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Ebook has 2091 lines and 77423 words, and 42 pages

BOB BROWN

The Complete Book of Cheese

THE WINE COOK BOOK

AMERICA COOKS

SALADS AND HERBS

THE SOUTH AMERICAN COOK BOOK

SOUPS, SAUCES AND GRAVIES

THE VEGETABLE COOK BOOK

LOOK BEFORE YOU COOK!

THE EUROPEAN COOK BOOK

THE WINING AND DINING QUIZ

MOST FOR YOUR MONEY

OUTDOOR COOKING

FISH AND SEAFOOD COOK BOOK

THE COUNTRY COOK BOOK

LET THERE BE BEER!

HOMEMADE HILARITY

PHIL

ALPERT

INDEX OF RECIPES

I Remember Cheese

Cheese market day in a town in the north of Holland. All the cheese-fanciers are out, thumping the cannon-ball Edams and the millstone Goudas with their bare red knuckles, plugging in with a hollow steel tool for samples. In Holland the business of judging a crumb of cheese has been taken with great seriousness for centuries. The abracadabra is comparable to that of the wine-taster or tea-taster. These Edamers have the trained ear of music-masters and, merely by knuckle-rapping, can tell down to an air pocket left by a gas bubble just how mature the interior is.

The connoisseurs use gingerbread as a mouth-freshener; and I, too, that sunny day among the Edams, kept my gingerbread handy and made my way from one fine cheese to another, trying out generous plugs from the heaped cannon balls that looked like the ammunition dump at Antietam.

I remember another market day, this time in Lucerne. All morning I stocked up on good Schweizerk?se and better Gruy?re. For lunch I had cheese salad. All around me the farmers were rolling two-hundred-pound Emmentalers, bigger than oxcart wheels. I sat in a little caf?, absorbing cheese and cheese lore in equal quantities. I learned that a prize cheese must be chock-full of equal-sized eyes, the gas holes produced during fermentation. They must glisten like polished bar glass. The cheese itself must be of a light, lemonish yellow. Its flavor must be nutlike. There are, I learned, "blind" Swiss cheeses as well, but the million-eyed ones are better.

But I don't have to hark back to Switzerland and Holland for cheese memories. Here at home we have increasingly taken over the cheeses of all nations, first importing them, then imitating them, from Swiss Engadine to what we call Genuine Sprinz. We've naturalized Scandinavian Blues and smoked browns and baptized our own Saaland Pfarr in native whiskey. Of fifty popular Italian types we duplicate more than half, some fairly well, others badly.

We have our own legitimate offspring too, beginning with the Pineapple, supposed to have been first made about 1845 in Litchfield County, Connecticut. We have our own creamy Neufch?tel, New York Coon, Vermont Sage, the delicious Liederkranz, California Jack, Nuworld, and dozens of others, not all quite so original.

And, true to the American way, we've organized cheese-eating. There's an annual cheese week, and a cheese month . We even boast a mail-order Cheese-of-the-Month Club. We haven't yet reached the point of sophistication, however, attained by a Paris cheese club that meets regularly. To qualify for membership you have to identify two hundred basic cheeses, and you have to do it blindfolded.

This is a test I'd prefer not to submit to, but in my amateur way I have during the past year or two been sharpening my cheese perception with whatever varieties I could encounter around New York. I've run into briny Caucasian Cossack, Corsican Gricotta, and exotics like Rarush Durmar, Travnik, and Karaghi La-la. Cheese-hunting is one of the greatest--and least competitively crowded--of sports. I hope this book may lead others to give it a try.

The Big Cheese

One of the world's first outsize cheeses officially weighed in at four tons in a fair at Toronto, Canada, seventy years ago. Another monstrous Cheddar tipped the scales at six tons in the New York State Fair at Syracuse in 1937.

Before this, a one-thousand-pounder was fetched all the way from New Zealand to London to star in the Wembley Exposition of 1924. But, compared to the outsize Syracusan, it looked like a Baby Gouda. As a matter of fact, neither England nor any of her great dairying colonies have gone in for mammoth jobs, except Canada, with that four-tonner shown at Toronto.

It was almost a century later that the second record-breaking Chester weighed in, at only 200 pounds. Yet it won a Gold Medal and a Challenge Cup and was presented to the King, who graciously accepted it. This was more than Queen Victoria had done with a bridal gift cheese that tipped the scales at 1,100 pounds. It took a whole day's yield from 780 contented cows, and stood a foot and eight inches high, measuring nine feet, four inches around the middle. The assembled donors of the cheese were so proud of it that they asked royal permission to exhibit it on a round of country fairs. The Queen assented to this ambitious request, perhaps prompted by the exhibition-minded Albert. The publicity-seeking cheesemongers assured Her Majesty that the gift would be returned to her just as soon as it had been exhibited. But the Queen didn't want it back after it was show-worn. The donors began to quarrel among themselves about what to do with the remains, until finally it got into Chancery where so many lost causes end their days. The cheese was never heard of again.

While it is generally true that the bigger the cheese the better, , there is a limit to the obesity of a block, ball or brick of almost any kinds of cheese. When they pass a certain limit, they lack homogeneity and are not nearly so good as the smaller ones. Today a good magnum size for an exhibition Cheddar is 560 pounds; for a prize Provolone, 280 pounds; while a Swiss wheel of only 210 will draw crowds to any food-shop window.

Yet by and large it's the monsters that get into the Cheese Hall of Fame and come down to us in song and story. For example, that four-ton Toronto affair inspired a cheese poet, James McIntyre, who doubled as the local undertaker.

We have thee, mammoth cheese, Lying quietly at your ease; Gently fanned by evening breeze, Thy fair form no flies dare seize.

All gaily dressed soon you'll go To the greatest provincial show, To be admired by many a beau In the city of Toronto.

May you not receive a scar as We have heard that Mr. Harris Intends to send you off as far as The great world's show at Paris.

Of the youth beware of these, For some of them might rudely squeeze And bite your cheek; then song or glees We could not sing, oh, Queen of Cheese.

AN EPICO-LYRICO BALLAD

From meadows rich, with clover red, A thousand heifers come; The tinkling bells the tidings spread, The milkmaid muffles up her head, And wakes the village hum.

In shining pans the snowy flood Through whitened canvas pours; The dyeing pots of otter good And rennet tinged with madder blood Are sought among their stores.

The quivering curd, in panniers stowed, Is loaded on the jade, The stumbling beast supports the load, While trickling whey bedews the road Along the dusty glade.

As Cairo's slaves, to bondage bred, The arid deserts roam, Through trackless sands undaunted tread, With skins of water on their head To cheer their masters home,

So here full many a sturdy swain His precious baggage bore; Old misers e'en forgot their gain, And bed-rid cripples, free from pain, Now took the road before.

The widow, with her dripping mite Upon her saddle horn, Rode up in haste to see the sight And aid a charity so right, A pauper so forlorn.

The circling throng an opening drew Upon the verdant-grass To let the vast procession through To spread their rich repast in view, And Elder J. L. pass.

Then Elder J. with lifted eyes In musing posture stood, Invoked a blessing from the skies To save from vermin, mites and flies, And keep the bounty good.

Now mellow strokes the yielding pile From polished steel receives, And shining nymphs stand still a while, Or mix the mass with salt and oil, With sage and savory leaves.

Then sextonlike, the patriot troop, With naked arms and crown, Embraced, with hardy hands, the scoop, And filled the vast expanded hoop, While beetles smacked it down.

Next girding screws the ponderous beam, With heft immense, drew down; The gushing whey from every seam Flowed through the streets a rapid stream, And shad came up to town.

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