Priscilla wrote:

 I quite like the cranberries in Wensleydale...

Do you remember my story about trying to buy some of that nice Stilton cheese that has apricots bits in it? It was when visiting Bath, and I ventured into that very posh cheese shop (emporium, sorry) in the city centre. Never again! The snooty little shop-girl (who obviously thought I was Miss Bunting from Downton Abbey) told me: "If you want cheese with bits in it, you'll have to go to Morrisons."

The manageress overheard this exchange and, to her credit, she came over and apologised with obvious sincerity. She then ordered her young assistant purveyor of fine cheeses (sans bits) also to apologise  to me at once. I replied not to worry, because it would make a wonderful story to tell my friends, and that I'd even write a letter to the Times about the iniquity of asking for Stilton "with bits". At least in Bath.

I did get some in Morrison's - I'm surprised they have a branch in Bath, but they do. But the lower orders have to get their vittles from somewhere, I suppose, even in that very up-market and expensive city.

It was lovely cheese, too...

PS Salty cheese plus lots of red wine - terrible combination if you have high blood-pressure. But so absolutely deicious. The English have beer and Walkers crisps - just as bad, but nowhere near so civilised...

PPS National diet (including drink) and the proclivity to rebel/be belligerent - a possible subject for an interesting topic?

Doesn't wine lower blood pressure? I thought it did but maybe I'm wrong. Nevertheless I'm sure that has been suggested as one reason why the French - enthusiastic consumers of full-fat cheeses, salty biscuits, fatty charcuterie, rich butter-based sauces and creamy patisseries, but also plenty of red wine - have relatively low rates of heart disease.

Red and white wines both featured at the state banquet on Wednesday:

Wine selection for King Charles and Queen Consort

The four-course menu included no cheese but did have East Frisian black tea and shortbread (Ostfriesische Schwarztee und Sandgebäck) to finish. A Frisian green cheese (griene tsiis) and rye bread might have been an option. As if to make up for it, however, the next day the king visited Brodowin in the Brandenburg countryside to help in the making of the local Tilsit-style cheese:



Originally produced in Tilsit in East Prussia (today Sovetsk in Kaliningrad) by Swiss settlers from Emmental, Tilsiter-style cheeses are now also made in Germany and Switzerland.

No cheese? Oh Gromit, they've forgotten the cheese! Quelle horreur.

As the 18th-century French lawyer, politician and epicure Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826) famously remarked, "Un dessert sans fromage, est une belle à qui il manque un œil" - "a dessert without cheese is like a beautiful woman who's missing an eye". But as you say, during the state visit to Germany maybe it was because they already knew that His Majesty would literally be up to his elbows in cheese the following day on his visit to the Brodowin dairy.

I was nevertheless impressed by the menu at the state banquet: marinaded carp and Erfurt watercress, soup of Heck beef, chicken and wild mushrooms. The Heck beef is particularly interesting as the Heck cattle breed was bred in the 1920s by zookeeping brothers Heinz and Lutz Heck in an attempt to breed back the wild European aurochs which had been hunted to extinction in the early 17th century (and in this the brothers had the support of Hermann Göring who was keen to have these animals released back into German forests ... so he could hunt them). Heck cattle are of course not genetically identical to extinct wild aurochs but they do look and behave very much like them. They are very big, powerful, hardy animals, with huge horns (both bulls and cows) and with a disposition that is generally wary, untrusting, territorial and aggressive ... so exactly unlike the placid and trusting nature displayed by most modern domesticated cattle but rather like their extinct wild ancestors. Accordingly Heck cattle sometimes feature in modern rewilding projects.

But returning to cheese: Monsieur Brillat-Savarin rather appropriately has a cheese named after him. It was created in about 1890 and originally called "Délice des Gourmets" ("Gourmets' Delight") by its creators, the Dubuc family of Forges-les-Eaux in Normandy, however the emminent master cheese-maker Henri Androuët renamed it in the 1930s as an homage to the famous French gourmet. Brillat-Savarin cheese is now produced in Burgundy and is a so-called 'triple-cream cheese' made by adding warm, luscious full-fat cream to the cows' milk curds during the initial curd-forming stage, thereby boosting the overall fat content to a heart-stopping 75% or even higher. Always served young at only just past the curd stage, with only a couple of weeks ripening at most, it is very, very rich, sweet, creamy and rather gooey. I've never knowingly had any but it does sound very yummy.

