These are a truly French biscuit. They’re made by LU, a company that goes back to 1846 and which today is owned by Nabisco, which in turn is owned by Kraft. But back then, in Nantes, it consisted of husband and wife team Jean-Romain Lefèvre and Pauline-Isabelle Utile. I bet you can see where LU comes from now!

Originally they made fancy biscuits which they packaged nicely and sold to be given as gifts. Over the years as the company passed down through the generations, it morphed into large-scale biscuit production.

LU had an astute eye for advertising, commissioning top artists of the day to paint pictures that they could use as publicity. One of the most famous of these is Firmin Bouisset’s Petit Écolier (little schoolboy), which he created in 1897. It’s a painting of his own son eating a petit beurre biscuit, made, of course, by LU.

However, it wasn’t until 1983 that the Petit Écolier biscuit arrived on the scene. This is a petit beurre biscuit topped by a slab of chocolate that has the famous painting moulded onto it. It comes in milk, white, dark and extra dark chocolate, all equally delicious. They’re a very popular after school nibble for hungry kids off the school bus. There are plenty of cheaper imitations of these biscuits, but none of them have the little schoolboy picture on.

Ruadhri had a couple today after we came back from playing and ice trucking on the frozen lake. (No school today since the school buses were all cancelled again because of the weather.) We used the sledge to haul wood across from Ragondin Island over to the far bank where we can collect it with the tractor. Here’s Ruadhri with a load.

We messed around too, taking it in turns to tow each other. Here’s Rors pulling me! He deserved his Petit Écoliers after that!

My fève collection

Not any more. They’re just a couple of euros now and definitely a bargain. I can add to my fève collection, and do a spot of low-key favophilie.

Favophilie (sometimes fabophilie) is the activity of collecting the fèves from Galettes des Rois. Seasoned favophiles are after rare ones, or are trying to build up whole series of special edition ones. Either way, they’re probably slightly sad people.

The tradition of a single fève in festive cakes began in the 13th century in France. Cakes containing two fèves appeared later, one was black and one was white signifying ‘king’ and ‘queen’ respectively. But come the Revolution there could be no more religious based fun, so Twelfth Night became the sans culottes (without trousers) festival, and the Galette des Rois became the Galette d’égalité, still with fèves. Even that gateau was banned on and off for a while. But the tradition persevered.

The current trend of porcelain fèves (with a brief eruption of plastic ones in the 1960s and 1970s) began in Germany in 1874. Porcelain swimmers were the first models. Twenty years later, fèves of all sorts were being produced. Different themes predominated at different times – santons (saints), doves, angels, professions and so on. These days cartoon and film characters tend to prevail, which is rather naff but clearly a good selling point. This year I’ve gained a Harry Potter bust and a truly awful mini-plaque of Titeuf, that strange cartoon guy with the yellow hair. My other less classy fèves include Indiana Jones and Pirates of the Caribbean momentoes.

I do have some nice ones including a sheep that Rors brought home from school on Tuesday. Clearly the caterer at his school is like me and buys in bargain food since the kids got a Galette des Rois for pudding out of the blue. Rors came up trumps when it was dished up and got the fève, so he also got the cardboard crown. He wore it for our 2.5 km walk home and I think he was disappointed that no-one else got to see him. We rarely come across anyone during our walks.

There are some lovely fèves out there – this is one set I saw on a website. It’s a collection of the 13 desserts served on Christmas Eve in Provence. You can get animals (I found a set of pandas and koalas aka world’s dopiest animals!), flowers, trees, Disney, Hello Kitty, symbols, letters, books, playing cards – the list is endless these days. Look up fève on eBay and see what comes up. A lot are claimed to be rare or ancien - although probably take that with a pinch of salt! But there are some cute and clever ones to be had.

Actually, I think I’m beginning to see how you can get drawn into favophilie …

Comment fait-on les petits suisses ?

- Comme les petits français !

It doesn’t quite translate exactly since it’s playing on words and relies on the way the French refer to other nationalities. Rors was slightly embarrassed when I asked him to repeat it and said it was a bit rude. It’s not really!

How do you make a little Swiss (implying the cheese but meaning a person)? The same way you make a little French (person)!

So, it’s Petit Suisse cheese this week. Petit Suisse is in the family of soft cheeses. It’s fromage frais i.e. an unripe, non-salted creamy cheese. It’s made from cow’s milk and a generous dollop of cream is added during the process so it’s very high fat, up to 40%. But it’s delicious!

