Foodie Tour of Alsace - Munster Valley

The foodie tourism continues this week with a visit to the Munster Valley, in the Alsace region of France. This region is famous for wine - primarily Riesling and Gewurztraminer - which makes sense, given that Alsace is on the German border. In fact, the dialect spoken there is a variant of German, rather than French. The wines, however, in my opinion are far superior to their German counterparts. We stopped by the Schoenheitz Winery, who claim that their wines are different because their grapes are grown at the highest in altitude of any in the region, and sampled several excellent wines.

You may have guessed that the other famous local product from the Munster Valley is Munster cheese. Let's get one thing straight - the "munster" that we grow up on in the U.S. is not the same thing as an AOC munster from Alsace. Where ours is tasteless and rubbery, with food coloring giving it that typical red rind, real munster cheese is one of the stinkiest, strongest-tasting cheeses around. It has a smell that knocks you over. Real munster is made on a small farm from unpasteurized milk, and it is washed three times a week with a cloth that previously washed an older munster, thus passing down from generation to generation the bacteria that make the cheese so delicious. We stayed in a farmhouse that we highly recommend, Chez Chantal et Dany, and visited their dairy in the morning.

Dany told us of the many woes of the modern cheese farmer in France, mainly that European regulations are strangling traditional cheese production and encouraging cheese to become industrialized. If you know anything about cheese, you know that when it comes from a factory, the taste can't begin to compare with cheese from a small producer. And to see the work and love and tradition that goes into making these cheeses, it felt tragic to hear Dany talk about how his children would most likely not be able to continue his work. So I encourage everyone to visit these places and support the small farmers - maybe France is too far away, but this is a problem everywhere now.

Anyway, we did a little tour of the lovely small villages in the area, full of colorful, old half-timbered houses, and lots of French countryside atmosphere. Randomly, the artist who designed the Statue of Liberty, Frederic Bartholdi, came from Colmar, one of the towns we visited, so there was a mini-Statue of Liberty outside the town. I think our favorite town was Riquewihr, but for food you can't beat Strasbourg (also home of the European Parliament). We had an amazing meal at La Cloche a Fromage, home of the biggest cheese cloche (the big glass bell they put over cheese) in the world - they are actually in the Guiness Book! Walking in the door, the smell of cheese hits you in the face, and they have a cheese expert there who ages the cheeses herself and picks the ones that are at the height of their maturity for you to try. The only one on the plate we couldn't stomach was the Epoisse, which was too strong even for me.

We also tried a local "winstub", a traditional Alsatian restaurant, and though they made me a terrific dish of munster melted on potatoes and onions, we had to suffer through everyone around us ordering the local specialty - tete de veau (calf's head). They don't bring it whole, but the brain is clearly visible on the plate, which is not very appetizing to be sitting next to! Well, it was a "cultural experience"...

So, now that I have had my fill of wine and cheese, I head off to India tomorrow, where the cuisine (and everything else) should be drastically different. I'll keep you posted...

Eating our way through Normandy

For our last weekend away before the long summer apart, D. had the brilliant idea that we should visit France - so close that we usually overlook it, but full of so many treasures. So with what people keep telling me is the "most romantic place in France" - the Mont Saint Michel - as our target, we set out for Normandy.

You can see photos of our trip to Normandy here

Normandy is on the northwest coast of France, and you probably know it as the site of the D-Day invasion. Call me uncultured, but this was, until now, my main association with the name. Turns out it is also the home of Camembert, as well as several other tasty, protected cheeses, Calvados (an apple liquor), apple cider, and, of course, the famous Mont Saint Michel. These things can be found in the midst of an idyllic countryside dotted with the unique Norman cows.

Our first stop was Giverny, just past Paris, a town of about 500 people and 1000 times as many tourists, as it is famously the home of Impressionist painter Claude Monet. In early May there were fairly few tourists there and all the Spring flowers that so inspired the artist were in full bloom. We toured the grounds of his home, with the famous footbridge over the lake, and wandered through his mansion. It felt like... well, it felt like walking around in a Monet painting. It was a little eerie to be in such a familiar landscape, but to be there for the first time.

From here we visited the towns of Rouen, with its famous cathedral and medieval streets lined with half-timbered buildings, and infamously the city where Joan of Arc was sentenced and burned at the stake (the sites where these occurred and the tower where she was kept prisoner are all marked now with plaques), and Caen, also known for its cathedral and its castle. The next day we stopped in the town of Camembert, which surprisingly enough is about one block long... not including the President factory (you know it from the Brie sold worldwide). We gave that one a wide berth, as I'm not particularly into mass-produced food. What you know as "camembert" most likely bears little resemblance to the original cheese. The real camembert is made only with unpasteurized cheese from Norman cows, and it has been designated the world's third smelliest cheese, far from the bland taste-vacuum we are familiar with. Only a few farms still make it the traditional way, but of course we made sure we knew where they were, and we feasted on artisan bread and a fresh round of raw-milk camembert for one of the best lunches we'd had in quite a while.

Norman cows apparently produce less milk than most other kinds of cows, but due to the high fat content, the Norman farmers won't use anything else, because these cows make the best cheese (or so they say, and we were inclined to agree). The other famous AOC (Appellation d'Origine Controllee, or protected name of origin) cheeses from the area are Pont L'Eveque (world's second smelliest cheese), Livarot, and Neufchatel, each associated with a cute little timeless town where the cheese originated. We felt obliged to taste each one, of course. We visited a few farms, and drove past miles and miles of farmland, and we were very happy to see the cows grazing happily in the grass, enjoying the sunshine. In Europe, giving hormones to cows is illegal, and to a large extent feedlots have not yet become a common phenomenon. So, assured that the cows looked well-treated and happy, we enjoyed our cheese guilt free.

Apples are the other big product of this region, resulting in many kinds of cider (which in France is mildly alcoholic), a very strong liquor called Calvados, and a much more palatable one called Pommeau, which is a mix of one part Calvados to 3 parts apple juice. Normandy is right next to Brittany, which is where crepes originated, so the two are traditionally paired throughout France, and we took advantage.

Of course, while we were in the region, we visited several of the D-Day landing beaches, a quite sobering sight, as they have been preserved with German cannons still in their original housing and large blast holes pockmarking the ground. It was strange to see a handful of sunbathers enjoying the beach, which felt slightly disrespectful, but then life goes on, I suppose. We also stopped by the beautiful town of Bayeux, home of the famous Bayeux Tapestry, which I've wanted to see ever since we learned about it in Middle School history class. It was quite different than I imagined - it's not so much a tapestry as an embroidered cloth, but it is indeed extremely long.

And we did see the Mont Saint Michel, which is an island off the coast that is basically a big hill with an abbey on top. During low tide, there is a vast flat plain, and you can walk all around the island, and when the tide comes in, the whole thing turns to quicksand, and you had better not be out there. The abbey was definitely remarkable, but the place was jam-packed with people going up and down the only street and had a bit of a Disneyland atmosphere, so once we saw the abbey, we got out of there as fast as possible.

On the way back, we lucked into an annual AOC fair, where we got to try (one last time) AOC foods from around the region and some from as far away as Provence, and we stopped by Honfleur, a touristy seaside town where we visited the strangest museum I've ever seen, the home of composer Erik Satie, which has been turned into a giant surrealist work.

So very sad to be leaving Normandy already, we returned to Brussels, and soon after I headed back to New York, where I'll be till August, dreaming of all the other places I want to go as soon as I get a chance...