(Largentière, Chassiers, and Lyon, France)

France enjoys a certain reputation when it comes to food. Like it or not, you cannot escape the impact of French cuisine. Lyon, quite close to my home base of Largentière (l’Ardèche region) is probably the capital of influential French cuisine. It was the home of legendary chef Paul Bocuse.

So it should come as no surprise that my stay in l’Ardèche also had its share of culinary adventures. The most memorable was probably our dinner in Chassiers, an impossibly old village high above the Val-de-Ligne at Largentière. There, we ate at a tiny place called Le Ver O Tof. It was perhaps the quaintest restaurant I have ever seen. And they specialized in…incredible gourmet burgers! It wasn’t the first time that I have found burgers done so well in a European culinary hotspot. Even the buns were made on site.

Because of the relatively isolated nature of our accommodation at Domaine Les Ranchisses, we often ate at the on-site Auberge. In addition to some other dishes, they had about 20 pizzas on the menu…and every single one of them had olives! Olives are big here. A black olive tapenade was on the table for every meal. I even bought a small locally-made jar to put on my sandwiches for lunch at the bowling green.

One of the salads (L’Ardéchoise) looked interesting, with a bunch of local ingredients that I liked. Topping the list was a local goat cheese (chèvre), and chestnuts (châtaignes). But there was one ingredient I could not identify: dés caillettes. I figured that it had to be some kind of local meat. I decided not to research it, and order it without knowing exactly what it was.

I ate and enjoyed the salad. There was indeed a meat in there: it was kind of like ground beef, but with a bacon flavour. It turns out that dés caillettes are made from pork liver and throat. For balance, I had the salade végétarienne the next time.

However, the most interesting food turned out to be an innocent looking hard cheese from Normandy called Mimolette. I thought it looked like an extra old gouda, so I bought it from the local supermarket for my breakfasts. Notably, I had never seen this cheese in Canada. Some research provided a possible explanation.

Mimolette comes with a dusty grey rind. The reason we don’t see it much in Canada is probably because cheese mites are deliberately put on the rind. This apparently enhances the cheese’s flavour while it ages. I learned this before I ate any. But I figured that there would be huge warnings on the packaging if there was truly any health risk. I cut away all of the rind and eventually ate the whole thing.

My research told me that if I didn’t eat the rind, I shouldn’t be eating any significant number of cheese mites. In any case, the cheese was quite good and did indeed taste similar to extra old gouda. If you do find Mimolette in Canada, chances are that the rind will be different (usually a black wax). You’ll need to go to France for the unadulterated real thing!