Bob Brown

“ The Brie was melting prime, the Camembert was so perfectly matured we ate every scrap of the crust, which can't be done with many American "Camemberts" or, indeed, with the dead, dry French ones sold out of season. Then came the Roquefort, a regal cheese we voted the best buy of the lot, even though it was the most expensive. A plump piece, pleasantly unctuous but not greasy, sharp in scent, stimulatingly bittersweet in taste—unbeatable. There is no American pretender to the Roquefort throne. Ours is invariably chalky and tasteless. ”

“ It was there and then that cheese came of age from coast to coast. In every bar there was a choice of Swiss, Cottage, Limburger—manly cheeses, walkie-talkie oldsters that could sit up and beg, golden yellow, tangy mellow, always cut in cubes. Cheese takes the cube form as naturally as eggs take the oval and honeycombs the hexagon.
On the more elegant handout buffets, besides the shapely cubes, free Welsh Rabbit started at four every afternoon, to lead the tired businessman in by the nose ”

“ Italians are so dependent on cheese to enrich all their dishes, from soups to spaghetti—and indeed any vegetable—that a shaker of grated Parmesan, Romano or reasonable substitute stands ready at every table, or is served freshly grated on a side dish. Thus any Italian soup might be called a cheese soup, but we know of only one, the great minestrone, in which cheese is listed as an indispensable ingredient along with the pasta, peas, onion, tomatoes, kidney beans, celery, olive oil, garlic, oregano, potatoes, carrots, and so forth. ”

“ Next to nibbling cheese with crackers and appetizers, of which there is no end in sight, cheese sandwiches help us consume most of our country's enormous output of Brick, Cheddar and Swiss. To attempt to classify and describe all of these would be impossible, so we will content ourselves by picking a few of the cold and hot, the plain and the fancy, the familiar and the exotic. ”

“ I peril myself upon the assertion that this is not a heavy supper for a man who has been busy all day till dinner in reading, writing, walking or riding—who has occupied himself between dinner and supper in the discussion of a bottle or two of sound wine, or any equivalent—and who proposes to swallow at least three tumblers of something hot ere he resigns himself to the embrace of Somnus. ”

“ Their neighbors call it Greek cheese. Feta is to cheese what Hymettus is to honey. The two together make ambrosial manna. Feta is soft and as blinding white as a plate of fresh Ricotta smothered with sour cream. The whiteness is preserved by shipping the cheese all the way from Greece in kegs sloshing full of milk, the milk being renewed from time to time. Having been cured in brine, this great sheep-milk curd is slightly salty and somewhat sharp, but superbly spicy. ”

“ Unlike the beginning of the classical Jugged Hare recipe: "First catch your hare!" we modern Rabbit-hunters start off with "First catch your Cheddar!" And some of us go so far as to smuggle in formerly forbidden fromages such as Gruyère, Neufchâtel, Parmesan, and mixtures thereof. We run the gamut of personal preferences in selecting the Rabbit cheese itself, from old-time American, yellow or store cheese, to Coon and Canadian-smoked, though all of it is still Cheddar, no matter how you slice it. ”

“ In England, indeed, many epicures consider Gorgonzola greater than Stilton, which is the highest praise any cheese can get there. Like all great cheeses it has been widely imitated, but never equaled. Imported Gorgonzola, when fruity ripe, is still firm but creamy and golden inside with rich green veins running through. Very pungent and highly flavored, it is eaten sliced or crumbled to flavor salad dressings, like Roquefort. ”

“ To cut his losses the rascally cheesemonger had his cargo ground up and its flavor disguised with hot peppers and chili sauce. Thus there came into being the abortion known as the "cheese spread."
The cheese spread or "food" and its cousin, the processed cheese, are handy, cheap and nasty. They are available every where and some people even like them. So any cheese book is bound to take formal notice of their existence. ”

