Here is a fundamental truth about cheese: It is rotting. The original point of cheese was to find a way to keep milk from going bad, and so what some strong-stomached people found was that it was better to go ahead and let it rot, but control the process. They cultured the milk with harmless bacteria and let them stave off any deadly microbes in a microscopic turf war. The trade-off, of course, is that the friendly bacteria get to feed on the milk, too, only in doing so, they break it down and remake it into a complexly delicious food for us. Win!
But the French cheese I just had tonight, fromage fort, tried — I swear — to kill me. And not that boring old, "I'll just sit here and let you eat me so I can poison you" kind of killing. I mean it got up off its plate and waved a knife in my face.
I have to say first that, of course, it's just stupidly easy to get your hands on socks-knocking-off-good cheese in France. On my very first day here, my friend Julia and I went down the street and randomly came home with a wedge of Brie from Melun so good, so soft and so sticky and so rich and woodsy and creamy that I caught her talking to it the next day. "Hey, Brie," she purred after getting home from work. "I've been thinking about you, baby. You been thinking about me?" (No, really. That happened.)
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