Cheese pizza, all grown up

It’s nice to have a man who cooks for me. While I run around, stressing about the job I have, pining for a job I don’t, maintain 3 (three!) blogs and a sad semblance of a social life, I almost always know that I will have a good meal at the end of the day, even when I don't have the energy or desire to make it myself.

This particular meal, however, was a bit of a landmark for me. You see, about three weeks ago I applied for a job I desperately wanted. I thought it was the one, my true love, the job that will get me to London and I would live happily ever after. All the stars were aligned in my favor. Or so I thought. It was web publishing, it was science writing, I personally knew the person who posted the position, it was in London, and I made the mistake of starting to hope.

That was stupid.

I didn’t get the job. It was just between me and one another person and I didn’t get it. To say that I was bummed would be an understatement. I was probably more upset than I should have been. Thirty minutes after getting the phone call which unceremoniously crushed my hopes, I wrote to a lab head at my graduate institution. He had asked me earlier if I would be interested in re-joining his lab for a short term to conduct a set of experiments only I had the expertise to pull off. I gagged, threw up a little in my mouth, and said to myself, “only as a last resort.” And then it was, all of a sudden, time for a last resort. I emailed him and said I would start that following Monday. And I did. And here I am. Back in lab, a place I had sincerely hoped to avoid for the rest of my life. I am the sad loser-ish kid who moves back in with the parents after college, one who didn’t quite make it far enough on their own.

It sounds pathetic and it is, and I felt slightly pathetic (slowly getting over it now, by the way).

Needless to say, I was not much of a party the night after I didn’t get the job. The Texan, that brave (read: naïve) soul, knowing that I was pissy and cranky and decidedly unfun, said that he would come over anyway and make dinner. He came over with pre-made pizza dough from Whole Foods, cornichons, and a block of raclette cheese, determined to a) put up with me and b) re-imagine his favorite starter plate at Eastern Standard, raclette – a bowl of melted cheese with cornichons and fingerling potatoes, served with toasted baguette. When consumed with a beer, it’s in a word – perfect.

Pizza, being one of the Texan’s favorite things to make, seemed a reasonable way to turn raclette into an entrée without flying to Switzerland. He rolled out the pizza dough atop some cornmeal – while I whined – topped it with olive oil, a thick layer of grated raclette, boiled Yukon potatoes, sliced cornichons, a little bit of salt, and tons of freshly cracked pepper. He then popped the pizza into a pre-heated 550F oven until the cheese melted and turned brown on the edges and ridiculously gorgeous (about 10 minutes), while I, also ridiculously gorgeous, blew my nose and wiped my eyes in a completely pathetic manner.

When the pizza was ready, I was still grumpy, but ready to eat. And it was amazing. Raclette, for lack of a better description, smells very barnyardy. Slightly off-putting (if you’re a weeny), but oh so delicious once you taste it. The cheese is creamy, earthy, and very distinctive. It was punctuated by briny pickles and velvety, slightly sweet potatoes, held up by the crunchy chewy crust. It wasn’t much to look at, but wow was it good. I didn’t feel better right away (probably because I was on my sixth beer by the time dinnertime rolled around), but I was getting there.


The next day, I was still upset, but I had a fridge full of left over pizza. A person can only whine so much.

Cheese-O-Lantern

Ugh, sweet lord, I have missed blogging. I really have. The last few months kicked my butt kind of completely. I applied for jobs which I did not get, ended my internship working on things in which I had no background nor education (and succeeding, shockingly, despite my own predictions of complete and profound failure), and avoided pondering my impending unemployment by running away to Rome, then Austin, then Philadelphia. Now I am back, unemployed (did I mention that I have no job?), with all the time in the world to blog and a back log of about a million pictures and stories that I had neither the time nor the physical and emotional energy to record before now. So here I go.

In the middle of all the work, and the job search, and the impending darkness of the 9-month long Boston winter, my little social circle suffered a terrible loss – one of my closest friends and inspiration for numerous blog posts on this very blog – left me, cold-heartedly, for three years in Paris. I am happy for her and all her baguettes and crepes, obviously I am happy for her. Meh. I am just sad for me.

Before she left me for Parisian cheese and wine (and can you blame her, really) we had one last hurrah at my place, a going away party with lots of friends, lots of booze, and of course, lots of food, close to Halloween. A momentous departure demanded a momentous dish. The Texan and I pulled off one of the more spectacular things that has ever come out of my oven – a whole pumpkin (picked with my own two hand at the same farm as the apples), hollowed out and stuffed with alternating layers of baguette, Gruyere, heavy cream and a tint of nutmeg, baked until the cheese and cream liquefied into a fondue, the pumpkin softened to a puree, the skin blackened and blistered.

