Famous French Cheeses - Cantal

The ever popular Cantal

Steph & Chris Dagg run Notaires & Alder lakes. Through this personal Blog, Steph is going to describe her experiences of moving to France and living the dream of many UK carp anglers.

Cantal (15) is one of the three départements that make up the Auvergne (the other two are Allier (03) and Puy de Dôme (63)). It’s one of my favourite parts of France. We had a great holiday near St Flour when Rors was a toddler, and the other two about 9 and 11 or so. We were staying in the most spartan gîte we’d ever come across. It had electricity and running water but those were pretty much the only modern conveniences!

There wasn’t a kettle or a tin opener or any cups bigger than thimbles. We hit the hypermarché to put that to rights. It was a rather gloomy old house with a menacing stuffed squirrel on a shelf as you went upstairs.

We met some great people. The Cantalais are very friendly. Chris and Benj had gone fishing so I took the two little ones for a bike ride. It was blazing sunshine when we set out but a thunderstorm loomed out of nowhere so we took shelter in a village shop, since we were in flimsy cotton clothes and it was lashing. I asked the assistant if it was OK for us to hang around there until the deluge stopped. But it went on and on and on, so the shopkeeper offered to run us home and said we could put our bikes in the storeroom to keep them safe till we came back for them. And she was as good as her word.

There was an elderly farming couple in the tiny hamlet of Farges, where the gîte was. They made cheese and invited us down to watch the process one afternoon. Then another time Madam la Fermière arrived on the doorstep with all the ingredients to show me how to make the perfect truffade, Cantal style without ham but with extra cholesterol. It was delicious. So although the landscape is bleak and rugged, I always think of Cantal as a warm place.

Anyway, to the cheese.

Now a quick test. Can you remember from last Tuesday which family of cheeses Cantal falls into? It’s group 4, pressed cheeses or fromages à pâte pressée. Cantal is a very old cheese and dates back to the Gauls.

Henri de La Ferté-Senneterre, a marshall from the Auvergne, introduced the cheese to Louis XIV, or possibly the other way round, and that’s what made it famous. There are two types – Cantal fermier which is made from raw milk, lait cru, and Cantal laitier, the mass market version made from pasteurised milk. The milk in either form comes from Salers cows, but only when they’re being fed on hay. When the cows are grazing on grass in the summer months, then their milk is turned into Salers cheese. Now I bet you didn’t know that, did you! And Salers cows really know how to do horns.

The hard cheese is made into one foot wide cyclinders and aged for anything between 1 to 6 months. It gets a different label according to how long it has aged, namely: Cantal jeune (aged 1-2 months), Cantal entre-deux or Cantal doré (aged 2-6 months), and Cantal vieux (aged more than 6 months). Apparently a lump of Cantal vieux will keep for eighteen months!

Tastewise it reminds me very much of Cheddar. It gets stronger as it gets older, so the Cantal jeune is very milky and creamy, whereas the indestructible Cantal vieux is described as ‘vigorous’. I’m not one for strong cheese so I’ve tended to steer clear of it, but plenty of people do enjoy it. It has a 45% fat content and makes good fondues and gratins.

But I love a chunk with baguette and chutney, and it goes very nicely with fruit cake too.

So another interesting and tasty cheese to try.

Carp Cradles & Weigh Slings provided Free at Joy Lake

We’re pleased to announce that we’ve just taken delivery of 5 sets of Nash Carp Cradles & Weigh Slings here at Joy Lake (the same type as pictured below with Scott Gilfillan holding an early season ‘30’ in March last year).

If you’ve not seen the Nash Carp Cradle, it’s basically an un-hooking mat raised off the ground which ensures the carp don’t ever come into contact with the ground as they can’t slide off (no matter how much they flap around!).

From watching visiting anglers who already had these, the carp also seem to behave themselves better with this type of unhooking equipment, and this obviously means less chance of a fish getting damaged/injured.

We decided to include the weigh-slings (which un-zip either end) so that we are providing a complete ‘fish-care’ equipment package – we pride ourselves on the condition of our carp and want to look after them, keeping them in tip-top condition (and already insist on the compulsory use of antiseptic mouth treatment on all fish as part of our lake rules). We believe the financial out-lay for this equipment is well worth the extra safety this gives the fish.

The cradles and slings will be made available to all visiting anglers FREE OF CHARGE, which means;

-          More space in the car (those beanie mats can take up a lot of room!)

