What is wrong with this guy!

Doesn't he know he is french? Go home, get a life!! It is 10:30 PM and he is still at work. I know this because I can see him across from my hotel room every night. Just before I go to sleep, I check and he is still there. It is bad enough for me, when my work day in France ends at 6:00 pm it is only 1:00 PM in NYC and I have six more hours to get stuff done. Yeah! But this guy, come on!

J'adore Paris

Here is a little thing I like about Paris, the hotel I am staying in provides (for a charge of course) this half bottle of wine, corkscrew and glasses, as well as a full stocked mini bar. This bottle makes me happy... well not so much the bottle but the corkscrew because I intend to go over to Monoprix and pick up my own bottle of wine and use that corkscrew.
It is fun to travel in a foreign country! I like to see how flummoxed I can be by simple things, such as doors. This is my third time in Paris and I am still unable to pass through a door without difficulty. There are latches to contend with and buttons to press. I think I fully dismantled the security system in one building. I was quite stuck that time.
While I am very adventurous and excited to take the metro, I am daunted by the task of purchasing the tickets. I have to explain where I am going and consider zones. So far, no catastrophes. The other thing about the Metro is you have manually open the door to get on the train. More doors. Today I was unable to flip the latch and had to step aside while a local girl flipped open the door on her first try. She gave me the eyeball that I think would translate into English as "duh?" and she would be correct. On the plus side, what I like about the metro is that it makes funny farty noises. How can you not get a giggle out of that?

A German Feast at Rolf's

I went to a holiday outing with my hiking group to Rolf's German restaurant and ordered this delicious sausage platter with a side of spazele. Not everyone was as happy as I was with their meal but I was ecstatic and came home with lunch for tomorrow. I mean really, is there anyway to eat four sausages in one sitting. That sausage there on the right is a knockwurst and when I was a kid it was my absolute favorite dinner. Then I foolishly became a vegetarian for twenty years and was estranged from by beloved wurst. Well, I'm back baby and cholesterol be damned.

Here is a good rule of thumb (I wonder why they call it that), if ordering in a German restaurant, order the German dishes. Don't get the salmon. That pretty much holds true for any restaurant. To expand on that rule, don't trust restaurants that specialize in a cuisine and then put generic things on the menu to please all, at least not in NYC. so not everyone was happy with the food and the price didn't help the situation either but how else would Rolf's pay for these insane holiday decorations. The entire place manic with Christmas spirit. So much so that at one point the fuse blew and the place when half dark.

If you look closely at this picture you can see our dinner table, cool huh?

Thanksgivings!

My family lives too far to get together on Thanksgiving so I began cooking it myself two years ago for local friends in the same predicament. I had three guests but cooked enough for ten, that seemed about right for Thanksgivings. The bird was 14 pounds and I filled it with Italian sausage stuffing and covered it with cheese cloth soaked in melted butter. the cheese cloth was a great trick I just leaned about. The cloth really hangs on to the liquid when basting and the turkey came out very moist.


I also made cranberry sauce, of course, roasted
root vegetables, Brussels sprouts with bread crumb and hard boiled egg, and an apple, walnut cheese salad. It sounds fairly simple but there was a lot of juggling on my tiny stove. The turkey made its way to the table ahead of a few side dishes, and the boys picked at the plate with such stealth that we had to cut many more slices. Being from Sweden, the boys are new to Thanksgiving, so just minutes before Robert fell sound asleep Steph and I told him about tryptophan. There was a few seconds of disbelief and then snoring.


After a good sized nap, I woke Robert up with this piece of gingerbread atop a cloud of English cream. Boy do I love this dessert!




Later we watched Gary Vaynerchuk's WLTV thanksgivings special and tasted these wines, followed by a mandatory dance party and a round of poker which was a non stop argument, but in a fun way.

special sweet treats

I arrived at home last night to find a present on my door step (or knob, really). I was so touched because it is from a friend who really loves chocolate and he is sharing this with me, chocolate from home. A texted followed that read that it was something to show how much he appreciates all that I do for him. Oooh, sweet! All friends should be so good to each other.

the giant pineapple

sounds like a double entendre, doesn't it. sounds like a euphemism for something a tad naughty, yes? yes? is it just me?

