I have a terrible addiction to buying foodstuffs that come with some kind of unthrowaway-able packaging.

Anyone who has lived with me has inevitably become frustrated at the growing pile of pickle jars that making putting containers away a real challenge, and I can’t bring myself to recycle the small glass ramekins that Gu desserts come in, instead amassing myriad small dishes for coins and buttons and paperclips and the like.

So you can imagine my delight when I bought a Saint-Felicien cheese that came in a small terracotta container the other day.

Saint-Felicien is a cow’s milk cheese made in the Rhône-Alpes region of France, in the countryside just out of Lyon. It is the big brother to Saint-Marcellin, which was one of the first cheeses I tried, although it is considerably larger and creamier than its teeny-tiny counterpart.

The cheese is known for its softness – hence the terracotta ramekin to keep it from getting squashed. Unlike Saint-Marcellin, Saint-Felicien is made using cream, making it softer and more plump than its baby bro. It is aged for up to six weeks, in which time a soft, lightly coloured rind develops. The one I bought had been smoothed a little by the plastic wrap, but I’ve seen a few pictures of this cheese that have a distinctly brain-like texture to them which is weirdly appealing.

To me, Saint-Felicien felt like an easy cheese – one I wasn’t going to have think super hard about. Camembert and Brie and some of the other smelly soft cheeses are real “sit up and pay attention” type cheeses – they will permeate every sense as you munch. Instead, there was something enjoyably light and fresh about this cheese, which I ate simply with a bit of bread.

The cheese tang, as I am calling it from now on, was milky and without the usual mushroomy, earthy flavours I am becoming accustomed to in French cheese. It was like fresh milk given solid form with a good whack of saltiness. It had a lovely, plump mouthfeel and spread appealingly on the baguette.

I am told that a few minutes in the oven will give me a meal fit for a queen, but as it has been a million degrees in Lyon and I don’t have an oven, I had to make do with room-temperature Saint-Felicien. This was no bother, as I polished off a good portion of the cheese in one sitting with very few complaints.

Type of Cheese: Saint-Felicien
Eaten with: Baguette, tomatoes from Provence, Orangina
Rating: 7.5 out of 10 laughing cows