Cheese toasties have long been viewed by French gastronomes as an unsophisticated anglo-saxon invention far inferior to their own version, the croque monsieur.
Now, however, attitudes are changing, with the cheese toastie coming to be seen as a culinary delicacy even in France.
The Salon du Fromage et des Produits Laitiers (Cheese and Dairy Products Fair) in Paris organised what it described as the first ever international grilled cheese competition on Tuesday.
The event is being taken as a sign that France is opening up to other cheese-making cultures after considering for decades that it knew everything there was to know about the subject.
Five contestants, a Briton, two Americans, a Belgian and a Frenchman, were given 15 minutes to come up with ultra-sophisticated cheese toasties in front of an audience of professionals, including dairy farmers.
Advertisement
Nick Bayne, 35, the self-styled American Cheesemason who now lives in Bristol and works at the Bath-based Fine Cheese Co, said: “It’s quite high pressure. You have to work quickly.”
His first toastie, with ewe’s milk raclette cheese, spring onion, za’atar and black pepper, was a triumph, although his second, which included raclette and Pont-l’Évêque cheeses and Japanese sencha green tea, went down less well with the three-member jury.
Bayne, who came third in the World Cheesemonger Championships in France last year, is a fervent believer in toasties. “There is nothing better than melty, gooey cheese,” he said.
Yet he admitted that some purists took exception to the concept. “They say that if you have a lovely small cheese, why would you melt it? The answer is, because it’s delicious.”
Bayne, who initially moved to the UK to study acting before realising that he preferred dairy products to drama, conceded that some cheeses are better for grilling than others, but insisted that almost all can be used.
Advertisement
He added that he was pleasantly surprised to find that the cheese toastie was finally being considered as a gastronomic delight in a country that used to see no further than the croque monsieur, which is made with cheese, béchamel and ham.
In the audience was Julie Coquelle, 35, a goats’ cheese maker from the Charente département in western France. Her products were being used by the contestants and she said she had no qualms about seeing her cheese melted into a sandwich.
“I make cheese toasties with our goats’ cheese when I am home myself,” she said. “It’s really nice and full of flavour.”
Coquelle added that she was an admirer of British cheese, saying that after the show had closed the previous day, she and other cheesemakers from the Charente had eaten cheddar with their aperitif. “Britain does some incredible cheeses now,” she said, although she conceded that many French people remained convinced that there was nothing but industrial dairy products on the other side of the channel.
Matthew Carver, 37, owner of the Cheese Bar in London and three other restaurants in the UK, is among those hoping to accelerate change in France. He said his “pipe dream” was to open a cheese restaurant in Paris, although he added: “Brexit hasn’t really helped.”
Advertisement
When it was his turn to cook, Carver came up with a blue cheese toastie with hazelnuts, rosemary butter and chestnut honey. “I thought it was really good,” he said.
The winner, however, was Léo Begin, a 30-year-old Belgian cheesemonger who produced his version of a cheeseburger. This consisted of a bun, fourme d’Ambert blue cheese, chicory and a poached egg.
Such is the alchemy of cheese and heat that you can use the cheapest sliced bread and the lowliest of processed cheeses and the result will always be greater than the sum of its parts. However, if you wish to scale the heights, it’s worth laying the right foundations, starting with the bread.
The grilled cheese sandwich at The Wigmore, a London pub as imagined by Michel Roux, is considered by many to be the acme of its field. Thinly sliced caramelised onion and nigella seed sourdough bread is spread generously with Dijon mustard and used to sandwich a mix of chopped cornichons, red onions and roughly equal parts of grated Montgomery cheddar for sharpness plus raclette and its British equivalent Ogleshield for sweet stretchiness.
The outside of the bread is then brushed with clarified butter and the sandwich cooked weighted down in a hot pan, so that the cheese oozes out and crisps around the edges. At nearly a foot long (and priced at £12.50), it is a grilled cheese on heroic scale. But as I say, sliced Pilgrims Choice on a slice of Mighty White and flashed under an oven grill? That’s not bad either.