“ How good are cheese and pears.
Having found out for ourselves, we suggest a golden slice of Taleggio, Stracchino, or pale gold Bel Paese to polish off a good dinner, with a juicy Lombardy pear or its American equivalent, a Bartlett, let us say.
This celestial association of cheese and pears is further accented by the French:
Entre la poire et le fromage
Between the pear and the cheese.
This places the cheese after the fruit, as the last course, in accordance with early English usage set down by John Clarke in his Paroemiologia:
After cheese comes nothing. ”

“ It is a cheese for skilled artists to make sculptures with, sometimes horses' heads, again bunches of grapes and other fruits, even as Provolone is shaped like apples and pears and often worked into elaborate bas-relief designs. But ordinarily the horse's head is a plain tenpin in shape or a squat bottle with a knob on the side by which it has been tied up, two cheeses at a time, on opposite sides of a rafter, while being smoked lightly golden and rubbed with olive oil and butter to make it all the more buttery. ”

“ Before our processed and food cheese era some scoundrels in the cheese business over there added animal fats and margarine to skimmed milk to make it pass as whole milk in making cheese. Such adulteration killed the flavor and quality, and no doubt some of the customers. Luckily in America we put down this vicious counterfeiting with pure food laws. But such foreign fats are still stuffed into the skimmed milk of many foreign cheeses. To take the place of the natural butterfat the phony fats are whipped in violently and extra rennet is added to speed up coagulation. ”

“ They must glisten like polished bar glass. The cheese itself must be of a light, lemonish yellow. Its flavor must be nutlike. (Nuts and Swiss cheese complement each other as subtly as Gorgonzola and a ripe banana.) 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. ”

“ The dunking is done as rhythmically as the stirring, guests taking regular turns at twirling the fork to keep the cheese swirling. When this "chafing dish cheese custard," as it has been called in England, is ready for eating, each in turn thrusts in his fork, sops up a mouthful with the bread for a sponge and gives the Fondue a final stir, to keep it always moving in the same direction. All the while the heat beneath the dish keeps it gently bubbling. ”

“ At the Cheese Cellar in the New York World's Fair Swiss Pavilion, where a continual dunking party was in progress, thousands of amateurs learned such basic things as not to overcook the Fondue lest it become stringy, and the protocol of dunking in turn and keeping the mass in continual motion until the next on the Fondue line dips in his cube of bread. The success of the dish depends on making it quickly, keeping it gently a-bubble and never letting it stand still for a split second. ”

“ A frank and fair name for a semihard, brittle mouthful of flavor. Every country has its goat specialties. In Norway the milk is boiled dry, then fresh milk or cream added. In Czechoslovakia the peasants smoke the cheese up the kitchen chimney. No matter how you slice it, goat cheese is always notable or noble. ”

“ Stilton, Roquefort and Gorgonzola form the triumvirate that rules a world of lesser Blues. They are actually green, as green as the mythical cheese the moon is made of.
In almost every, land where cheese is made you can sample a handful of lesser Blues and imitations of the invincible three and try to classify them, until you're blue in the face. The best we can do in this slight summary is to mention a few of the most notable, aside from our own Blues of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Oregon and other states that major in cheese. ”

“ Some Pied Piper took the country cheese and crackers to the corner saloon and led a free-lunch procession that never faltered till Prohibition came. The same old store cheese was soon pepped up as saloon cheese with a saucer of caraway seeds, bowls of pickles, peppers, pickled peppers and rye bread with plenty of mustard, pretzels or cheese straws, smearcase and schwarzbrot. Beer and cheese forever together, as in the free-lunch ditty of that great day:
I am an Irish hunter ”

“ A chef at the New York Athletic Club once improved on this by first sandwiching the Swiss between a slice of ham and a slice of chicken breast, then beating up a brace of eggs with a jigger of heavy sweet cream and soaking his sandwich in this until it sopped up every drop. A final frying in sweet butter made strong men cry for it. ”