The glorious party centerpiece, complete with rivulets of hot cream running out of the cheese fondue inside

The melted cheese and cream soaked bread, piled onto a plate next to a scoop of baked pumpkin flesh made for a picture perfect (and dramatic) way to bid good-bye (a temporary good-bye) to someone you love.

All hollowed out.

The recipe here.

Happy Birthday, Melissa! I miss you very much and am jealous, daily, of the newly Parisian you. And happy for you, of course.

A Party, by the Book (Almost)

New Year’s was a party. A paaaarty. I will not go into too much detail. Suffice it to say that my guests consumed almost all of the hard liquor in my house, and that's saying something. Yeeaaah. I think all I have left is some Triple Sec. I am glad that things didn’t reach the Triple Sec level of desperation. As it was, the end of the evening was not pretty. No offense to pediatricians, but their dispassionate treatment of various body fluids is borderline inhuman. I am not now, nor will I ever be a pediatrician. (My unbudging distaste for children helps nothing in this regard). Make of that what you will.

Besides the astronomical alcohol consumption, the New Year's party was set apart by the fact that I prepared pretty much every item from a recipe, most from cookbooks. This is rare for me. I have a house full of cookbooks but can rarely be bothered to use them. Something about forethought and planning that gets in my way. I made a concerted effort to make things out of books this time around and I was not disappointed.

The menu for that fateful (and booze-full) evening:

Crudites with hummus (perfunctory raw veg. Completely perfunctory)
Almond-stuffed dates wrapped in bacon (these were crack cocaine, I kid you not; from 1080 recipes)
Melon wrapped in prosciutto
Walnut halves with gorgonzola dolce and red grapes (Deen Brothers cookbook)


Baked brie with dried cherries and almonds (recipe posted here)
Samosas with cilantro chutney (specialty Chez Archna)
Mushroom caps stuffed with bread crumbs and prosciutto (1080 recipes)
Mixed mushroom and goat cheese tartlettes (recipe from my Mom. Need to ask where she found it).


Lemon tart (I have made it before and it was as gorgeous on New Year's as it was the first time, from Silver Spoon)
Fudge brownies dipped in chocolate and topped with chili powder, red salt, or walnuts (for the wimps) (brownie recipe adapted from Gale Gand’s Chocolate and Vanilla. The freaky toppings were my special flourish).


Archna’s homemade samosas stole the show. Starting from scratch, she made the dough, the filling, folded the samosas (with help), fried them, and made a cilantro chuntey that could make a toilet seat cover taste like haute cuisine. I may have to beg her to tell me the recipe beyond: "Garam masala, to taste." Whose taste? Taste what? Measure, woman! Measure!





The alcohol gluttony was out of hand, the food consumption was a close second. For me, anyway. You know, they say (and by they I mean my grandmother) the way you spend New Year’s eve is the way you will spend the rest of the year. By that measure, I will spend the next months eating great food, drinking with my friends, and dancing on chairs to Salt ‘n Pepa’s Shoop. Old school, baby.

Muttar Paneer

So Archna and I made paneer. Well, that’s not really all we did. It was a Saturday to be remembered. We got up at about 9:30AM… I had my first beer by 10:30. It all went downhill from there and it wasn’t pretty. Picture two people splayed out on a couch in front of a TV blaring the Food Network, the coffee table in front of them littered with cheese, bread, and newly emptied bottles of wine. We managed to capitalize on our sporadic moments of motivation to extricate ourselves from the siren call of my couch to push on in making the paneer and engineering its starring role in one of my favorite dishes of all time, muttar paneer.

It went a little something like this:



1 medium onion, finely chopped
1 tbsp grated fresh ginger
3 cloves garlic, grated (I grated both the ginger and the garlic on a microplane. You could also pulverize the garlic in a food processor if making a large batch to store).

½ tsp cumin seeds
½ tsp ground coriander
½ tsp ground cumin
1/8 tsp turmeric
1/8 tsp chili powder

1¼ cups water
1/3 cup frozen peas
1 tomato, chopped (we used about 12 cherry tomatoes, halved)
A pinch of sugar

Fried paneer (really don’t know what amount to give… as much as you would like to add? Not very scientific, I know. I think our half gallon of milk yielded 1 – 1½ cups of paneer and we added it all in).


