The Cheese Lover's Companion: The Ultimate A-to-Z Cheese Guide with More Than 1,000 Listings for Cheeses and Cheese-Related Terms
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The Cheese Lover's Companion: The Ultimate A-to-Z Cheese Guide with More Than 1,000 Listings for Cheeses and Cheese-Related Terms Customer Reviews
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If you like lusciousness in food and word ...
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In an earlier incarnation, I've endeavored to collect compendia of everything, and read them all, such that I could know all there is to know, and have, if not at tip of tongue, then, tip of finger, the answer, and more's the better to look, as there may be one missed or forgotten morsel of fact that I can sop up.
But lately I've discovered a loss of this generalized appetite -- or some kind of waning, perhaps it is as a barley field that only grows waist-high in one season, and stops, and does not get ever taller each year as the oak; this knowledge has a secondary purpose. The season is done. The tallness of barley counts for nothing but straw, more important are the kernels in the staff.
So I was researching "cheese," because I want to do a project of a limited scope having to do with cheese. And I found this book, "The Cheese Lover's Companion: The ultimate A - to- Z cheese Guide," Sharon Tyler Herbst and Ron Herbst, William Morrow, 2007. These two wrote a lot of food books together; I did not know that before.
I thought I had sworn off of this stuff! Okay, I am not going to sit here and read a cheese dictionary when I can instead go swimming in a heated pool in a glass room, when there's snow on the ground ... but this has got THE rules for a cheese-tasting party (if you've been to an especially sublime one, or a bad one, you know ...), cheese-wine pairings, cheese-beer pairings ... and then your knowledge of cheese can be sated for any one reading by the cheese descriptions.
I remember going to a beer-tasting in 1993 at the Museum at the University of Pennsylvania. Micheal Jackson, the scotch connoisseur, was leading the tasting. The head of Anchor-Steen (Beer, SF) presented a beer named Ninkasa, named after the Sumerian goddess of beers. The recipe for the beer was derived from a translation of a Sumerian poem ... I have hardcopy around here somewhere, but you can probably google it.
An anthropologist/archeologist gave a lecture on the tandem developments of the culturing of BEER and BREAD, both derived from grains and yeast. Which came first? What kinds of happy accidents happened? Which one were they trying for when they discovered the other?
Man! Early man were some hungry, thirsty, curious, and relentlessly persistent people! We were shown pottery in which divots were made in the interior surfaces, such to catch and keep the right yeasts ... and the experts there that night were positing that early man wanted BEER, and BREAD was the baked muck left-over; a lot like trying to find a use for coffee-grounds.
Oh, I was talking about this cheese book. Well, cheese culture is another wonder of human artifice ... an edible wonder.
This is the first paragraph of the book:
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"Cheese is a mysterious, passion-inspiring, mind-boggling force of nature that leaves in its wake a sensual afterglow and longings for more. Arguably the world's most popular food, cheese nourishes the body, energizes the spirit, and satisfies hunger on all levels. It waits quietly in the wings to be noticed yet demands attention once on stage. It sustains, it teases, it begs an encore. As well it should. For cheese is one of humankind's greatest treasures."
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That ol' cheese! Awright, I'm having some cheese, and going swimming!
Constance X at Myspace. |
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The Cheese Lover's Companion: The Ultimate A-to-Z Cheese Guide with More Than 1,000 Listings for Cheeses and Cheese-Related Terms Books In Print, Audio Books.