My Christmas dinner was a multi-course, five-hour (no joke!) affair including jambon en croute, purée de marrons, and crème de chocolat. I even tried some foie gras, which I’ve decided is nowhere close to becoming my favorite food, as the whole time I was chewing I was thinking less about the flavor and more about the poor little geese.
The ultimate test came towards the end of the meal, an evaluation of my introduction thus far to French cuisine, in the form of the all-important cheese course. The French will tell you that the bacterial ferments aid with digesting the meal; I just think they’re stupendously delicious.
For the special occasion, an enormous platter of multi-hued, multi-shaped, multi-textured, multi-stinking cheese had been ordered from the fromagerie. Really quite impressive. All eyes were on me as it was placed on the table. Each specimen was pointed to in succession, and I was to name them.
The results? Perfect marks; I know my Roblochon from my Morbier. In recompense I got a couple little cheers of “Bravo!” and a nice hunk of camembert.
Speaking of which, when my aunt and uncle came to visit me after Christmas, they were inquiring what the peculiar smell in the fridge was. I spent a good minute digging through the leftovers looking for something that had gone bad, and yet was still unable to find a culprit. Turns out, it was the cheese dish all along.
So it’s official. I’ve become immune to even the most particularly fragrant varieties of cheese; it no longer registers in my system as offensive.
All I can say is that my brother William, who detests the faintest scent of the mildest and most harmless of cheeses (such as cheddar or feta or parmesan) had better watch out for when I get back home.
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