlikely to see a whole fresh King Crab in a restaurant as a large crab can weigh 10 kg and measure 1.5 meter from leg to leg. Even the average King Crab weighs around two and a half kilos and its body contains no meat that most of us would want to eat.

The King Crab and an ecological disaster.

  

The king crab on French and European menus today results from a man-made ecological disaster that has, so far, become a goldmine. In the 1960s the Russians put large quantities of the Kamchatka king crabs, the Red King Crab, from the North Pacific on a train and shipped them on the Trans-Siberian railroad to their port at Murmansk a distance of 5743 kilometers (3568 miles). They had no controls or evaluations, but they wanted to create a Russian crabbing industry in the North Atlantic. There in the Murmansk Fjord, the crabs multiplied and multiplied and destroyed the local fishermen’s nets, along with much of the local fishing industry, and then they moved swiftly to Norwegian waters. Then the Russians and Norwegians were forced to co-operate to control this disaster, and one of the few results (at least in the short term) has been the creation of a new crabbing industry. Many fishermen have given up their nets and become crabbers, who receive more Euros per kilo that for any other commercial catch. However, the story does not end here, and the crabs are continuing to move along the Norwegian coast, and eating a lot of Norwegian King Crab may still not be enough to save the cod fisheries.

 

The other King Crabs that are commercially fished in the seas off Alaska are the Golden King Crab and the Blue King Crab. When the menu reads Alaskan King Crab in Europe, it’s nearly always the Red King Crab. When the crab meat is canned, you might have to read the small print as only the white meat will be in the can.

 

The Red King Crab on French menus:

 

La Soupe de Crabe Royal – A soup made from the King Crab. (The crab’s body may be used for crab flavor and other seafood products, but it will not be on the menu and in France rarely used in crab soup).

  

 

Steamed king crab in a cream sauce.

Photograph City Foodsters

www.flickr.com/photos/cityfoodsters/12163045876/

 

Pattes de Crabe Royal avec Sauce Dijon Crémeuse - King's crab legs served with a creamy Dijon mustard sauce.

 

Pattes de Crabe Royal Grillées  – Grilled king crab's legs.

Surf and Turf

Steak, King Crab and asparagus.

Photograph courtesy of Todd Dwyer

www.flickr.com/photos/ret0dd/4383729622/

 

Pattes de Crabe Royal Cuites à la Vapeur - Steamed King Crab's legs.

 

Ravioli de Crabe Royal au Bouillon de Citronnelle et Gingembre - King Crab prepared as ravioli and served in a bouillon flavored with lemongrass and ginger.

 

Raviolis Ouverts de Crabe Royal et Caviar d'Aquitaine – Open ravioli (flat disks of pasta) filled with king crab and the Caviar d'Aquitaine, a brand name for the farmed Siberian sturgeon caviar from the Gironde River.  The Gironde River once had its own wild sturgeon but over-fishing ended that and now sturgeon farms there and elsewhere in Europe supply 90% of the caviar consumed in Europe and also export to the USA.


Coal-Roasted King Crab.
Crème Fraiche, Miso, Lime, Coriander
Photograph courtesy of Lou Stejskal
www.flickr.com/photos/loustejskal/24308115705/

French chefs consider the Norwegian Red King Crab better than the Alaskan Red King Crab though they are the same crab from albeit from different waters; their taste buds may be influenced by Norway being part of Europe, though it is not part of the EU.  The main King Crab crabbing season is from October to January though they may be caught as a by-catch all year round.  The Red King Crabs from the North Atlantic are also becoming more important for another reason.  The Red King Crab's Alaskan brothers and sisters are experiencing a steady decline in numbers.  Investigations that cited overfishing resulted in fishing limits set by the United States in the 1980s and 2000.  However, those regulations have failed to stop the decline, and now warmer water from climate change is being investigated.

However, back in Norway, not everything in the garden is rosy; or rather not all the Red King Crabs are gold.  The crabs keep advancing along the Norwegian coast, and that is a new cause for worry.  Remember the story of the rabbits brought to Australia for food and hunting.  Then, despite all attempts at control, Australia now has a population of close to 300 million wild rabbits that have caused and are causing devastation by destroying grasses, young plants, and tree bark.  That continues the ecological damage by the destruction of other species including birds and fish whose life is interlinked with the same destroyed sources of food. Bringing in new species can and does destroy local populations that have no resistance to the imports.

Cooking King Crab’s legs at home.

If you are buying King Crabs’ legs in Europe or North American, they will have been boiled and flash frozen on board or upon arrival at the fishing port before being shipped.  Read the package carefully, and you will see that despite all the recipes available all the work is basically just heating and adding flavor whether you grill, steam or roast them. Crab meat is very delicate, and so very little will be shipped without being cooked and frozen first. 

  


An entrée, the French starter, of King Crab.
Photograph courtesy oe Ff onetallchef
www.flickr.com/photos/96550666@N08/14318731138/
 

The Red King Crab, the Crabe Royal in the languages of France’s neighbors:

(Catalan -  crabe royal du Kamtchatka), (Dutch - rode koningskrab), (German –königskrabbe, kamtschatkakrabbe), (Italian -  granchio reale, grancevola del Kamciatka), (Spanish - cangrejo real rojo, cangrejo de Kamchatka), (Latin paralithodes camtschaticus).

---------------- 

Are you searching for the meanings of a word, name,
or a phrase on a French Menu? 
  
Just add the word, words, or phrase that you are searching for to the words "Behind the French Menu" and search with Google. Behind the French Menu’s links include hundreds of words, names, and phrases that are seen on French menus. There are over 400 articles that include over 3,000 French dishes with English translations and explanations.
------------------

Behind the French Menu
by
Bryan G. Newman

 

behindthefrenchmenu@gmail.com

Copyright 2010, 2019, 2021
 
--------------------------------
 
 
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