Abbaye De Belloc

First, hi friends! We are having so much fun with this, and we hope you are too!


Last night we stepped out of our American comfort zone a little, and opened our home and our mouths to a lesser known sheep's milk cheese from France! So far we've done cow and goat milk cheeses, but haven't really been able to find any from sheep. 


So, how did we stumble upon this gem of Abbaye De Belloc? Alan and I decided that the next step in our cheese journey is to find a good cheesemonger. Yes, that's the official term :-)  We need to find a good cheese counter, with authentic imports, and someone who is familiar and enthusiastic about what they're selling. So, we began our hunt for one. We headed to the famous Thursday night Farmers Market in San Luis Obispo (and bought some crazy produce) and visited their local cheese and wine shop, Vintage 1255. 


Their cheese counter was impressive, with imports from all over Europe, as well as a good selection of local California cheeses. The man behind the counter was excited to talk to us and let us sample everything we asked about! They had a lot of scary bleu-style cheeses that Alan was very excited about... but the first thing I noticed was that they had sheep cheese from the Pyrenees! They had 2 types from France and some from Spain as well. We tried them and decided to buy the Abbaye De Belloc - and again, we didn't read up on this particular type first, so we didn't learn about how awesome it is until we got home!


Let's talk about this cheese! The Pyrenees region of France is in the southern part of the country along the border of Spain. That's why there are spanish versions of this cheese, I guess. It is from the sheep that graze in the Pyrenees Mountains (how cute!) and is specifically made at the Notre-Dame de Belloc abbey by Benedictine monks!  That's awesome! The recipe they use for Abbaye De Belloc is apparently a fairly recent development, from the 1960's, but that doesn't mean it's any less authentic. Those monks know what they're doing! They based the recipe for Abbaye De Belloc on the ancient, 4,000 year old recipe of it more well-known cheesy cousin, Ossau-Iraty. 4,000 years old!! If we can get our hands on that, we will. 


The Cheese: Abbaye De Belloc


Without getting too technical (which I tend to do when I get excited) let me describe Abbaye De Belloc. It's firm and ivory colored- to me it looks like swiss cheese without holes. It is a little pricey... but it's authentic, so I guess that's why. The rind was a little interesting: it is coated with paprika and then the white and grey mold grows over that, and it's covered in cloth while it ages, which leaves a cross-hatched pattern on the rind. I had read about that technique in The Cheese Primer, so I was excited to actually see it.  


And then we ate it.  It tasted very mild, creamy, and melted in your mouth. It wasn't salty at all. Alan loved it! He said it tasted nutty to him, in a good way. Probably because they add the paprika to it. The Cheese Primer does say it should have a smooth, nutty, fruity and olivey flavor. I didn't taste all of that... it tasted like swiss cheese to me. Terrible, I know! I'm not good at this yet.


Then, a few seconds later, I exhaled, and was in for a surprise. When the cheese was in my mouth, it was fine. The aftertaste was ALL FEET! Nasty, stinky, dirty feet. Not that I go around licking people's feet, but you know what I mean. I'm sure the flavor is more complex than that, I just don't know what it is. But the flavor of the cheese definitely changed as you ate it. Which is pretty impressive. Shows how complex it really is. Oh, and it doesn't stop there. The feet smell stays in your mouth... oh man, Alan reeked. Bad. No kissing. And he said I reeked too... which is unfortunate. No one's safe!  And yet, we kept eating it. It was almost addictive. We kept going, in the name of cheese and science! We just sat on opposite sides of the couch. We do this for you, ya know. 


And then, we brushed our teeth and everything was fine. 


The verdict:
Alan: yumm!!
Ashleigh: yay sheep!!


So, if you feel like paying $30/lb for awful breath, go for it. It has enjoyable qualities too.


In addition to The Cheese Primer, we used Culture Cheese Magazine for our research on this cheese.


We'll be scoping out more cheese counters, looking for the our favorite cheesemonger. I wish we had a Wegman's... they have great cheese counters.  We'll keep Vintage 1255 in mind, though!  Tell us about your favorite cheeses, and try some of these with us!


-Ashleigh