wine tasting in cellars or warm as an appertizer. A hard cheese such as Comté, Emmental or the Swiss cheese, Gruyère, from the mountain areas is grated into the uncooked choux pastry before cooking in a hot oven. Gougere is thought to have originated in Sens, just north of Auxerre on the River Yonne in Burgundy. In our local boulangeries, the gougères are made to a larger dimension and often stuffed with a sauce of bacon, ham or cheese.

Combining a rich red wine sauce with lardon (bacon pieces), onion and mushrooms with a croute of bread and finished off with a poached egg. This really is 'bacon and eggs' with a delicious French sophistication!

The cheese is an unpasturised cows-milk cheese of rich golden orange colour. With a soft rind and an inside, the texture of Camembert the similarities continue, since it is sold in a similar circular wooden box. The taste however is very different, due to the 'rinsing' in Marc de Bourgogne, which gives the distinct smooth creamy flavour, so different from that pungent smell.....taste it to believe it!