I dare say you’re familiar with this little cylindrical, white cheese, usually sold in 60g size, although sometimes twice that, in a plastic pot and perplexingly wrapped in paper. This strange practice dates back to when they were individually wrapped in a piece of waxed paper to hold them in shape and sold in lots of six in a small wooden box. They don’t really need the paper any more now they’re sold in pots, but it’s a tradition that’s hung on. The bits of paper can be a pain since the cheese tends to stick to them, and in our house the cats fish them out of the bin any time they manage to invade the kitchen, chew them up then spit them out on the floor. Yuk.

Petit Suisse aren’t Swiss – they originated in Normandy – but they were thought up by a Swiss person who worked at a dairy in Auvilliers. He suggested adding cream to the curd they used for cheese to make it richer, and so the whole thing began.But only because a chef’s assistant, Henri Gervais, took a shine to the product and begun to use it. He was the key to its success and built a business around it. The Gervais company sent their cheese to Paris by horse-drawn cart every day. Nowadays, Gervais Petit Suisses are still going  strong and are distributed worldwide by slightly more efficient but less environmentally friendly means! Gervais is part of the Bel group.

French people tend to deluge Petit Suisses in sugar to eat them, but I like them as they are. They’re said to be nice with a touch of salt of pepper or a sprinkle of herbs over too. Petit Suisse mixed with mustard makes a tasty coating to meat while it’s cooking and stops it drying out.

It’s very easy to make and easiest of all is if you can get unpasteurised milk. This isn’t a problem in France where you find it in vending machines. You leave a bowl of the raw milk out of the fridge overnight and it should have curdled i.e. set, by morning. Then wrap it in muslin and let it drain for a while so all the whey drips out. Unwrap the cheese, stir in a few spoonfuls of cream and enjoy. If you can only get pasteurised milk, then you need to add some buttermilk or a spoonful of yogurt or other fermented milk product to get the curdling process started. Apart from that, the method is the same. I haven’t made any yet, but now I’ve found these recipes, I shall be. I’m very partial to Petit Suisse.

Finally a question: in which book do you find a character names Petisuix? Answers please!

Isn’t it cool? It’s specially designed with those movable plastic bits inside to conserve your Camembert and help it ripen properly by retaining its odour.

So, onto the cheese itself. This is one of the family of fromages à pâte molle et à croûte fleurie (soft cheeses with a floury crust). It’s less fatty than its pressed cheese cousins since it contains more water. It contains around 320 calories per 100g which is pretty good for cheese.

A typical 250g Camembert is made from two litres of milk, so lots of healthy calcium in every slice, and also a good dollop of phosphorus too. There are vitamins A and B2 as well.

Generally, the longer you keep Camembert, the better it gets provided you don’t go past the eat by date on the packet and don’t leave it to shrivel up in the back of your frigo like we sometimes do, only rediscovering it the next time a full-scale fridge clean out is called for due to there being a funny smell. Which is usually the Camembert! If you eat it affiné, ie about 3 weeks after it’s been made, it’s light and delicate. When it becomes à point about a fortnight later, it’s altogether a more determined cheese. But wash it down with a swig of good strong red wine and it’s extremely palatable.

You can eat it in many different ways. Straight out of the packet on baguette is always nice. But slices rolled in breadcrumbs and then deep fried are my favourites. I once had these with a redcurrant sauce as a starter many years ago, and I can still remember how lovely it was.

I’ve never done it, but apparently it’s delicious if you cook the camembert in a moderate oven in its wooden box (assuming you buy the posher varieties) until the wood is starting to blacken. You then take the crust off with a knife and dip bits of bread into the melty cheese underneath. Something to try but keep a fire extinguisher handy.

I’ve read that Camembert chocolates and camembert sorbet are highly acclaimed gastronomic delights but I can’t say they sound very appealing.

Onto the cheese’s history. Legend has it that it all began with Marie Harel, a farmer in the village of Pays d’Auge at the end of the 18th century. She kindly sheltered a refractory priest, Abbé Charles-Jean Bonvoust, when he was on the run from the guillotine-obsessed authorities during the Revolution. He was from Brie originally, and to show his gratitude to Marie, he gave her the recipe for his native cheese. She combined this with the cheese she traditionally made and voilà, Camembert was born. Except this isn’t true. Camembert already existed. There are references to it that date back to 16th century. Nice try Marie!

