In addition to the city of Paris, famous for its art, culture, literature, and the City of Lights, France is renowned for one more thing, its kitchen. The reputation of French gastronomic food is worldwide. But there is one thing, without which the French kitchen is incomplete. And that is fromage in French, cheese in English, and Panir in Bangla.
In short, cheese is a dairy food, and there are different types of it worldwide. Cheese.com has a total of 1831 types of original and aesthetic cheeses in the world. Cheese is mainly made from cow, goat, sheep, buffalo, and vegetarian milk. Different kinds of extracts, spices, vinegar, citric acid, and additional ingredients make the cheese different.
France is one of the world’s leading producers and exporters of cheese. About two million tons of cheese are produced in France every year. The French have a particular weakness for cheese. According to the International Dairy Federation, a French person eats at least 25 kg of cheese a year, the first per capita in the world. And 47% of French people consume cheese at least once a day.
General Sean de Gaulle, the architect of modern France and commander-in-chief of France during World War II, once joked, “How can you run a state that has 246 different kinds of cheese in different regions?” He would be surprised if were alive because France now has about 400 patents on cheese. And from these 400 original types of cheese, about one thousand different sub-variants have been created.
There are about 40 types of cheese in France that are required by law to be produced only in the designated regions. Production of that cheese is prohibited in other regions. For example, Kamembart is made only in the Normandy region, Kampte is made in the French Kampte region, Rockfort is made in the Midi-Pyrenees region.
The French are so serious about cheese that they hold an international cheese competition every two years. Competitors from all over the world appear in this competition with their best cheese. You will also be surprised to know that you can also take a degree in cheese making in France. The National Dairy School of France has been conducting degree courses on cheese making for almost 120 years. The University of Henry Poincar in eastern France also conducts a master’s course in cheese production. Another surprise is that the French also make cheese from horse milk.
In front of a cheese-loving Frenchman, if you cut and eat a piece of cheese as you wish, you will see that he looks with evil eyes because there are different rules for cutting cheese in France. There are also eating rules. Some things have to be cut into triangles; some have to be cut into parallelograms, some have to be sliced, some have to be cut into tops and eaten only on the inside. There are also different times to eat other things. Some cheeses you can eat at any time, some cheeses are to be eaten while eating heavy meals, some cheeses are to be eaten only along with wine, some cheeses are to be eaten only with baguette (famous bread of France).
I am concluding with the use of cheese in the French kitchen mentioned at the beginning. Many famous recipes in France are obsolete without cheese. Some famous recipes made with cheese are Fandu Savayard, Ali-G, Cheese Sufle, Takhtifiyat, Raklet, etc. In some of these recipes, the cheese is cooked with other ingredients; in some recipes, the gas pistol hits the top with the cheese after cooking; in some, only the cheese is spread on top after cooking. Also, most of the pizzas made in France use a variety of cheeses, including framz rape, kikhat framz, beauforkh, brie, and so on. In a word, France can be called the paradise of cheese.