Whatever.

Ok here is it the giant pineapple. At Caroline's birthday extrazaganza, we gathered again and painted plaster. I didn't really know what it was that I ordered. I initally wanted the wheat plaster but they were out so, without taking a good look, I opted for the pineapple. And I painted it. I looks fine in this pic yes, no big deal.




Well check out this picture! With the ruler as size reference! Now! Yea! Big Deal! I don't have a spot on my wall anywhere for such a BIG PINEAPPLE!

I know, I know. In reality it is not so big , but in NYC apartment living scope, yes it is, and I don't have the space for such a thing.

Anybody want to buy a hand painted pineapple?

Working hard is hard work!

I recently started a new job that I already love love love, especially since I am being sent to Paris for eight days! Yea!!! But I have been neglecting you dear sweet bloggy. And the readers have been clamoring for more - ok that would be no one, but I have to pretend so that I get motivated. I say to myself, get out of bed - your readers need more! Maybe my readers are the multiply personalities in my head! tee hee. I still have to blog up about Thanksgiving, the lovely gift left at my door and the giant pineapple (that's foreshadowing). Tonight, tonight, it is all I will do.

custard the culinary challenge

So the point of this blog is to challenge myself to learn about cooking and wine. I want to cook intuitively, you know... from the gut or from the heart, whichever. I have been thinking the I need to toss myself culinary throw downs on a regular basis. Here is the first one: make something I am apprehensive to make without referring to the recipe. This isn't like the turkey chili that I can just make by following my craving, but something a tad more technical.

On Thanksgiving, dessert will be individual pumpkin-shaped gingerbread that will rest on a pillow of English cream. Sounds yummy doesn't it? the English cream recipe I have is custard folded into whipped cream. I made the custard tonight and it was my culinary throw down.

When I said "without referring to a recipe", I meant during the process. I read it first and committed it to memory and then proceeded to make the custard. I prepared a bain Marie, got out all my tools and ingredients. Things turned out pretty good. I put a cup of whole milk in a small pot and brought it to a simmer.
Look how mysterious this yolk looks close up, like a happy sun rising over sugarhill.

Combined two yokes and a 1/4 cup of sugar and whisk. When the milk reaches a simmer, pour it in a slow stream into the egg and sugar while whisking to combine. Slow pour and whisking is a must because you do not want the heat of the milk to cook the egg yokes.

Pour it back into the pot and return to a low heat. Stir consistently with a wooded spoon till the mixture thickens. Do not let it go over 175 degrees. You can see here that my pause for a photo is causing my custard to get dangerously close the no-no zone. If it is not thickening pull the pot off the heat, dangle it above the flame to keep the temp down but giving it a bit more cook time.

Pour the custard through a fine sieve into a bowl in the bain Marie (ice bath). Mix in 1/2 a teaspoon of vanilla and there it is! Custard!

So, I did it, I meet my culinary throw down and and pleased with the results. During the process though, I was very distracted by the photography that I pulled the custard before it was thick enough and I had it on ice before I decide to go back to the stove with it, but that decision to go back to the heat is the intuitively that I am trying to develop. Isn't it?

GV we have a problem!

I got one of four hundred boxes of Gary Vaynerchuk's Secret Thanksgiving Pack but one of the bottles got mysteriously drunk last night! Seriously and not by me!!! I mean it!! And it wasn't the cat either, though the picture suggests otherwise. My two hungry Swedish neighbors drank it, but that is fine. They are coming to Thanksgivings so it is for them anyway.

Cotes du Rhone wine tasting

Last night I hosted my fourth wine tasting event. What a crazy emotional day! It was my last day on the job at Imax and Monday, I start a new gig that I am very excited about. Leaving my job was hard because I have the best boss ever!!! There was a surprise party and presents... lots of fun!