The railway helped Camembert become famous since it could now be easily transported to markets in Paris. Once Napoléon said he liked it and officially called it Camembert, its success was assured. The famous round wooden boxes for Camembert were invented in 1890 by Ridel. These allowed the cheese within to breathe and thus be transported further afield to conquer foreign markets.

Until 1910 Camembert actually had a bluish mould on it. This ended with the discovery of penicillium candidum which produced a more attractive white mould. And it’s said that the cheese became the unofficial symbol of France when it was included in the daily rations of soldiers in the Great War.

So, rather an interesting cheese all round.

Like the ban on tomato ketchup in schools, this is another tax that will Do Us Good and stop us becoming a nation of fatties, apparently. However, well known French economist Pierre Combris has pointed out the flaw in the government’s argument. Governments want to make money so they actually want us to carry on buying vast quantities of fizzy drinks since they’ll raise more tax that way. But if they achieve their avowed public health aim of putting us off these drinks of the devil, then they won’t raise very much revenue after all. Have they really thought this through? Coca-Cola has already protested by not investing 17 million euros in its Bouches-du-Rhône factory in France. That’s a big financial blow to the country.

And will the small price hike break the habits of a lifetime? Smokers and drinkers resiliently take the annual increase in the cost of their vices on the chin, and carry on consuming. Will sugary drinks drinkers be equally resolute, or will the tax burst their bubble? We’ll see.

This tax won’t have much effect in our household. I don’t buy a lot of fizzy drinks or premixed squash, just the occasional bottle of orangina or coke at party time or for a treat. So it won’t be making a huge hole in my purse. And food prices have been going up so quickly generally lately that I’m not sure heavy consumers of the boissons will even notice the rise anyway. We’ve all got used to paying a different price for the same food item every week.

And will France be full of slim people by the end of the year? Hmmm …

But some groundwork to do first. Cheese comes in families in France, and there are anything between 3 and 8 of them, according to the source you look at. I’m going with the eight families, since we might as well do this properly!

1. Fresh cheeses – fromages frais

These are the white, rather runny cheeses with a high water content (up to 82%). They’re made without using rennet and aren’t aged at all. Familiar examples would be fromage blanc and Petit Suisse.

2. Soft cheeses with natural rind – Fromages à pâte molle et à croûte fleurie

Brie and camembert are examples of this family of soft cheese made from cow’s milk which has a distinctive floury rind. They’re aged for about a month.

3. Soft cheeses with washed rind – Fromages à pâte molle et à croûte lavée

These cow’s milk cheeses are literally washed during the aging process to stop surface moulds forming. They usually have bright rinds. Pont L’Évêque is such a cheese.

4. Pressed cheeses – Fromages à pâte pressée

Right, these cheeses are pressed while they age and this rids them of some of their moisture content. They’re also washed, brushed and turned to give them nice even rinds. Cantal is an example of this family of cheese.

5. Pressed and cooked cheeses – Fromages à pâte pressée et cuite

Emmental comes into this category. Cheeses in this group are heated before they’re pressed. They’re left to ripen for a long time.

6. Goat cheese - Fromages de chèvre

I don’t think this needs any more explanation! There are over 100 different types of French cheese made from goat’s milk.

7. Blue cheeses – Fromages à pâte persillées

These are the smelly cheeses (like the one I wrote about in this story) which are aged for a long time before they’re eaten. They have the distinctive blue veins running through them. Some are made from sheep’s milk, such as Roquefort. We visited that factory – I can still smell it! You either love this type of cheese or hate it.

8. Processed cheeses – Fromages à pâte fondue

These are made from a blend of cheeses and often have herbs and flavourings added. Delicious Boursin falls into this category.

So that’s a quick introduction to the main groups of fromage.

The Daggs' favourite cheese in bulk

This Tuesday’s cheese is Emmental, you know the one with holes in it. I usually buy this cheese pre-grated in 1 kg bags at the supermarket. We get through vast amounts of it. It’s one of the most popular and cheaper cheeses. It’s mainly produced in the east of France and the Emmental from certain areas (for example, france est central) has an IGP label (Indication Géographique Protégée – a quality mark). Not the sort that I buy though!

Almost half a million tonnes of Emmental are produced in Europe each year, and France makes approximately half of this, using 13.1% of all the milk produced in France. It takes 12 litres to make 1 kg of Emmental. It’s made in big  loaves of up to 80 kg, which is a lot of cheese.

So where do the holes come from? Carefully controlled mice? Nope. A bacteria is introduced which produces carbon dioxide while the cheese is aging and this is what gives rise to them. So now you know.