- Toast the cumin seeds in canola oil until they turn pink and begin to release fragrance.
- Add onion, ginger and garlic, sweat until the onion softens.
- Add the ground spices (cumin, coriander, turmeric, and chili powder), cook for another 3 minutes or so.
- Add water, bring to a boil.
- Add tomatoes and simmer on med high heat (a fairly potent simmer) about 10 minutes, mushing up the tomatoes slightly to homogenize.
- Add frozen peas and fried paneer.
- Add more water if necessary to cover the paneer.
- Cook another 10 minutes to infuse the paneer with the spices.
- Add a pinch of sugar to bring out the sweetness of the peas, salt to taste, serve over rice.



Oh it was wonderful! The paneer was tasted like the essence and soul of milk, condensed into a resilient fried nugget. It was creamy yet firm, with a fresh taste that you can only get from farmhouse milk still warm from a cow. Totally gross description, I know, but having experienced it, I find little else to compare it to.

The paneer was luscious and rich but had the little squeak of a fresh cheese curd. The heat from the chili powder, sweetness from the peas, acidity from the tomatoes and slight punch from the ginger were all in perfect balance with each other and generally got on famously. The pops of the peas, the squeaks of the paneer, and my grunts of approval harmonized beautifully.

I would have been happy to eat the fried cheese all by itself but felt we should have something more involved to show at the end of our day of Gluttony and Sloth. And we did. We had muttar paneer and we had Pride. It was a great day.

Paneer : A Photoessay

There is no use in fighting it. Some (crappy) people may deny it, but the truth is that everyone on this earth is the same on the inside (except maybe Clive Owen. He is better). Let's use cheese as an example. Every culture and cuisine has their version of a fresh cheese. There are variations within the genre, just as with people, but the founding principle is the same. Russian people have have fresh farmer’s cheese (tvorog) – cow’s milk that is cultured overnight, then drained. Italians have mozzarella (pulled or stretched curd cheese) and ricotta, re-cooked from whey. Mexican people have queso fresco, Indians have paneer. Both of these are acid set cheeses, meaning that the milk is curdled by the addition of an acid. The resulting curds are separated and drained, and sometimes pressed (as in the case of queso fresco and paneer) to get rid of extra whey.

So you see? They are all the same at heart, and they all taste reeeaally good.

I got a hands-on demonstration of this unifying theory of mine when my old old old (15 years and counting) friend, Archna, came up to Boston for another visit. Seeing as how we were/are both stressed and tired, nothing seemed more appealing than sitting on a couch for hours on end and cooking something that takes ages of waiting but minutes of work. Enter paneer, the main component of one of my most favorite Indian dishes, muttar paneer (peas and paneer).

After multiple phone consultations with Archna’s Mom, and many assurances from her that we will never be able to make it properly we, remarkably, did it. I can’t say that we made it properly, but we made it. And it was delicious.

The basics of paneer making are as follows:

Heat milk (2% or whole milk) slowly over medium heat, stirring occasionally until it starts to boil. Don’t let it boil vigorously or you will have hours of stove scrubbing to look forward to - it always boils over. Always.

Turn off the heat and curdle the milk in one of two ways, either with the addition of vinegar or buttermilk. Buttermilk will make a richer, creamier paneer but vinegar may yield more curds. Add the buttermilk or vinegar until the milk curdles. For half a gallon, we used two cups of buttermilk (approximate vinegar equivalent would be ¼ - ½ cup).

Let the milk rest undisturbed, partially covered for two hours.

Then:

Drain the curds into a cheese cloth set in a colander. Either suspend the bundle from a faucet to drip the whey into the sink or, say you are kinda clumsy and let the cheesecloth slip open, leave the curds to drain the colander for one hour.



Remove the curds onto a high tech, sophisticated paneer pressing machine. This marvel of technology (my own invention) consists of a cooling rack atop a large pot or bowl...





... topped with a plate and a bottle of wine for a press. Preferably Chablis, preferably chilled, although this portion of the instructions may be modified to suit your individual taste.

Allow the paneer to drain for another hour.

Remove the paneer from the cheesecloth and transfer it onto a plate. Slice into biggish cubes.
At this point, the paneer may be refrigerated or frozen, or it can be fried straight away.

Brown in the paneer on both sides in vegetable or canola oil, drain on a paper towel, and use in your preferred recipe. My recipe of choice, muttar paneer, is forthcoming.

