12 February 2007

Duh!

We had guests at the house. One of the things we served was a cheese plate with fresh bread.

Guest: This cheese is fabulous! What kind of cheese is it?

Me: Well, the largest word on the package was "Fromage."

Guest (laughing): "Fromage" is French for "cheese."

Me: Is it? Then I have absolutely no idea what kind of cheese it is...

5 comments:

CanadianSwiss said...

Don't worry about it. In North America, any cheese with holes (and sometimes w/out) will be called "Swiss cheese", but is it Gruyère? Emmentaler?? It never says! Drives me nuts.

Global Librarian said...

"Swiss Cheese" in the United States, Canada and Australia is a generic name for a type of cheese with holes in it. There is nothing Swiss about it!

Here's the Wikipedia article on it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese

To purchase actual Swiss cheese, you need to go to higher end grocery stores or specialty shops and look for Gruyère, Emmentaler and so on...

Global Librarian said...

By the way, the unidentified cheese in the blog turned out to be "Vacherin Mort-d'Or." It is produced in Canton Vaud, a French-Swiss canton. Thus the use of the word "fromage!"

Fortunately one of the Swiss guests was able to identify it.

It truly is fabulous and disappeared from the table extremely swiftly. If you'd like a taste, get it now. Apparently it is only available during the winter months.

We also served a French brie and Tète de Moine, which is not cut but shaved using a special Swiss-made cheese shaver.

The Big Finn said...

Normally, I wouldn't correct a spelling error, but I have to make an exception in this case...

It's Mont d'or instead of Mort d'or. The first one is (I believe) "mount of gold", and the second one is "death of gold."

Just thought you'd like to know so that you don't scare away your French-speaking dinner guests.

Global Librarian said...

Opps! That would be some cheese!

Thanks for the correction, TBF