I have to confess that I sat on this cheese for a while. Not literally of course, but the time between when I purchased it and when I first tried it was well over a week and a half. What started our as a light yellow cheese with a white rind, the Tomme de Savoie became a rich gold with a dark, black and gray exterior. Cheese people call this process of aging cheese to perfect ripeness, affinage. In this case the results were good.
The first whiff after unwrapping this tomme was a bit harsh. Very much ammonia-smelling. I let it air out for 30 minutes and the odious odor had evaporated. The outer rind was still overpowering to eat in great amounts but small strips of it surrounding the healthy inner cheese were fabulous, reminding me of a master sushi chef who can dissect a posionous blowfish so that he leaves just enough of the fatal toxin to make your throat tingle.
A "tomme" in French is any small round farmhouse cheese and the full name of these cheeses usually ends with the town or region of its origin. In this case, the Haute-Savoie region of France. It is a pretty standard cheese on restaurant cheese plates and deservedly so. Well worth finding.
Name: Tomme de Savoie
Type of Milk: cow's, unpasteurized
Type: semi-hard
Produced in: France
Date Purchased: 1/11/2006
Date Eaten: 1/24/2006
Purchased Where: United States, North Carolina, Chapel Hill, A Southern Season
Price: $11.99/lb.
TRACKBACK
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.365cheeses.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-t.cgi/83
COMMENTS
I am a cheese professional and I cannot tell you the number of times I have been confronted by a customer who says, "I had this great cheese 5 years ago in France. Do you have it? It was white."
Thank you for keeping track of what you eat and recording it for all the "punters" out there. We professionals appreciate it. What is amazing is the number of times we find that white cheese with the right questions.
Keep it up and I will be back.
Posted by Helen Duran | February 5, 2007 1:00 PM
Posted on February 5, 2007 13:00
I lived in France for ten years and exactley in the region where the tomme de savoie is from. i can tell the first few years i hesitated in trying any cheeses with in a range of my nostrals because of the strong odors. Especially the one of the Tomme.. Another one from this region is also called Roblochon.
One major comment i would like to say. you need to buy a tomme with atleast 40% to 45% of Matiere grasse or fat if you want. this is what gives the tomme its flavor as well as aging of the cheese itself. If anyone trys to sell you a tomme de savoie with less then that or sais its fat free REFUSE because its not the real thing.
Unfortunately we cannot buy the Roblochon in the USA beacause of its age processing.. less then 90 days for unpasturized milk. This cheese is another wonderful product of the savoyarde region of france...A great traditional dish of this region that uses this cheese is the Tartiflette... MMMMMMMM (Potatoes, thick cut bacon, onions, roblochon and cream) all sauteed together then cooked in the oven..Yes not the perfect dish for your diet...
hope this has helped some people choosing this cheese... Its a really exceptional taste..
P.S. Drink with a Merlot.. or a good french Bordeaux red wine....
Posted by Robert Montgomery | February 7, 2008 1:27 AM
Posted on February 7, 2008 01:27