It had been a tough start to the week in the vineyard of truth. I was having technology problems, clients were being demanding and well, it was Tuesday. And it was March. When I heard about the new Grapes and Cheese night at Gordon Ramsay’s Opal at St Regis Doha, I am not one to pass up the opportunity to sample up to different types of wine and matching cheeses. After all, it was Tuesday. And it was March. The wines took center stage with a selection prepared by Sommelier Ashwin Tillousing who took us through wines from France, South Africa, Spain, Chile and New Zealand. Bearing in mind it…
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Fromage a Trois…Paris three, four, four, five… cheeses as a time
It’s Paris and great food, especially cheese is everywhere. Herewith my cheese porn diary from a week in Paris…
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Comte As You Are
As I type this, I am watching a “One Night Only” Duran Duran special on TV. Amazingly, they have aged quite well, Simon, admittedly wearing a rather flattering leather jacket, seems to move as well as he did in the 1980s and is still endearingly out of tune. The other members still look a bit of all right too, I’m unsure of how much of their performance and current looks are wind assisted, but this didn’t affect my nostalgic moment. I knew all the words to the songs, except that weird later period around A View to a Kill, when they got all artsy and their all did “side projects”…
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The Rouquefort Files
Time to enter my blue period. Roquefort is perhaps the “entry level” cheese for many of us. A non-controversial addition to cheese plates around the globe. I also find it’s one of the most abused cheeses, served far too cold to be enjoyed. This was, I think the first blue veined cheese I ever tried, and although not one of my favorites (that’s reserved for Stilton and Gorgonzola), there is always a hunk of it in my ridge. Traditionally, Roquefort is a sheep milk cheese, and in Euro fashion, apparently only those cheeses made in Roquefort Sul-Soulzon can called themselves”roquefort”. I bought my hunk from our loca French megastore and…