Vizzer wrote:

The four-course menu [at the German State Banquent on 30 March 2023] included no cheese ... however, the next day the king visited Brodowin in the Brandenburg countryside to help in the making of the local Tilsit-style cheese ...

Inevitably yesterday's French State Banquet held in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles Palace to welcome King Charles to France did feature some cheese. Three cheeses were on the menu: a well-aged Comté (which Charles had apparently expressed a liking for); a Pélardon, which is a soft-ripened goats' cheese from the Cévennes, and  a Stilchelton unpasteurised blue cheese. The last was clearly included as a bit of cheesey diplomacy as it is actually an English cheese - basically a copy of Stilton (although legally unable to be called that as it is not made in the town), the name being how the village of Stilton was recorded in the 1086 Domesday book.

I'm sure they were all very yummy, as doubtless was the whole menu: lobster and crab with "a veil" of fresh almonds and peppermint; poulet de Bresse with a corn and cèpe mushroom gratin; and finally "Isfahan macaron", inspired by the ancient city in Iran, accompanied by a lychee and rose-water sorbet and a raspberry compôte. The wines were pretty impressive too and included Pol Roger champagne cuvée Winston Churchill 2013, Bâtard Montrachet grand cru 2018 (white), and Château Mouton Rothschild 2004, (red) all of which retail at about £400 the bottle.

Miam miam.

I also drooled over that menu. Pleased that good old Comte (my fav) -3yrs old - was brought in  for the King but must confess I had never heard of that other English cheese (Faux Stilton) with a Stil name......naughty when one thinks of the many twisted culottes moments that the French have had about the use of French cheese names applied to English ones. I like the rose water touch - I sometimes use it in biryani - given a huge amount of time to make it properly; that or kewra - can't see that going down well in the west; rose water yes.

This being France the details of the dishes were all widely reported in the press. Regarding the inclusion of an English cheese, the Alsatian cheesemonger, Bernard Antony, responsible for the cheese selection was reported as saying, "Contrary to the often-held view that you can’t find any decent food in England, it’s totally untrue; you can find great products there and especially great cheese". So true.

Full details of the principal dishes were also given a few hours in advance:

Homard bleu et tourteau de casier, voile d’amande fraîche et menthe Chartreuse (cooked by the chef Anne-Sophie Pic).
Le homard sera taillé en dés, le tourteau viendra apporter de la texture. Servi avec une sauce lactique à base d’amandes. Sous ce voile, il y aura du melon de la Drôme, infusé à la menthe Chartreuse. Ainsi qu’une Pannacotta style beurre blanc.

Volaille de Bresse et gratin de cèpes (cooked by chef Yannick Alléno).
La volaille est pochée, soufflée et marinée au champagne durant deux trois jours. Elle cuit avec sa propre vapeur, ce qui lui donne une chair extraordinaire. Elle sera accompagnée d’une extraction de maïs bio, rôti durant 17 heures. "On fait une réduction par le froid. Ça donne un sirop de maïs qui n’est pas sucré, car comme on ne le fait pas bouillir, les amidons ne se transforment pas en sucre". Elle sera accompagnée d’un gratin de cèpes cuits en papillotes, avec du parmesan.

The dessert 'Un Ispahan revisité' is the signature dish of the chef pâtissier-chocolatier Pierre Hermé
Fine couche de macaron. Avec une compote de framboises cuites et crues, d’un sorbet de litchi à la rose et d’un sorbet à la framboise, et des framboises entières.

I can imagine there was not a little stress in the kitchens to get it all ready to serve exactly on time, not the least because le Roi et Monsieur le President came to the banquet (from a music recital in Versailles' Chapelle Royale) over half an hour behind schedule.