Epoisses

Food of the Gods

One of the best things about my midlife crisis is finding new things to try that hadn’t really crossed the radar before.

This cheese is just remarkable. Apparently, it is the second most stinkiest cheese in France and was allegedly Napoleon’s favourite.

I’m getting a picture of ‘ol Boney being a bit of a sniffer – famously, he wrote Josephine to stop washing as he made hi way slowly back to Paris from Austerlitz on horseback (or something) – definitely a boy who liked his women stinky and his cheese stinkier.

WARNING: You are banned from eating this cheese on public transport in France.

But if you can get past the smell sheer heaven awaits. It’s like Camembert on steroids – everything about it is Bigger: the texture is smoother, claggier, more mouth coating; the taste is huge: powerful, rounded, complex – even the deeply wrinkled, soft and dusky orange rind has a melting ‘eat-me-now’ quality.

And remember I am eating a supermarket cheese – this gorgeousness is available in Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference range. Fantastically well done, Sainsbury’s.

I was attempting to spread the cheese on a granary roll (sublime marriage of textures) unsuccessfully – the cheese is so oozy it ended up all over my fingers. I didn’t wash my hands so I could enjoy the stinkiness some more (definitely no intimate moments with A. N. Other at chez Hedgie last night). In France, they eat it with spoons. Who knows how Napoleon ate it. He may have spread it across Josephine.

Epoisses was invented by Cistercian monks in the 16th Century. Whatever evil the Catholic Church has committed over the centuries, this one is definitely on the side of the angels. On the other hand, no purely saintly organization could have come up with something so good.

More Epoisses lusciousness here and here.

Go on. You haven’t lived until you try it.