Green Eggs and Ham

I have a fear of yeast (the baking kind, not the lab kind). I never make recipes that involve yeast, rising, proofing, kneading or any other equally intimidating words. They bring up images of rolled up sleeves, beads of sweat forming on the forehead, and of little cups full of breeding, breathing, scum colored yeast. Blech. I cannot tell you why I have such a strange and powerful aversion to an organism that has served mankind for centuries, but I do.

I am here to tell you that I have made a small step toward conquering my yeastophobia. Under strict and patient supervision, I assisted in making my very first homemade pizza, complete with a made-from-scratch, yeast-leavened crust. It was scary, I won’t lie. But I made it through, ate pizza, and lived to tell the tale.

My kind supervisor added yeast to a warm water and sugar bath to wake up the little buggers and coax them into eating mode (I could not be trusted with such a key step). After the yeast solution was added to flour and salt it came time to knead the dough. For five whole minutes. Yeah, I know! Five minutes is a lot! I kneaded, I grunted, I got tired and whiney but it was worth it - the dough rose beautifully. I got to punch it down with a disproportionate amount of glee (and a little vindictiveness), after which it was rolled out by my attentive and generous supervisor (I still hate rolling pins and had to defer). The rolled out dough was covered in a thick, deep green Greek olive oil, a home-made tomato sauce with tons of browned garlic, and then it was time for the toppings.


I really have no self-control. Practically the entire contents of my fridge made their way onto this pizza. I roasted a red bell pepper and three Anaheim chiles, sliced green zebra heirloom tomatoes (note that all the vegetables were green…), tore prosciutto di Parma, cut rounds of fresh mozzarella, and what the hell, plopped a raw egg into the center. I am sure I could have found something else to sprinkle, layer, or shower on top (capers were up next … but they were vetoed) but the crust had to go into the oven before it became soggy.


Twelve minutes in a 600F oven, no pizza stone, no fancy equipment, just crossed fingers and a few bated breaths and there it was – a crunchy crust baked all the way through to the center, bubbling cheese, crispy prosciutto, melted tomatoes, and creamy, oozing egg in the middle. And let me tell you, it was fantastic – the taste of the pizza no doubt enhanced by the flavor of my victory over yeast, but delicious nonetheless. What lies ahead in my journey with yeast – cinnamon buns? Bread? Panettone? Who knows. But it all sounds a little less scary now.

Simplicity - Not As Easy As It Sounds

It’s so strange how the most simple and basic questions are the most difficult to answer. What is heat, really? Why do airplanes fly? Why does Britney Spears insist on letting me down, time and time again? Well, maybe that one is not so difficult to answer. Regardless, sometimes objectively complicated things can seem easy and turn out well, while something really simple and basic is a complete nightmare to master. Take, for example, the standard French omelette (I must be on an egg kick). It is so much harder than it sounds.

Feeling inspired by Julia Child after watching her on the French Chef (thank you, Netflix!) I decided to have a go at making an omelette, following her lead. I did not have the patience to practice my omelette manipulation technique before jumping in (Julia recommends using dried beans to simulate the motion of the egg mixture in the pan), nor did I have the heart to add nearly as much butter as she did (frankly, I think it’s a medical miracle that she lived to 92). Maybe I should have done both those things. I should have probably also used the right size pan for the job (mine was 2 inches too big in diameter). So many should-haves. Tant pis, as Julia would say (I think).

It looked easy enough. Add the beaten eggs (2 to 3 eggs per omelette, salt, pepper, teaspoon of cold water. No idea why the water) to the pan (7.5 to 8 inches in diameter) once the foaming of the butter (~1 tbsp, but I am pretty sure I used less) begins to subside. Let the eggs sit still for about 5 seconds, then start swirling the pan around to expose more of the eggs to the heat, allowing them to begin to coagulate (her word, not mine… it makes me think of blood). Then begin jerking the pan toward yourself so that the egg “pancake” folds in on itself. Tip the omelette out onto a plate, seam side down. The whole process should take about 20 seconds (!). The eggs should be just barely set, and therefore, creamy and luxurious (my word, not hers).

Well, not so much with the jerking and the folding. I really do think my pan was just too big - my egg pancake was too thin and the jerking did nothing but scramble the whole business instead of making it move it in a single sheet. My omelette looked a little disheveled and generally out of sorts.


After sprinkling a bit of parmesan on top, taking about 20 pictures and sitting down to breakfast, I was pleasantly surprised. While totally ugly, the eggs really were very creamy and closely bordering on luxurious. Cooking them the bare minimum of time is definitely the trick here, I think.