“ For the Britisher only blue-veined Stilton is worthy to crown the banquet. The Frenchman defends Roquefort, the Dane his own regal Blue; the Swiss sticks to Emmentaler before, during and after all three meals. You may prefer to finish with a delicate Brie, a smoky slice of Provolone, a bit of Baby Gouda, or some Liptauer Garniert, about which more later.
We load them all on Lazy Lou, Lazy Susan's big twin brother, a giant roulette wheel of cheese, every number a winner. A second Lazy Lou will bear the savories and go-withs. For these tidbits the English have a divine genius ”

“ Cook onion in butter until light golden, then blend in flour, wine and soup with the soda and all seasonings. Stir in cheese slowly until melted and finish off by thickening with the egg and stirring until smooth and velvety. Serve on crisp, buttered toast with a dry red wine.
Although wine Rabbits, red or white, are as unusual as Swiss ones with Gruyère in place of Cheddar, wine is commonly drunk with anything from a Golden Buck to a Blushing Bunny. But for most of us, a deep draught of beer or ale goes best with an even deeper draught of the mellow scent of a Cheddar golden-yellow. ”

“ For one sandwich prepare 30 or 40 garlic cloves by removing skins and frying out the fierce pungence in smoking olive oil. They skip in the hot pan like Mexican jumping beans. Toast one side of a thickish slice of bread, put this side down on a grilling pan, cover it with a slice of imported Swiss Emmentaler or Gruyère, of about the same size, shape and thickness. Stick the cooked garlic cloves, while still blistering hot, in a close pattern into the cheese and brown for a minute under the grill. ”

“ The value of buttermilk is stressed in an extravagant old Hindu proverb: "A man may live without bread, but without buttermilk he dies."
Cheese was made before butter, being the earliest form of dairy manufacturing, so buttermilk cheese came well after plain milk cheese, even after whey cheese. It is very tasty, and a natural with potato salad. The curd is salted after draining and sold in small parchment packages.
German "leather" cheese has buttermilk mixed with the plain. The Danes make their Appetitost with sour buttermilk. Ricotta Romano, for a novelty, is made of sheep buttermilk. ”

“ While it is generally true that the bigger the cheese the better, (much the same as a magnum bottle of champagne is better than a pint) , 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. ”

“ There isn't much difference between Cheese Soufflés, Puffs and Ramekins. The English Encyclopedia of Practical Cookery, the oldest, biggest and best of such works in English, lumps Cheese Puffs and Ramekins together, giving the same recipes for both, although it treats each extensively under its own name when not made with cheese.
Cheese was the basis of the original French Ramequin, cheese and bread crumbs or puff paste, baked in a mold, (with puff again the principal factor in Soufflé, from the French souffler, puff up) . ”

“ Hot apple pie was always accompanied with cheese in New England, even as every slice of apple pie in Wisconsin has cheese for a sidekick, according to law. Pioneer hot pies were baked in brick ovens and flavored with nutmeg, cinnamon and rose geranium. The cheese was Cheddar, but today all sorts of pie and cheese combinations are common, such as banana pie and Gorgonzola, mince with Danish Blue, pumpkin with cream cheese, peach pie with Hablé, and even a green dusting of Sapsago over raisin pie. ”

“ When finally it has cooked down to a crust in the bottom of the dish, this is forked out by the host and divided among the guests as a very special dividend.
Any dry white wine will serve in a pinch, and the Switzerland Cheese Association, in broadcasting this classical recipe, points out that any dry rum, slivovitz, or brandy, including applejack, will be a valid substitute for the kirsch. To us, applejack seems specially suited, when we stop to consider our native taste that has married apple pie to cheese since pioneer times. ”

“ Named from cooking sour clabbered curd to the melting point. When cool it is allowed to stand three or four days until it is colored through. Then it is cooked again with salt, milk, and usually caraway. It is stirred until it's as thick as molasses and strings from a spoon. It is then put into pots or molds, whose shape it retains when turned out.
All cooked cheese is apt to be tasteless unless some of the milk flavor cooked out is put back in, as wheat germ is now returned to white bread. ”