Du Fromage, S'il Te Plait

One of the by products of a houseful of 'invitees' is a surplus of leftovers. Having been brought up in the fifties by a frugal, though caring, mum, I have learnt the value of food. I don't just mean its monetary value, although in these less bountiful times everyone feels the need to cut back on unnecessary expenditure, but also the fact that a producer has gone to a great deal of time and effort to make his product. We owe it to our farmers and growers to treat the product of their hard worn labour with respect, which in my book means not jettisoning it all just because someone's taken a a great big chunk out of it and it doesn't look pristine anymore. Our advertisers have a lot to answer for.

So many leftovers can be 'repackaged' on shiny new plates, cut into smaller morsels for an appetiser, worked into a pie or casserole or just covered with a fresh sprinkling of newly snipped herbs and some good olive oil. My all time favourite transformation is when those knobbly old bits of cheese hacked into after a good lunch or dinner metamorphose into a tart of some form or other. I love all cheese, from the palest delicate 'crottin' to a nasal blowing ripe Livarot, and many would say it shows! But with a skinny younger sister who has a broken femur and wrist due to osteoporosis, I've decided I'm not about to give up my favourite indulgence in a hurry.

Cheese and pastry are a marriage made in heaven. One of our many house guests many years ago gave me a copy of the wonderful Tamasin Day-Lewis's [she with the gorgeous brother whom we all fell in love with in 'My Beautiful Launderette'] fabulous cookery book, 'The Art of the Tart'. I have improvised many of her recipes over the years, largely because we just can't get the same quality of cream here. Her asparagus tart is to die for and we live on it during late spring and early summer when French asparagus is at its best. It is her cheese tarts, though, that make for the greatest satisfaction in recipe re-working.

I have to be honest and say that before the pound hit rock bottom against the euro, I would regularly phone up Martine Crespo in St Girons to put in an order for lunch. Ellie is partial to her quiche Lorraine, Freddie to her croustarde de montagne and Peter and me to her tarte aux tomates et courgettes. Less honest hosts could easily pass them off as their own! Not this year, though. We all have to tighten our belts, so to speak [ah, that it were the case for me!]. A good place to buy cheese economically is from the 'Vente directe' shop opposite the St Girons 'Intermarche', a great place to buy at good prices if there are lots of you or you don't mind freezing it. The temptation is always to buy too much, there is so much choice. It varies from day to day and you can never be sure on any given day what will be available.

This year almost every lunch has been an experiment in adaptation. One of my favourites is a chevre and tomato tart, made in a hurry the cheat's way, with 100% 'pur beurre' ready made pastry or, for real, with pastry made in the food processor. You can use any chevre but logs are best because you can slice it to overlap perfectly with slices of tomato. I put a good dollop of Dijon mustard into the base, a serious handful of Gruyere or Emmentale 'rape' on top of it, then slice the chevre and tomatoes, arrange them in rounds and top with as many fresh herbs you can muster, shaken together with some olive oil and one or two minced garlic cloves and loads of sel de Guerande and black pepper. Forty minutes in a moderate oven and you're done!

My other great favourite is a Roquefort and walnut tart, just discovered, which is great for using up old bits of Roquefort. Just sprinkle the base of your tart with the cheese and walnut pieces, broken up into fairly small bits, and pour 300 mls or so of creme de Normandie entiere beaten lightly with an egg and 4 egg yolks and some pepper, and cook till browning gently on top. Heaven! I cannot begin to bore you with the number of combinations I've thrown together, some infinitely better than others. It's so satisfying, as well as leaving you, smugly, with a tidy fridge. My mother-in-law would be proud of me!

Our local cheeses are fantastic, although rather more expensive these days. I particularly like the gloriously rich 'Le Pic de la Calabasse' from the fromagerie artisanale in St Lary, the Bamalou 'Petit Bethmale de Chevre' and the fromage artisanal au lait cru de vache from the Fromagerie de Moulis. One of the great joys of the Saturday morning market in St Girons over the years has been buying Stan's superb 'Le Montagnol' fromages made from either vache, brebis or chevre. I don't know if it's just me but he does seem to have become grumpier and less patient with his customers over the years. When he didn't even wait for me to choose a second cheese this morning before turning to his next punter, I was minded of Van Morrison in concert. You may be one of the best, but you won't always be able to get away with treating your loyal supporters with total indifference! The contrast with the delightfully smiley, elderly purveyor of the 'Le Brussard' chevre from Soulan, not far from Stan's pitch on the market, couldn't have been more marked.

Last week we had some friends for lunch and they brought with them the most delicious 'crottin de chevre' made by their neighbour in Laborie, not far from Castlenau-Durban. It always makes me laugh to think that a 'crottin' is so named because it resembles the the rear end deposits from a goat, sheep, mule etc. Only the French would happily describe a style of cheese with the same nominative as dung! How I love this country! It is what it is, end of story.

Talking of which, at the very same lunch I also served some supermarket Brie. Nothing wrong with that. My best friend in the Lauragais, Caroline de Roquette, who runs an amazing conserverie, regularly serves supermarket cheeses, saying that it's all in the keeping. Cheese must be eaten when it's ripe, something us English so often forget. Anyway, whilst Pascal, Sarah, Peter and I were discussing the merits of the crottin, Ellie tucked into the Brie. Suddenly, she gagged and yelled "Mum, it's moving! I feel sick!" I put on my specs and looked at her plate. Sure enough, there were a couple [only a couple, I promise!] of tiny white maggots on the plate. In my desire to ripen the Brie, I had obviously left it out in the recent heat, albeit covered, for far too long. The poor girl was mortified, as indeed was I, at such a lack of housekeeping in front of my lunch guests.

I needn't have worried. Pascal, being French, said 'C'est normal. Pas de probleme.' He then told us that there were certain cheeses which he preferred with the odd maggot or two. Yet another example of French practicality when it comes to food. I think, though, that when I next say to Ellie 'Du fromage, s'il te plait,' she may run a kilometre! Poor child, I've probably scarred her for life!