Once I had made junket the next simple step was to make fromage frais by gently cutting the junket into chunks and allowing it to drain through muslin.

In 1996 I was fortunate to be at a class at Sunnybrae Restaurant given by Richard Thomas on cheese. Richard put on an amazing array of cheeses to try and demonstrated making fresh curd cheeses. At that time he was at Yarra Valley Dairies and had created the now popular Persian Fetta. More recently he is down the road at De Bortoli producing butter and maturing and selling cheese.

He has held offal dinners at the grand view Hotel in Brunswick West with Alain Kerambrun over the last year and the dessert at one of those dinners was Coeur à la crème.

The idea was to make a Coeur à la crème as I had seen Gabriel Gaté do on Taste of the Tour. It is a traditional dish from his native region, but not in those cookbooks of his that I own, so a bit of searching. There was an article and recipe in Australian Gourmet Traveller, and the reference to Elizabeth David?s book, ?French Provincial Cooking? led me to why I had been having troubles sourcing a recipe in my French books. The dessert is often referred to as crémet d?Angers.
I found a recipe in Jane Grigson?s ?Good Things? where she buys into the pasteurised milk for cheese debate... ?And it?s no good making your own in a muslin drip bag, from our pasteurised milk; the result is rubbery. If you can buy unpasteurised milk, it?s another matter.? Gri...