Gorgonzola: not a Jim Henson Muppet character

[Boris_A]

The father of Parmigiano-Reggiano is Sbrinz from Unterwalden. And France has 700 different cheese varieties because they still try to imitate real Gruyère.

But I have to admit, both France and Italy are producing some decent cheese.

I was wondering if you were going to comment Boris! I remember you making the same comment about Gruyere when you blogged.

As much as I like Italian cheeses, apart from Parmigiano-Reggiano, all my faves are French, English (recent Neil's Yard convert) or locally made artisan cheeses.

A.

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I repeated a outworn joke. Sorry.

My core message was inteneded to be: with food, we see only personalities, styles and maybe history. The notion of "French" or "Italian" is mostly misleading. How many times the sentence "There's no Italian cuisine, there's only regional cuisine" was repeated. And still we are framed in discussing "Italian" cheese. A tragedy, somehow.

Those Swiss who make Sbrinz have (culinarily) nothing to do with those Swiss who who make Gruyère. Food is not a soccer game or an olympic event. In matters of pleasure, there's never a A beats B by 1:0.

Next time I'm going to visit Denmark, I'm going to pay attention to the cheese variants mentioned by eGulleteer oraklet. I'm looking forward.

[chefzadi]

Boris-

I thought you were joking, but then it occured to me that you might not be so I didn't want to insult you by laughing at something that might have been sincere. But then I thought if are serious, it would be a really silly thing to say. Anyway. my first instinct was right.

Outside of the monolith of so called Haute Cuisine, French cooking is regional as well. Bordered by Andorra 56.6 km, Belgium 620 km, Germany 451 km, Italy 488 km, Luxembourg 73 km, Monaco 4.4 km, Spain 623 km, Switzerland 573 km. Even Algeria was considered by the French government and some private citizens as another "region" of France like the Rhone or the Burgundy and not a colony (huh?).

Alsace is an obvious example that French cusine doesn't suddenly become French without being informed by bordering countries. I could go along the list, but I think most are pretty familiar with the regional differences. Or am I being too assumptive?

Edited February 4, 2005 by chefzadi (log)

[oraklet]

Next time I'm going to visit Denmark, I'm going to pay attention to the cheese variants mentioned by eGulleteer oraklet. I'm looking forward.

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the best places to eat old stinking danish cheese would be in one of the lunch restaurants that have specialized in the danish version of "smorgasbord". kanalcafeen is, in my opinion, a very good choice, though you should be aware that smoking is allowed in one of the two rooms!