I rushed home, performed tornado style cleaning and cooked up a batch of Swedish meatballs. They came out ok but I want to tweak the recipe to be more flavorful. I also prepared seven glasses of wine for our "smell off". I used a very neutral bottle of wine, a beaujolais nouveau, the base wine and added aromas that would be found in the wines we were drinking tonight. The aromas were blueberry, currant, black pepper, smoke, chocolate, spice, and fennel. The group then smells all the glasses and tries to detect which smell is in the wine. Luckily by the time everything is set up and the meeting gets underway, I tend to forget what is in which glass, so it is a challenge for me too. I got stumped by the blueberry and the currant; I couldn't tell them apart.

We then tasted four Cotes du Rhone wines. Our first was Guigal Chateauneuf-du-Pape 2003. In the bouquet I detected spice and berry, and the flavor had notes of smoke, black pepper and berry. The mouth feel was fabulous and the tannins were grippy but not over bearing. When there was just a little bit of the wine left in the glass, the aroma became plastic and reminded me of toys that I had as a kid.

The next wine was Guigal Crozes-Hermitage 2004. This one was herbaceous, with a dark chocolate hit and dark stone fruit on the finish. Tasted lighter and sweeter than the first bottle.

We then moved to the Eric Texier, Côte du Rhône Brézème 2005 and the Côte-Rôtie Vieilles Vignes 2004. The price point is hugely different on these wines the former is $18 while the latter is $62 and yet they are both excellent quality wines. I was surprised at how light and fruity the wines were tasting because they are Rhone, while not light like Burgundy red, still I wasn't thinking steak but german sausages instead.

I like every wine we has last night. After we all have our little sippy sips of every wine, it turns into a party as we polish off the bottle. I went back to the Pape and this time, after all the wines, the tannis were very grippy, too grippy. It is always fun to go back and see how different the wine is.

The questions that came up during the evening all require a good googling. How are these foreign aromas imparted onto a wine, what is the effect of duty on the price, are the grapes washed before the crush. I don't know!!!

Hooray for Birthdays

My sister and I have birthdays that are somewhat close together. We went out to The Melting Pot restaurant in Hoboken NJ to celebrate and the staff signed a card for us to share. And we shared it.

Chamber Street Wines tasting of Louis/Dressner

Went to my second Louis/Dressner wine tasting at Chamber Street Wines today and purchased these lovelies. The two on the left are for my next wine tasting get together and the other three are theoretically for Thanksgiving. Problem is that Burgundy keeps calling to me so I hope it makes it till then. Since this blog is all about me learning new things about food and wine, one thing I must absolutely learn is how to cellar a wine. Yeah, yeah, I know 55 degrees and the right humidity, I get that part, the tricky part will be to resist their siren song.

Wine tasting at Tasting World

Attended a wine tasting tonight. It was a group of about 35, everyone brought a bottle. I picked up this one pictured above, but I wasn't so crazy about it. The one I liked the best was the Salla & Mosca Cannonau di Sardegna Riserva 2004. It is flowery, spicy, soft and subtle. The bouquet was beautiful and perfume-like, I wouldn't mind smelling like this wine. The taste was dimensional with a nice length. I love a good length! Best of all, Union Square Wines sells it for $12.99! I'll be right over USQ!!

It is a bit overwhelming sampling 35 wines, spitting was an absolute necessity for me but I didn't see too many other people spit, so I am assuming there are 34 people in NYC with some hefty hangovers. Me? I got too much to do this weekend to nurse a hangover; I am testing recipes for Thanksgiving! It will be my second Thanks but my first with a proper table for peeps to sit around. I am very psyched for the day (and will be a furious cooking maniac till then).

Citizen Cope

Lisa and I drove up to Peekskill after work last night to go see Citizen Cope. It was a great show in a tiny venue. He played a really long set, mostly solo, and at times accompanied by a percussionist and a keyboardist.

It is great to see such a talented musician in a small venue. It is almost as if I have retained a modicum of my former hipness, like back in the day when I used to see brilliant little-known musicians at CBGB's or Danceteria or The World.

AaahhhhOld.

