Would you like a gourmet coffee? NO, A GOURMET CHEESE!
A cheese that dances around sweet and salty combinations like the Rudolf Noureev of desserts, an intoxicating sweetness that shakes up every after-dinner custom, even if it resembles the liqueurs from film Groundhog Day, a star sweet that shakes up the soul like a kiss under the rain to Chopin’s complete mazurkas.
In short, a cheese whose flavours work extremely well with fruit, gingerbread, meringues, chocolate, vanilla, coffee, tea, rum, whisky and liqueur, that they allow millions of French people to put an end to the depressing question like an after-meal telephone survey: « Cheese or dessert ? »
How did we impose upon ourselves, over all these years, a choice that wasn’t a choice, with the knowing look of the guest who knows how to do without? From which killjoy spirit then did the crazy idea of bringing together the smoothness of a pastry cream and the hint of vanilla of Morbier cheese take shape ?
Nowadays cheese is the new dessert! A sweet and salty pleasure that no one can take back, like a bespoke remix and a true little masterpiece on our plate.
…And to think that not too long ago, the Café Gourmand and its square plate, microwaved chocolate fondant (1 min), apricot purée in a glass, three softened mini-meringues, plastic canelé and extortionate price passed for the height of sophistication and elegance… How did we fool people for so long?
Pushing them to give cheese a miss under the pretext of eating more quickly and lightly, we did not simply deprive them of one of the greatest pleasures of existence (a recent study has even compared the effects of cheese on the brain to those of sex) but what’s more, we often pushed them into the arms of reheated petit-fours whose dietary and nutritional qualities left much to desire. Ciao imposters, cheese is back on the table! No dessert trolley, no dome, no platter, but a multitude of combinations whose every possibility we are yet to determine…
And what if, following its success as a dessert, sweet cheese established itself at breakfast (with pastries, fruit loaves, herbal teas, etc) and snack time (with Époisses de Bourgogne, cumin chocolate, Jean-Paul Hévin, Paris)? Watch this space…
Long live France and long live mouth-watering cheese!