I have a lot of practicing to do… although my cleaning lady may quit if I start tossing beans all around the apartment. My kitchen is enough for her to deal with as it is.





P.S. I think this post make take the prize for the most parentheses used (ever).

Poofy Neuroses

I don’t know if y’all have noticed, but I have severe neurotic tendencies. Really, it’s true. Science does nothing to alleviate my neurotic sufferings, but instead amplifies them to a fever pitch, makes them bloom, sprout, and otherwise prosper and multiply. So what better preparation to undertake for a neurotic scientist (is that redundant?) than a soufflé!

Souffles are made of one part milk, two parts eggs, and the rest is worry. Will it rise? Will it be a brick? Will it be an eggy, mushy, foamy concoction with some cheese on top? The trick, as it turns out, is to get a firm grip on one’s neuroses and not check on the soufflé while it’s baking. Not even once. Opening the oven door is a soufflé death sentence. I was so good. I didn’t open the oven, not even once. Of course that’s not to say that I didn’t stand with my face plastered against the oven door with the little light on for the majority of the 50 minutes that the soufflé was interred in its toasty depths.

All my nervous energy must have aided the soufflé in rising to its potential (quiet. Puns are funny). The bragging rights of having made a soufflé are nothing compared to the satisfaction of seeing it rise in the oven, just like it should. Unfortunately, the uncooperative bugger that it was, the soufflé de-souffled itself (i.e. fell) the moment it came out of the oven, making picture taking, serving, and of course, bragging, rather difficult (the picture at top is a slightly de-poofed version of the teaser campaign pic).

If all those things fall into place, and everything works as it should, a soufflé is a marvelous thing. It’s like eating poofy, savory cotton candy, with a slightly eggy tang (unless it’s a sweet cotton candy type of soufflé, in which case you really hope the eggy tang is absent). I messed with the recipe a little. I used cheddar instead of Gruyere and threw in two big handfuls of parsley, scallions, and thyme. The herbs did a great job of cutting through the richness of the soufflé.

My second stab at soufflés (clearly, I had more worrying left in me) was a chocolate soufflé with a cardamom crème anglaise. While the cheese soufflé was for my own consumption (and worry), the chocolate soufflés were for friends – this took the worry component to stratospheric heights. But, all is well that ends well… or should I say, all is well that begins with ginger-wasabi martinis, moves on to three bottles of wine, and tops off with kir royales (there were four of us, FYI). We don’t fool around.

I used semisweet Valrhona chocolate for the soufflés and let me tell you, I needed a moment. I really did. I tried a piece of the chocolate and I realized that I needed a moment. It is positively hypnotic. The soufflés turned out silky, rich, light, and flavorful all at the same time, if that’s possible. Chocolate + cardamom - not an obvious combination, but wonderfully complementary and fantastic. Chocolate souffles with cardamom creme - not very photogenic, and somewhat deflated, and utterly delicious.


Since the recipe led me make about a cubic meter of cheese soufflé, I was eating it for quite a while. Turns out deflated soufflés are a marvelous substitute for scrambled eggs in the morning. Soufflés for breakfast. How amazingly bourgeois of me, right? It was great and lasted me almost a week! Not so much with the chocolate soufflés. Those didn’t last long at all. I had to physically restrain myself from drinking the cardamom crème anglaise. It was that good.

All this soufflé making had a purpose, by the way. It wasn’t simply to exercise my stress response. I was actually making soufflés for an IMBB event. It turned out that remembering the submission deadline was the one challenge I could not meet. I figure it’s all about the baby steps. I made the soufflé. Next time, I may even get the post up in time. Till then, I have another committee meeting to live through. The living through it part is becoming less and less a given as the day draws closer. Grad school has a wonderful way of taking my neuroses and helping them along to absurd heights. Taller than some soufflés, even.

Cheese and Tease

This is what one might call a teaser campaign. Please make do with this preview of an upcoming post while I do battle with yet another committee meeting. Any guesses as to what the post will be of? It's not much of a challenge, I know.

Dinner Of Champions

You know those evenings when you just barely make it home from a long day (ok, month) and you're beyond tired and your whole body hurts and the mere thought of cooking sends a crushing wave of dread over you? Well, I know those evenings. Intimately.

Since I don't much fancy a painful death by starvation while waiting for a delivery man, I go to my stand-by, my dinner of champions: bread, cheese, olives and yep, booze (you can't see the beer in the picture). No cooking required.

