Roquefort-- Katie Cooley

My French concoction

Coming from a small semi-rural town and growing up with an all-American family, I can honestly say that I have yet to experience any misfortunate or awkward encounters as far as food is concerned. I have never traveled outside of the United States, besides a small trip to Canada when I was younger (and I hardly remember that) so I haven’t tasted any legit foreign food. One of the only occasions that came to my mind for this blog assignment was the annual French and Spanish National Honor Society dinner held at my high school for juniors and seniors in these honor societies. For this night, everyone had to research, make, and bring in a dish respective of the honor society they were in so that we ended up with a large buffet of French and Spanish food. As I was in the French Honor Society, I had to find a French dish that was somewhat inexpensive and that sounded somewhat edible for the rest of my classmates.

In the end, I made a chicken dish with Roquefort, a blue cheese from the south of France, that when mixed into the sauce turned it green and which was then served over pasta. For the life of me I can’t remember what the dish was called but it certainly looked very different from what one was used to. Of course, at the dinner, everyone had to announce what food they brought and it was expected that if you brought it then you would have to try it. When I had first decided to make this dish, I had no clue what Roquefort was besides it was a cheese and it wasn’t until after I had bought it that I realized that Roquefort was blue cheese. Personally, I was never keen on the idea of eating moldy cheese and therefore I was hesitant at trying my French concoction, but I did. I was surprised by the taste of it and even though the sauce had blue cheese it actually tasted like a really, REALLY strong extra sharp. The dish was pretty good and besides that one there were many other foods I tried that I never would have tried any other time. Although this experience isn’t nearly as different as other’s experiences, this was the most food experience that I had and brought me to realize that sometimes foreign foods are really good even though they may not look it and to always remain open minded.