It’s reckoned that on average, French people eat about 3.3 kg of Emmental a year. Well, if that really is the case then a lot of people can’t be eating anything like that much since we Daggs are heavily skewing figure upwards. We really do eat an awful lot of it! I blame the adverts that used to run in Ireland, funded by the cheese marketing board. ‘With cheese, please!’ was the motto, and the ads encouraged you to add a thick crust of grated, sliced or melted cheese coated cheese to everything you consumed, from your breakfast muesli to your evening mug of hot chocolate. OK, I’m exaggerating, but only slightly! We’ve been totally brainwashed by them and have become cheese junkies as a result.

Now you know a bit more about Emmental. Do come back and discover another French cheese in next Tuesday’s blog.

Caiti came along for the trip so we pottered around the town centre while Benj was tortured. We’d seen a sign up saying there was a Marché de Noël on, but we didn’t find it. We did find the knitting shop and I confidently marched in and said I wanted 2.5 mm needles to knit shoes with. Yup, after five years of living here, I’m still getting chaussures (shoes) and chaussettes (socks) muddled up. Caiti rolled her eyes in the way only teenagers can and the shop assistant managed to keep a straight face. I assumed my moronic ‘I’m a foreign idiot’ expression and carried on regardless. I have a thick expat skin these days.

A half-knit chaussette and not a half-knit chaussure

You know, it’s not such a bad thing to be able to retreat into foreignness and let it all wash over you from time to time. It’s an expat escape mechanism for when things get too much or, more usually and more shamefully, you just can’t be bothered. For example, it comes in handy at committee meetings when they’re looking for volunteers for various roles. Simply smile a ‘I haven’t got a clue what’s going on’ smile when they catch your eye and you’ll be left safely alone. It’s also nice being able to switch off the background chatter in cafés or shops – or in meetings – by simply choosing not to try and tune into French and so slip away into English thoughts. I’ll have a real shock when/if I do ever go back to an English speaking country. To be able to easily understand what everyone around is saying may cause a brain overload after so long away from it! Yeah, it’s cool being an expat.

Anyway, back to subject. After hitting Halle des Chaussures (not chaussettes!) and stocking up on wellies (we get through a lot of pairs each a year, we should buy shares in a boot company), we did a food shop at Carrefour. By now I had two grumpy kids – both hungry, one with a cough and one with a cold and sore teeth. Not a good combo. I had to threaten to knock their heads together at one point, I think it was in the biscuit aisle. Benj defiantly said he’d like to see me try but I icily told him to respect his mother. Hah, I still have the upper hand! From now on, one child at a time on shopping trips. Better still – none!

Now all this is longwindedly leading to the fact that I bought my first ever navet. Chris wistfully asked for a parsnip to go with Christmas dinner. I didn’t hold out much hope of finding one for him – you just don’t seem to get them over here. We usually grow our own, but hadn’t done so this year. However, browsing in the veggie section, I reckoned a navet was near enough and bought one.

Not a smooth skinned parsnip but a long, thin turnip

Le navet – originally navot – is French for yellow turnip. So it’s not a parsnip at all, despite appearances to the contrary. As this cookery website  nicely says,  navets have been eaten in France since there was a France! The one I bought is probably the variety ‘le Nantois’ since it is long and thin like a parsnip. You get round purpley navets too.

The usual way to eat it is to peel, cut and mash it, and then cook it with a little milk, butter, salt and pepper. It was a winter staple in bygone years since it stored well in chilly cellars. It involves a bit of work, though, to prepare it so modern day softies generally resort to pre-peeled and diced navet in the freezer section of the hypermarché.

So we’ll be having turnip with our turkey on Christmas Day. Not our usual but let’s dare to be different! And on the subject of turkeys, tomorrow is T-day for the remaining four …

