Fougette au Thym

This petit quenelle of goat’s cheese is a rare find, made at a small family-owned goat farm just North of Toulouse. Their herd of goats is only about three hundred strong, and enjoy a life outdoors feeding only on the wild garrigue scrubland and what is grown on the farm. Their milk is made into cheese on the farm, aromatised with thyme and thyme leaves, then sent within the same week to Rodolphe le Meunier’s caves in Touraine. There, he and his team of affineurs mature it for a further ten days to nurture a delicate Geotrichum rind, which clings tightly to the paste. The name of the cheese is a portmanteau of fougere and bouygette, referring firstly to the fern that topped the original version of the cheese, and then to the local term for the cheese’s shape. Gently milky with the texture of a mousse, it is sweetly herbal with approachable salinity.