A brie binge east of Paris

Two summers ago, in a village outside Coulommiers, an old market town an hour east of Paris, an old love affair of mine came back to life.

On my way to a borrowed house for a few weeks, my partner, Bruno, and I had stopped at a farm for eggs, cream and produce - including a Coulommiers cheese in a round wooden box.

I lifted the lid and poked it; it yielded easily to the touch. When we ended a barbecue under the walnut tree in the garden that night, this locally made raw-milk beauty - runny and pleasantly tangy with a suave, complex taste of mossy wells and toasted hazelnuts - shot me back through time to a snowy Saturday in Connecticut when I was 11.