I just had one of those evenings, in case that wasn't made clear enough. This time though, I lucked out - the very few things I have in my fridge turned out to be really good things - very aged (read: smelly) English cheddar, good bread, pickled asparagus, and some good whole grain mustard all piled on a plate. One wouldn't think that cheese and mustard go together and yet they do, marvelously.

Pickled asparagus isn't the most common of pantry items, but it should be. I first had it in a bloody Mary in Seattle and swore I would find myself a jar. The asparagus is slightly sweet and crunchy. Tastes a little like asparagus and a lot like pickle. It's a great substitute for cornichon on a cheese plate. I highly recommend it, if you can find it. I stumbled upon it in a posh grocery store in a strikingly un-posh neighborhood.

It took me about ten of these evenings before I figured out that there are a few things that I must have in my apartment at all times: bread, tons of cheese, olives, and...yes, every grad student's best friend in a bottle. Current favorite: Smithwick's.

Striptease: A Photoessay

I saw Little Miss Sunshine last week and decided that I need a routine of my own. It took me forever to work it out.


And here it is, set either to N.E.R.D. "She Wants To Move" or The Raconteurs "Level," whichever your pleasure. Pleasure being the point here, of course.










Get comfortable.














Ready?













Press play.













Turn it up.































That's all you get. Don't be greedy.




Please note: no cheese was harmed in the making of this post. In fact, I think it rather enjoyed itself.

Reasons To Go To Wisconsin

Every year my lab attends a week-long international conference specializing in the subject that we study (being intentionally vague here so as to not gross out random readers). The location of the meeting is different every year. One meeting was in Australia, last year's was in Finland. Please take a guess as to where I went for the one meeting that it has so far been my pleasure (read : obligation) to attend? Oh yes, Wisconsin. I may be forever bitter about this.

I hear from many people how wonderful Madison, Wisc is. A number of my friends really love it there. I so don't get it. I am a city person and always have been. I spent the first third (I'm aging!) of my life in one of the largest cities in the world and the lifestyle stuck. I don't do well in non-cities (still trying to forget undergrad). Madison, by all definitions and descriptions is not a city. So, no, I am not planning on moving there any time soon (or ever) but some good things have come out of Wisconsin and I now wish to do pay them the attention they are due. The most notable product of Wisconsin is, of course, Lisa. I realize that not everyone can have a Lisa of their very own, but don't despair - there is also beer and cheese curds.

I had cheese curds for the first time while in Madison, one of the few places one can actually get fresh cheese curds in the country – they are only available at cheese factories (oh how I would love to have a cheese factory down the street!!). Cheese curds are what milk becomes before it is allowed to mature into cheese. I guess that makes them prepubescent cheese :) Yes, I know I am a dork. Cheese curds are quarter-sized nuggets that taste like a milder, saltier form of the cheese they will one day become, crossed with the freshest, most fragrant milk you have ever had in your life. The texture is entirely different from that of aged cheese. Curds are more elastic and less creamy than cheese, reminiscent of string cheese but juicier and more delicate.

The unique characteristic of cheese curds is the “squeak” against one’s teeth when biting into them. The squeak is lost if the curds are not absolutely fresh – two or three days past manufacture is enough time to lose the squeak and all the associated interesting texture and taste. Interesting factoid: cheese curds are huge in Quebec, where they are the star ingredient in poutine (described here and here) – fries topped with cheese curds and a gravy-style sauce. How’s that for a heart attack? I am happy enough eating cheese curds straight but my curiosity with poutine is at a fever pitch at the moment. Don't yet know what I can do about it...

The cheese curds in the picture above were kindly brought back from Wisconsin by Lisa just today (again, friends who know me well bring me food...). The ones you see are of the white sharp cheddar variety, but there are many other variations and flavors, such as traditional yellow sharp cheddar and even flavored with chives or dill. They are utterly addictive in that salty, chewy, juicy way. It is important to kepp in mind that they are still cheese, with all the glorious and generous fat content of cheese. I remembered this only after I had a heaping handful of them. I had to sit down for a while. I had to get my fill of them today as a) they will not be nearly as good tomorrow (they dry up and become crumbly), and b) I don’t have a cheese factory near me! One can order cheese curds online but no packing or shipping technology available today is sufficient to preserve the all-important freshness of the curds. Bummer. Looks like I may have to go back to Wisconsin after all.

~AK

P.S. Don't want to give the wrong impression here - I did enjoy my week in Madison. Friendships were made and/or cemented, and much much beer, cheese curds, and ice cream were consumed. Oh yeah. I guess there was some science there too.