Marie Quatrehomme

If lovingly aged cheese from every remote corner of France is not so easy to come by in Nice, Paris positively oozes with cheese possibilities. When I lived in rue Monge (home of several of the city's top bakeries, notably Le Boulanger de Monge, Eric Kayser and the lesser-known Boulangerie Grégoire), I could count five cheese shops in my neighborhood alone. Two of these were impeccably run branches of legendary fromageries, Androuët and Quatrehomme. Much as I loved popping into Marie Quatrehomme's charmingly cramped, stone-walled boutique in rue Mouffetard, sometimes for a hard-to-find hit of crumbly English cheddar, no fromagerie in Paris makes me happier than her main shop on rue de Sèvres.
Marie herself deserves much of the credit for this. Youthful looking, with a healthy glow that can only come from eating the very finest dairy products every day, she is unfailingly gracious to regular customers and one-time visitors alike. I saw definitive proof of this the day a group of 18 foreigners from a tour bus were herded into her shop on a busy Saturday morning by a tour guide who cut Marie off in mid-sentence with the words "Can I talk now?". Trying to fit that number of people into a typical Paris food shop is akin to stuffing the population of Delhi into a phone booth, but Marie, to her great credit, remained polite and unflustered.
I can't help but remark that several of the city's best cheese shops are run by women: besides Quatrehomme, there is Marie-Anne Cantin, Josiane Molard in rue des Martyrs, and Virginie Boularouah of Chez Virginie in the 18th, to name just a few. Then again, there are some pretty talented men in the milk business too, such as Philippe Alléosse and Laurent Dubois. Marie came to this profession by marriage after working in early childhood education, but in the past 15 years has established herself as one of the top fromagères in the country: she was the first woman to win the coveted Meilleur Ouvrier de France title, awarded to artisans who succeed at a gruelling competition.
So what makes her cheese so good? Well, first of all, she knows her producers personally, which means that she understands what they are trying to accomplish. This allows her to finish the ageing process in her own cellars with a real respect for the cheese. Her marque de fabrique, or trademark, is slow ageing in cool cellars to reduce the risk of the cheese going "off." One of her treasures is 36-month-old comté from producer Marcel Petite, a cheese from near the border with Switzerland that develops crackly crystals and an ever-more-complex nutty flavor as it ages (I never leave her shop without a chunk of this). She also has a soft spot for monastery cheeses, explaining that in France it was monks who originally taught farmers how to make cheese. Her shelf of goat cheeses is remarkable and following my visit last week I ate my way through an entire pot of her emerald-green "mousse" made only with fresh goat cheese and pesto. The bakery next door had the perfect baguette à l'ancienne to accompany this, which I think was called the Authentique (someone correct me if I'm wrong!).
Unlike many French fromagers, Marie respects the cheese of other countries and even has a whole shelf devoted to foreign cheeses - a rare sight, believe me. When I visited her shop with a couple from Texas she was able to talk to them about the state's best-known cheese maker, Paula Lambert. Marie has warm memories of the time she has spent in the United States, which is why she always takes the time to greet American customers. "Everyone was so kind to me, I'd like to give something back," she says. Her cheese is a gift in itself, but her ready smile makes it taste even better.
Fromagerie Quatrehomme, 62 rue de Sèvres, 7th, 01 47 34 33 45.

Georges, the goat cheese genius

At our house the word "Georges" is pronounced with the same reverence that others might reserve for "God."
Georges gives me reason to get up in the morning. On Saturdays, he gives me reason to get up especially early, by 7am without fail.
I first heard of Georges about a year ago, around the same time that I first met Franck Cerutti, chef at the Louis XV in Monaco. After introducing me to his favorite producers, Franck invited me to peek into the back of his small refrigerated van, where a couple of dozen plastic trays were stacked on top of each other.
"I have some extraordinary goat cheese," he said. "Would you like some?"
One taste and I was hooked. I had never tasted a goat cheese so fresh and pure, with not the slightest hint of goatiness. It didn't stick to the palate but caressed the tongue. It made me think of spring flowers and cool mountain air. I knew that somehow, whatever it took, I had to secure a regular supply.
"I don't think I can eat any other cheese," I said to Franck. "How can I get my hands on this?"
He laughed. "I'll have to introduce you to Georges."
A couple of Saturdays later a meeting was arranged at 7.30am in a café near the market. At first, Georges was a little skeptical. Who was this Canadian who thought she was entitled to his cheese? I fell on my knees (well, almost). I confessed that all other cheeses had lost their appeal. And Georges told me his story.
He came to the south of France at age 16 from Portugal to work on a goat cheese farm for the summer. While he was there, the farmer had a mishap with one of his beehives. He was stung so many times that he nearly died, and stayed in the hospital for three weeks. Young Georges had to take over. Upon his return, the farmer thanked him by giving him two goats. Georges knew he had found his vocation.
At that time, in the 1970s, France was reluctant to accept more Portuguese immigrants. But the bureaucrats at the préfecture found they couldn't bring themselves to say no to this young foreigner who loved goats, and eventually Georges married a Frenchwoman.
He has supplied many of the top restaurants on the Côte d'Azur but now sells only to Franck and to a passionate fromager at the Forville market in Cannes. And to me. After that meeting in the café, we agreed that each week he would put aside five little round cheeses for me. Some weeks they are fresh and almost fluffy in texture, some weeks they are developing blue spots on the rind and starting to turn creamy inside. His cheeses become creamy just under the rind, collapsing into a runny mass when they are really ripe.
Georges prefers them fresh, but Franck likes them shrunken with a blue crust, which he believes concentrates the essence of the cheese. It amazes Georges that anyone wants to eat them that way, let alone sell them in a three-Michelin-star restaurant. Fresh, runny or blue, what I love most about this cheese is that it feels like one of the healthiest things I could put into my body. That's not something I think very often about cheese.
When I told Georges I like to eat the fresher cheeses for breakfast with chestnut honey and figs, he looked so horrified that I thought my supply might be cut off. Georges is a cheese purist, which might explain why his cheese tastes so unadulterated. Between late November and March he stops producing cheese entirely to allow the goats to follow their natural cycle. He has never been able to explain to me what makes his cheeses so special, but I plan to find out by visiting his farm one of these days.
I serve Georges' cheese as often as I can in my cooking classes, always with the hope that students will share my cheese epiphany. I haven't been disappointed yet.