-          Two less smelly items of tackle for the journey home!

-          Two expensive items of tackle you don’t now need to buy if you don’t already possess them, or were going to upgrade them for your holiday.

The only condition we will impose is that any damage through neglect will be chargeable @ £50 for the cradle and £20 for the slings.

Famous French Cheeses - Camembert

Steph & Chris Dagg run Notaires & Alder lakes. Through this personal Blog, Steph is going to describe her experiences of moving to France and living the dream of many UK carp anglers.

Camembert 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.

All ready for the 2012 carp season at Bletiere

John London, owner of Bletiere carp lake, gives us a quick tour of the swims, all ready in preparation for the 2012 season.

Catching Carp in the Snow at Lac du Val

Dave with a fine 20 caught in the snow

Call it mad but last week I decided to have a days fishing here at Lac du Val.

Enduring -1 to -2 °C freezing snow, with eyes and nose running both at the same time I managed to catch 3 nice carp and Terry my pal managed 2.  So 2 x thirties and 3 x twenties – not a bad result I’d say!

Sausage butties and Ovaltine provided by Sammy did make things a little more human!

Also with thanks to our new bait.  Believe me lads carp do still feed in cold water.  I have tested this by feeding our carp once a week in the margins, where I could see if it disapeared.  And it did! So I shall be out again this weekend…. wish me luck!

Ps; Yesterday Sammy and I went out and bought a new flat screen TV and Dvd for the lakeside dinning room.

Best Regards, David & Sammy

Ice walking on a Frozen Carp Lake!

Steph braves the Ice Walk!

Steph & Chris Dagg run Notaires & Alder carp lakes in France. Through this personal Blog, Steph is going to describe her experiences of moving to France and living the dream of many UK carp anglers.

The phrase froid ressenti is appearing on the weather forecasts a lot these days. It translates literally as ‘cold felt/experienced’ but is pretty much the same asrefroidissement éolien (wind chill factor) – nothing to do with windmills (éoliennes) this time!) Frequently the froid ressenti is 7 or 8 degrees colder than the actual temperature. I imagined that someone was estimating this, but the computation of wind chill factor is based on very sound science.

Wind chill is the felt air temperature on exposed skin. The first wind chill formula was created by Paul Siple and Charles Passel while working in Antartica. You can see what must have motivated them! They expressed wind chill in watts of heat lost per square metre of skin.  This didn’t catch on terribly well, so the formula was revised a few times by other people and these days it reflects the notion of equivalent temperature. This is what the formula looks like:

T_wc = 13.12 + 0.6215 T_a – 11.37 V^+0.16 + 0.3965 T_aV^+0.16

where _w is the wind chill index in Celsius, T_a is the air temp in Celsius V is the wind speed at 10 metres (standard anemometer height), in kilometres per hour (km/h).

Simple!

A very frozen French carp lake!

So, the figures appearing on the météoeach day have been carefully worked out after all.

There wasn’t too much noticeable wind chill today, which has been a balmy minus 4 actual temperature wise, although that’s dropping fast now that evening is coming. We fired up Rusty Deux the tractor to deliver hay bales to the llamas, sheep and goats. Then we drove down to the cabin to fetch the gas bottles. Our central heating is dodgy so we might need to get the gas heaters going.

I love the passenger seat on Rusty Deux. You get great views from up there. It’s quite deadly trying to take photos though, since it’s a bumpy ride and the seat is a small square of metal with a tiny bit of rail behind it so very easy to slip off!

And I did the famous End To End Ice Walk today – my death defying walk across our lake. It’s used to be a Christmas Eve tradition (the rest of the family were nobly prepared to share my pressies between them if I fall through the ice) but the last two years we haven’t been iced up by then. So it’s slipped back a bit. I don’t know how long the lake is exactly but it’s a 10 acre lake so it’s pretty big! It’s also pretty deep so I’m very careful on the way. Any cracks or strange sounds send me scuttling to the bank right away.

Tomorrow we’ll profit from the big freeze to do some tidying up along the banks. There are over hanging branches that need sawing off. It will be a lot easier doing them standing on the ice than from the rowing boat, which is what we’d thought we’d be having to do this winter since it started so mild.

The Carp Hunters Session at Molyneux

A video of photo stills created by the Mr Sansford party (AKA The Carp Hunters) who fished Molyneux in 2010…