It was all very hands-on in that we got lots of detailed hand-outs this time. We were also pointed in the direction of the 300-page-long Guide des Bonnes Pratiques issued by the Chambres de Métiers. This really is the food preparers’ bible, but few of the people on the course knew about it, including the full-time restaurateurs. Our trainer tut-tutted and said that it was up to us to find out all the relevant information we needed to know. I find this disingenuous, I have to say. If you don’t know something is out there, and don’t know what it’s called, and don’t know where to find it, then it kind of makes it hard to start looking! Surely, when you turn up to register your business and you say that it involves making occasional meals for guests in your gîte, for example, then it doesn’t seem too much to ask, in my opinion, to be given a list of training courses you need to sign up for, publications you should get hold of and a copy of any relevant legislation that you need to know about. Isn’t that what the professionals in the various civil service departments are there for – to inform you, to guide you, to, heaven forbid, help you? Sadly certain bureaucrats don’t seem to think that it’s part of their job description. When I registered, I was vaguely told to go to the DSV who would ensure that my kitchen was ‘à normes’ (meeting regulations). I thought she had said ‘énorme’, meaning that the DSV would be checking if my kitchen was enormous! My French wasn’t so good then. So I went along to the DSV, confessed that I had a very small kitchen, filled in forms and went to a workshop they did about traceability, and learned that if I planned to use my freezer to store food for clients, then I’d have to submit all its details to the DSV on the appropriate fiche. I was told that with our level of making meals, a few dozen a year, then that was all we needed to do. That, and hold onto receipts and food labels from items we used for six months. (Someone on the course thought they had to keep theirs for five years! There’s a lot of confusion and lack of hard facts out there.)

Anyway, the upshot of the hygiene course is that you need to perform HACCP (Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point) and have a plethora of plans in place to show how you are attempting to ensure that you are operating in hygienic conditions and following best practices. Whatever they are. If that sounds vague, then, well, it is. I possibly missed a few things during the course but there does seem to be quite a lot of room for manoeuvre within the stipulations of the law.

Anyway, perhaps the last few loose ends will be tied up when the trainer visits on Thursday to help me draw up a ‘plan de nettoyage’. It will be nerve-wracking, but informative, and at least it shows that we’re doing everything we can to be squeaky clean.

Reaching them was going to be the problem. There’s a fairly deep ditch just in front of the hedge and it’s too wide to lean across easily. Whacking fruit out of trees with sticks or branches is too damaging to everything concerned (and everyone, as I know from one painful experience!), so what were we to do?

Luckily we have our berry picker which Chris made a couple of years ago to reach blackberries in awkward places. Ruadhri had first go.

The Chris took over.

The berry picker is made from a length of tough plastic piping. Chris found the instructions for making it here on instructables.com. First he shaped the fingers at the top, and then, warming the piping over a gas flame, bent them forwards. They slip behind the berry or piece of fruit you’re after and ease it off the tree. The fruit rolls down the piping into a plastic bag which you attach to the other end with elastic bands. This bottom end of the pipe has been cut and flared outwards, again using heat, so that the bag doesn’t simply slip off the bottom. Ingenious!

Close up of the picking fingers

Our berry picker was the right size for the medlars, but not quite long enough so we’ll have to make a longer version since there are still a lot of medlars left on our secret tree!

The picker is the perfect size widthwise for medlars

Chris and I had harvested a small bag of medlars on one of our bike rides about ten days ago. Half of these were well bletted i.e. soft and mushy, so perfect to be turned into medlar cheese. I find a recipe here.

Mushing up bletted medlars

Being me I approximated with the quantities. First I mushed my squishy medlars through a sieve. This gave me about 150 g (6 oz) of purée. I licked a bit off the end of my finger and it was surprisingly pleasant – a sort of earthy, appley taste.

Sieved medlar pulp

I stirred in a roughly equivalent weight of granulated sugar and put a teaspoon of allspice in for good measure. I mixed this together well and had another taste. Definitely better now. It’s a cross between chestnut purée and apple purée, with a pleasant tang to it.

Medlar cheese walnut whip

What to do with my medlar cheese? The Victorians would have put it into little moulds and served it up in pretty shapes as a starter or an accompaniment to meat. I came up with a take on the walnut whip. I put a dollop on top of a spirit biscuit (the French version of a Viennese whirl), a coil of spray cream and topped it with a walnut. Very tasty.

Sliced unbletted medlars. Each fruit has 4 small stones.

I had my unbletted medlars to work with now. I cut those in half, put them in a pan and covered them with water and simmered them gently for around 20 minutes, keeping the water topped up. There was around 200 g (8 oz) of medlars so I poured that amount of sugar into the pan and added some cinnamon and grated in some nutmeg.

I love how you get to grate your own nutmeg (muscade) here in France!

Then I gave it a good boil for 5 minutes or so and worked it through the sieve. I had a good bowlful of medlar jelly. This is really delicious, with a strong hint of apple but again that sweet, earthy taste that’s hard to describe.

Final stage for medlar jelly

We’ve already bought a medlar bush for the garden. It will be spending the winter in the polytunnel. However, I’ll be back on my bike tomorrow to hunt down some more medlars. I’m very impressed with them indeed.