At some point I did have to stick a bit of tissue in my ear. Not because the sound was too loud, but to mute out the horsefaced girl in row N who spend much of the night professing her love for Cope. "I love you Clarence". Boy, I wish I had audio so you could hear my mocking tone.

Other than that, a fabulous show. I am thinking I will zip down to Philly for the Dec 29th gig! Anybody, anybody?

Pea Soup

A while ago my friend Robert teased me that everything I make has peas in it. It's true, I do love peas, specifically petite peas. As a kid, my sister Barbara would literally cry when peas were served. One dinner, my mother coerced her to eat the peas and Barbara threw-up. It was very dramatic. Maybe they were not petite peas but common peas that are mealy and starchy. Yuck. It is petite peas or nothing!

As the weather has finally cooled, it is clearly pea soup season. I pondered peas soup a few weeks ago and while thinking of my tried and true pea soup recipe I wondered why I mindlessly followed along and used dried peas. So I pulled out a bag of frozen petite peas and winged it. The results were very satisfying. And now, as I dream up a Thanksgivings Day feast, I believe I will add this soup to the menu. I guess I better figure out how I made it!

Tonight I tried to make the soup a second time, which wasn't such a stretch since it is intended to be simple. Onions, carrots, thyme, ham, s&p, stock and pureed peas! It tasted fresh and clean but I think I would like to try it with a food mill, to really smooth out the peas, and maybe a touch of cream. Now that I think about it, I'd better try out a few more recipes for Thanksgiving.

Birthday party for ME!!!

So I wasn't much in the mood this year to have a big party like I usually do. Instead I had just a few neighbors over for turkey chili. I have been working on the recipe for a while and I am quite happy with it.

Happy folk eating turkey chili

Why turkey chili, you may ask. Several weeks ago I had a hankering to make something I have never made before. Something warming and delicious. Something ideal for this lovely fall weather. After searching online for a while, I printed out two recipes that didn't really float my boat too much, but I thought I would just monkey around with them and see what they could do. On the subway ride home (and to Whole Foods) I over heard some guy saying that he had turkey chili last night. (He had an actually friend on the receiving end of the conversation; he was not one of those random weirdos talking to himself that are often riding the fabulous NYC subway). Turkey chili he said and it was like an epiphany. It was the dish I was craving! It was as if I could taste it already and I knew exactly what I wanted in it. So I lost the recipes I was carrying and set my mind on turkey chili and winging the recipe.

Turkey Chili recipe and how I made it last night
1 large onion chopped fine
3 cloves of garlic minced
1/2 teaspoon of whole clove
1 1/2 teaspoon of whole cumin
1 poblano chili
fat pinch of cayenne
1 teaspoon of paprika
salt and pepper
2 big springs of thyme
1 pound of ground turkey meat
2 large carrots finely cubed
1 large yellow pepper finely cubed
1 28 oz of fire roasted cubed tomatoes (Muir Glen brand)
1 minced chipotle chili in adobe sauce
2 or 3 tablespoons of black strap molasses - to taste
vegetable oil and chicken stock as needed

If at any point during the cooking process the contents of your pot becomes sticky, add a touch of stock to prevent burning but don't add anything that needs to be sauteed till the liquid is sufficiently cooked off. I use this technique so that I don't have to add more oil to the pan and it buys me some time as I continue chopping up stuff to toss in.

Pour about 2 tablespoons of oil into a pot and set over a medium flame. As your pot heats, chop up your onion and add to the pot. Add salt to the onions (this will draw out moisture from the onion) and throw in the sprigs of whole thyme. As your onion cooks down, mince the garlic and add to onions. Let it all cook down till onions are loose, liquid and caramelizing. In a spice mill grind together the clove, cumin and poblano chili. Grind until the contents are a fine powder add to the pot along with cayenne, paprika and freshly ground black pepper (to taste). Crumble the ground turkey meat into the pot and stir a few times till the meat is cooked through. Then add your carrots and yellow pepper. Let them all cook down for about 5 minutes. Then add the fire roasted tomatoes, chipotle chili and a bit of molasses. You can hold back on the a bit of the chipotle and the molasses because you may want to taste it in a bit and see how the flavor is marrying. You can always add more seasoning but you cannot take subtract it once it is in the pot. The tomatoes will need about 20 to 30 minutes to cook down to deliciousness. Taste the dish at this point and see what you may want to add. Fish out the sprigs of thyme and with your spoon (hopefully a wooden spoon) give them a scrape on the side of the pot, loosening the leaves off the stem (and back into the pot). Toss the stem.

