I grew up in the Midwest and as a girl, was afraid of strong flavors. To me, cheese was bright orange Kraft American slices, each pressed against its own raft of wax paper, ready to be melted in some margarine between two slices of Wonder bread, (with the crusts cut off, because I swore the crusts tasted different.) Or cheese was Wishbone Blue Cheese Salad Dressing, with was my father's favorite, though I would not go near the stuff. On my on wedge of iceberg lettuce, I preferred Wishbone French, which, looking back, might have been some variation on catchup mixed with oil and vinegar and sugar. Or cheese was Cheese Whiz in a can, shaken then squirted on girlfriends' fingers at slumber parties, or directly into each others' mouths, or else used to draw happy faces on Ritz crackers. College exposed me to fondue and runny, hot brie baked in foil, but I never really appreciated the wonders of cheese until I spent a year in Paris.
I showed up at Bernadette's door, a total stranger that a waitressing friend in Berkeley had told me to call as a last resort, and she kindly showed me to her daughter's former room and said I could stay as long as I needed. Those first weeks, having never been to Europe before and knowing no one, I did what most lonely Expats do: I took the Metro to Shakespeare & Co. bookstore, or I went to old French movies with no subtitles to try and improve my French. I also explored Bernadette's kitchen while she was at work. My first Cheese Faux Pas was to put her lovely little plate of cheeses protected by its glass dome into the refrigerator, thinking she had left it out by mistake. When she got home from work, she saw what I had done, and held out the plate in front of me as if it was evidence of a terrible crime.
Mais non, mais non, mais non, she said wagging a finger at me,
Jamais dans le frigo!
She explained to me that the flavor of cheese could only bloom when room temperature. She told me the famous quote by Charles de Gaulle,
How can anyone govern a nation that has two hundred and forty-six different kinds of cheese? After the cheeses had warmed up a bit and recovered from their trauma, she sat me down for my first lesson, slicing a fresh baguette and starting me on my journey towards real cheese appreciation. Some of the cheeses she put on a small slice of baguette, and some she proffered straight up. She spoke very little English and I was trying to speak only French while there, but I was pretty sure when she passed me a taste of camembert and urged me to smell it, she said
a good camembert should smell like God's feet. This was the first time I appreciated how a flavor could be strong and delicious at the same time.
My second cheese faux pas occurred because I had rapidly become something of a camembert junkie. Soon after Bernadette's lesson, I ventured out to shyly navigate the cheese stalls at the street markets, wanting to treat her to some of the cheeses I knew she liked. The venders at first ignored me as regulars stepped right in front of me. After about ten minutes of this, I grew braver, and the vendors took my order, teasing me in French. I laughed, though I think I only understood about half of their humor at that stage. When I got back to Bernadette's kitchen, I arranged small wedges of the new cheeses on her platter, always "one soft cheese, one hard cheese, a blue and a goat cheese," as I had learned, and awaited her delight upon returning home. But then I got hungry. Full disclosure: I did not like the rind of the camembert nearly as much as the delicious, soft interior, so in true scoffing-at-the-crust-of-Wonder-Bread fashion, I slyly worked the knife inside the triangle, leaving the pointed end in front sagging for lack of support. When Bernadette returned home, I sat her down in the kitchen and with a Ta-Da, lifted the dome off the cheeses I had purchased. She immediately honed in on the hollowed out camembert and threw her hands up in the air, scolding
tu ne respect pas le fromage! And it was true, I had not respected the cheese, and vowed in that moment to have the entire experience, rind and all, if that was how the French did it.
I was making real progress in my cheese education, until the night of my third and probably not final faux pas. I had made some friends by this stage in my stay, and wanted to introduce
mes amis to Bernadette, so asked her for a restaurant suggestion that was "typically French and really good," perhaps a redundancy. After a wonderful meal at a place that our little trio of expats never would have found without the help of a local, I pushed my plate aside and exclaimed that I was extremely full but might be persuaded to have dessert. Right about then our waiter showed up wheeling a silver cart and on top, about a dozen types of cheese. With great respect, he gestured to each one, as if introducing us to a dignitary, and told us its name, whether it originated from cow or goat or sheep. He told us the region it had come from, and described in succinctly whether it was strong or mild or medium. When he had finished I laughed and asked if he had anything that involved chocolate. I sensed a blunder. Bernadette rolled her eyes at the waiter, then calmly chose her little portions of three cheeses, as if I had not spoken. The waiter made his way around to each of us, and, cheeks burning, I asked him humbly what he would recommend.
I learned that night that cheese aids in the digestion of the big meal one has just eaten, and that the average French citizen eats fifty-seven pounds of cheese a year! But part of me thinks that the cheese course is also there as a way to preserve that other great French tradition: the art of conversation and lingering with friends over a delicious meal.