Last night the turkey chili was not having it at, at this point in the cooking process so I had to really noodle around with the flavor in the end. I added more molasses, paprika, salt and pepper and even a few drops of liquid smoke until the dish finally tasted as scrumptious as I was hoping for.

Who know what happened but we somehow wound up at the Edge Bar again and here I am with my girls sporting my new Wine Library TV wristband that arrive just a few days before my birthday. Such a awesome gift. Thanks Wine Library!!!

Pictures from Storm King Art Center

Burgundy reds

Last night I hosted another wine tasting event with my meet up group. We had five red wines from Burgundy: two from Beaujoulais, and one each from Cote Chalonnaise, Cote De Beaune and Cote de Nuits. I have been furiously focusing on trying to develop my palate to detect the aromas and nuances in the flavor. At the first few wine tastings I had a blind smelling where I put different aromatics (lemon, mango, banana...) in a covered cup and the group tried to identify the contents based on smell alone. But last night I think I finally figured out that I am focusing too much on trying to detect these descriptives (like raspberry, caramel, straw) and I should be paying attention to the other attributes like the mouth feel, acidity or complexity.

Look how buttery this cheese is! This is the Mt. Tam from Cowgirl Creamery. It is smooth and delicious on top of an apple wedge. We also had Epoisses from the Burgundy region. It is a washed rind cheese and smells like Mrs. D's horse camp that I attended as a kid. Hay, mucked stalls, horse... it was like reliving some of my favorite childhood memories. It tasted fantastic too!

baby steps

It was a monumental moment for me! Last night I smelled the wine my friend Melissa was having and was instantly able to identify it as Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand! A seated victory dance followed which involved lots of fists pumping and there was one very happy Pammy. Okay okay, it probably is the most easy to identify wine because of the distinctive cat pee smell but I did it and I am happy.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Another cheese class at Whole Foods

I attended my second cheese on Monday; this class was all about blue cheese! I learned a lot at this class, here are the highlights.

How does the mold get in there? Mold, like most things, need air. So the wheels of cheese are perforated with slender, long spikes to allow air to enter the cheese. If you notice in a hunk of blue cheese there are often blue veins of mold. These are the marks from the perforation. You might also notice that there is less mold closer to the rind of the wheel, because less air is able to circulate in this area. Neat huh? Well at least I think it is neat because it is kind of the opposite of what happens in most cheeses where the mold is on the outside on the wheel and works it way inward. This is why on some cheeses you see have creamier texture closer to the rind and a firmer texture closer to the center of the wheel. That's mold doing its thing. So the perforations in blue cheese create a situation of mold gone wild.

I also learned that affinage is the term for aging cheese. An affineur or affineuse is the person who job it is to age the cheese (male cheese ager the former and female cheese ager the latter). This process is not always done by the producer of the cheese but can be an entirely separate enterprise on its own.

That familiar smell that I wrote about in my post dated October 26, 2007 (if I knew how, I'd link ya there), that smell that smells like minerals or mummy's, that may be cheese mites. I might not want to learn any more about cheese mites because they are exactly what they sound like, crawly critters.

In the class we had Monte Enebro from Spain, which is an unperforated blue. Just mold on the outside, none on the inside. It is a much milder blue and very nice indeed. We had Rouge River Blue from Oregon. This was my favorite by far. It is wrapped in pear brandy soaked grape leaves. The inside is creamy with little bursts of liquidity (probably whey) like flavor burst gums. This was followed by Bayley Hazen Blue of Jasper Hill Farm in Vermont. It was a drier cheese and milder mold. They also make the Constant Bliss I had in the first class. I wonder if they accept visitors to their farm, like next spring maybe? We then tasted, side by side, Colston-Bassett Stilton and Stichelton. Both of these cheeses melt in your mouth while the blue remains on your tongue leaving tang and texture. Both are delicious but I thought the Stichelton had greater dimensionality to it. And here is the exciting back story! Stilton is a protected by the PDO (European Protected Designation of Origin) and is made from pasteurized cows milk in Derbyshire, Leicestershire, and Nottinghamshire in England. This formulation was decreed in 1996. The makers of Stichelton use raw milk and are not permitted to use the name Stilton even though they are located in Nottinghamshire and prior to the PDO, Stilton was made with raw milk! So they named it Stichelton which, the story goes, is the former name of town where Stilton originated. I think that is pretty clever. Our final cheese of the evening is Herve Mons Bleu d'Auvergne which is a raw milk blue from France. To me it smelled the best. A very strong smell that screamed blue cheese. I like that. It tasted wonderful too.

How can you say no to this sweet face?

I was looking through old magazines for Thanksgivings recipes when I can across this ad for Cabot cheese. Cabot was one of the cheeses I tasted at the class I attended on October 25. The Cabot Cheddar was very good, it has won awards, but was blown away by the super fancy pants English Cheddar we had.




But now, after seeing this ad, I feel guilted into buying Cabot cheese! This picture of farmer Robert Elwell kindly asks that I buy his cheese. He even says please. Look how humbly he folds his hands in front of his sage green sweater vest. With matching pants. And work boots. I love this guy. I wish he were my pop-pop. Of course I'll by your cheese!


So now I will need to make some mac and cheese or something au gratin, just to satisfy this benign stranger, my paper grandpa.

Breakneck Ridge

On Sunday morning I packed a lunch of turkey chili and headed off for a monster hike and scramble on Breakneck Ridge which is along the Hudson River, close to Cold Spring NY. There were lots of rocks and some really challenging / scary rocks to jam in a foot hold and hoist yourself up on to.

Here are a few of the fine folk at I joined the hike. It was a big group of 30 people which is tricky to coordinate (though it wasn't me who coordinated it). Mishaps were kept to a minimum and fun was had by all.

And behold, some beautiful foliage. The trees are not yet at peek; there is still a lot of green. I have been very gung-ho to see the colors this year but the weather has been so warm that the change was hugely delayed. Finally it is cold today. Since I can only get out of NYC on the weekends I am hoping that the leaves don't blast through their color and fall off between Monday and Friday!

The hike lasted till 5 pm. Afterwards, everyone met up a local bar in Cold Spring. I drove three fellow hikes back to Manhattan where we stopped off at Molly's, an Irish pub on 23rd and 3rd Avenue. Fish and chips, and Guinness never tasted so good! What is it about thoroughly exhausting yourself that makes food (and beer especially) taste so sublime? I could have easily melted on to the chair and remain there forever!

Chili Challenge

I have been noodling with a turkey chili recipe lately so Friday night I tried to coerce a few neighbors over to have some chow with me. Oddly enough another neighbor was making chili as well, Chilean chili to be exact. Naturally I suggested a chili throw down. Since my invitation went out late, there weren't many hungry neighbors left but Sam and Yuko came over even though they were full from their own dinners.

Sam and I each had a small bowl of turkey chili with some delicious cheese, Midnight Moon Goat, from Cyprus Grove, melted on top. I like to mess around with spice combinations so in this version I had salt, pepper, cumin, clove, paprika, cayenne, poblano and molasses. I meant to add thyme, but forgot!

Yuko came over with the bowl of Chilean chili that Marco had made. Marco is only Chilean whose cooking I have tasted so I don't know if it is a cultural thing to heavily salt or a Marco thing to heavily salt. Either way, I like salt. I was a bit daunted to taste Chilean chili. Did chili originate in Chile? Clearly you know why I would assume this? Is it the chili standard by which all other chili's are measured? Much to my surprise, It was not like any other chili I had ever had. It is a delicious, thick broth with beans, pumpkin, noodles and beef.

Sam was too full to try Marco's chili, and Yuko was too full to try mine, so I was the only one who had both. Obviously, no winner was declared for the chili challenge.

ignorance is bliss

Last night at the cheese class I attended at Whole Foods, I learned something that I really, really wish I hadn't. It is about the rennet. I previously knew that rennet came from the lining of a cows stomach, that is disgusting enough, but there is detail that is much darker and more sinister than I was prepared for. Rennet is the a milk curdling coagulating enzyme found in the fourth stomach of ruminating creatures. And the only time such a creature would need to produce this enzyme is when they are still nursing, i.e. a baby. : (

There is a substitute rennet developed in a lab that can be used instead, but apparently, an artisanal cheese maker is more apt to use genuine rennet and I, being a fancy pants cheese eater am more apt to eat artisanal cheeses. So I am sad.

What is really at the core of my glumness is that during the twenty I spent as a vegetarian I was unwittingly eating dead baby cow food product. At least, before yesterday, when I ate whatever I wanted, I felt that I had done my time, I done my good deed, I abstained from eating creatures in my former life. Now that I am a recovering vegetarian I could be OK with the amount of meat product I so gladly consume.

So what did I learn yesterday? That for twenty years, I was full of crap!

Anyway, on to the cheese!!!

The class was kind of a throw-down between old world and new world cheese; America vs Europe. There were three pairs of cheese; in each pair one was American and one was European. The first pair were soft ripened, bloomy rind cheeses; 1) Le Chatelain Camembert from Normandy, and; 2) Constant Bliss from Vermont. For me there was no comparison, they were both fantastic and different enough from each other that I didn't want to pick my favorite. Next pair were Cheddar's. I have never been ga-ga over cheddar but that is probably because I consumed mass quantities of mediocre cheddar as a kid (Kraft sharp cheddar to be specific). But the Montgomery Cheddar from North Cadbury, Somerset in England was unlike any other that came before. It is a clothbound Cheddar aged for two years and has a complex dimensional flavor that I can't wait to have again. It had a minerally smell to it on the side that was in contact with the cloth. Its a smell that I have smelled before but I can't place. Maybe it is the smell of mummy's, I don't know. Its challenger, Cabot Clothbound Cheddar had a simpler, brighter taste that left me nonplussed. Next up were two Aline style cheeses, and what a way to end the evening because both of these two cheeses blew me away and I will be serving them at my next wine tasting meeting. The first one Rolf Beeler Appanzeller is from Appanzeller, Switzerland has a nutty, herby flavor (it is washed with wine and herbs) and its challenger was Upland Pleasant Ridge Reserve from Wisconsin that has a nutty caramel flavor. Both were intense. But while I savored the Upland, the girl to my right, hated it. Oddly she, her boyfriend and I all share the same favorite cheese, Comte (they like theirs with honey while I like mine with under ripened pears). I guess if we share one like, that doesn't mean we will share all likes.

So that was the class. It was fun, delicious and I learned a lot even some things I wish I hadn't. Plus the instructor, Aaron Foster had a rad tattoo of a pig with a butchers diagram on it. I am going to sign up for the Blue Cheese class next.

I learned something else culinary today; you can't rush crepes. I thought I would just quickly whip up the batter this morning and give it its 12 hour rest it needs. What I wound up with was a brown cloggy mess. I think all the ingredients were too cold and didn't want to hang out with each other. Like it was too early in the morning and they were pre-coffee. I understand, next time crepes.

Cheese Class

Tonight I will be attending a cheese class at Whole Foods on the Bowery. My first apartment in NYC was on Bleecker and Bowery many many moons ago. It was such a rough neighborhood at the time that, after dropping off his youngest born child, my dad uncharacteristicly downed a shot of some kind of hard liquor. And now, just around the corner, is the most fabulous, enormous Whole Foods. The neighborhood has changed considerably. I still live in the East Village. I thought it was the coolest place to live before I moved here and I still think that. Go EV! After stuffing myself full of cheese tonight, I will be attending a comedy show about gluttony, the irony is not lost on me.