Curds And Whey

Kim du Toit
June 19, 2007
8:16 PM CDT

The fine writer G.K. Chesterton loved cheese so much that he wrote a short story and sonnet about it, as well as a tongue-in-cheek essay which bewailed the disrespect shown this most wonderful of foods.

I love the stuff almost as much as he did. Maybe more.

One of the great culture shocks I encountered when I first moved to America is that most restaurants do not offer a cheese plate after the dessert course. I have no idea why this is the case: nothing, to my mind, rounds off a fine meal like a couple pieces of cheese and a glass of port or sherry. We’ve even tried to put a cheese plate out after dinners at our house, but the plate goes generally goes untouched (except by me, that is).

Cheese is not just an ingredient: it’s not even just a snack food. It’s an integral part of my daily existence.

Let me state my prejudices up front. With the exception of a couple of cheeses noted below, most standard American-made cheeses, of the kind most commonly found in supermarket fridges, are dreadful. I will never forget the first time I bought some domestic “Swiss” cheese, and the reaction it engendered (Swiss to me means Emmentaler). I spat this ersatz Swiss out, because it tasted like… nothing. It had a revolting, oily texture, and absolutely no flavor. Most of the stuff made by Kraft Foods should not be called cheese, nor food either, for that matter. It would be far more manly to give the foul stuff its proper name.

Strangely, I’m not a great fan of les frommages à la belle France as a group, although they certainly make some excellent variants. Also, I don’t like runny cheeses, which actually nauseate me (not the smell, but the texture, which reminds me of snot), so you can keep yer damn Brie to yourself, Pierre. The firmer the cheese, the more I like it.

Speaking of runny: don’t even get me started on cheese “sauce” (whose invention alone should have been an occasion for hanging), and “American” cheese, that strange orange concoction of processed oil and zero flavor. The less said about those two impostors, the better.

I don’t mind cheese which contains other stuff, mind you. Not long ago, for example, we found a soft white horseradish Wisconsin cheddar which will be going onto my next hot roast beef sandwich

And lastly, as much as I love cheese, I don’t like it melted all over my food (also known as the Wisconsin School of Cooking). I don’t mind little bits of it here and there, and of course it’s the mainstay of dishes like lasagna and pizza, but what puts me off most of all is that it’s usually just a bland cheddar or colby used as an additive. If I have cheese on a hamburger, it’s only at home, because elsewhere I run the constant risk that the cheese will be [blecchh] American or worse, cheese sauce.

If you are a cheese lover and are considering a trip overseas, then allow me to suggest that no trip to Amsterdam would be complete without a pilgrimage to this most holy of shrines, Kaasland ("Land of Cheeses"):

Tech Support and I dream about winning the lottery and flying to Amsterdam just to buy cheese there—it’s that good a place, and the proprietor is an evil, evil woman who will tempt you with endless “samples” (think of a drug dealer offering you freebies to get you hooked—she’s no different).

After buying a couple pounds of different cheeses at Kaasland, TS and I continued on our travels. We would wake up at all hours of the night, absolutely craving the stuff, and we’d have to break off a nibble or two, and then go back to sleep. Talk about addictive… we finished it all three days later in Brussels (just in time to discover Belgian chocolate—oy, vey—but that’s a story for another time).

As with almost every food or drink that I love, the kind of cheese I’ll choose will depend on my mood, and the occasion.

So here are my favorite cheeses, in order. The first five are “snacking” cheeses which I prefer to eat by themselves, and the last four are “meal” cheeses—ie. prepared as part of a dish. I like others too, and am constantly trying different types, but I always seem to come back to the ones listed below.

1. Jarlsberg (Norway)—Unquestionably one of the finest cheeses ever made. It’s smooth, with a slight “nutty” flavor and lovely aftertaste, and if I was told I could only ever eat one cheese for the rest of my life, this would be the hands-down winner. Even the “Lite” variant (made not in Norway, but under license in Ohio) is better than most other cheeses.

2. Emmentaler AO (Switzerland)—Almost as good as Jarlsberg, Emmentaler is smoother yet more nutty-flavored, is a superb after-dinner snack, and it’s my cheese of choice if the store has inexplicably run out of Jarlsberg. It’s also kinda spendy, because [duh] it’s made in Switzerland.

3. Wisconsin String Cheese (U.S.A.)—Specifically, I’m referring to the stuff sold at The Brat Stop (at the intersection of I-94 and Hwy 50 in Kenosha, WI). It’s the jerky of dairy foods: dry, chewy and super-salty, comes apart in long threads, and whenever we’re within fifty miles of the place, it’s a mandatory stop. Annoyingly, it’s not branded at all, so finding it is a chore (it’s not even listed on their website). Just go to the Brat Stop and buy a few bags, if that kind of cheese is to your taste. Don’t be surprised if one of the bags doesn’t survive the trip home, because it’s perfect road food.

4. Old Amsterdam Gouda (Holland)—My favorite aromatic cheese in the world, Old Amsterdam has a wonderful flavor reminiscent of port wine. Dry, it crumbles to the touch, and you can’t eat a big piece of it. Just a few crumbs melted in the mouth will suffice. And then again, a few minutes later. And again, and again… (Old Amsterdam also makes a 5-year-old variant, but that’s too strong, even for me.)

5. Cheddar (England)—Forget those impostors made all over the world, all called “cheddar” but none deserving of the name. The real thing (made in Cheddar, Somerset) is one of those rare cheeses which not only makes a fine snack, but also cooks up well, for example in a grilled ("toasted") cheese sandwich. If I lived in England, there’d be a 5lb block of the stuff in my fridge, and it would never have a chance to go off. Tech Support and I once ended up in a pub in Fulham somewhere, and ordered a cheese sandwich. It was just bread, butter and cheddar, with a side order of chips—a simplicity which would have delighted old G.K.—and it was one of the best light meals we’d ever had.

Now for the “ingredient” cheeses.

1. Burrini (Italy)—I’ve never been able to find this anywhere except Treasure Island in Chicago. Made in the south of Italy, it’s a hard, aromatic Provolone-style pear-shaped cheese, which in turn encases a small ball of sweet, creamy butter. It’s too rich to snack on by itself (although I have), and is best eaten grated over a salad. If you use it thus, you won’t need any salad dressing. If you really want to indulge yourself, a thin slice melted on toast will make you think you’ve died and gone to heaven. The Italians cut it open, spread the butter on their bread, and then add the cheese, so Burrini is like a self-contained sandwich-builder.

2. Beyaz Peynir (Turkey)—A variant of Greek feta cheese. Combine this wonderful stuff with spicy Turkish sausage (made of very finely-ground beef and lamb), throw in some sun-dried tomatoes or roasted sweet red peppers, and you have perhaps the perfect savory appetizer. It’s a combination of sheep- and goat’s milk.

3. Mozzarella (Italy)—Thickly-sliced, with roasted sweet red peppers (again) and an aromatic olive oil sprinkled over it. My second-favorite appetizer after Beyaz Peynir. If anyone’s curious where the term “buffalo mozzarella” comes from, it’s because all mozzarella was once made exclusively from the milk of water buffaloes—but nowadays the Mozzarella di bufala available in the U.S. is made from a mixure of buffalo- and cow’s milk. (Incidentally, Monzeta is a mozzarella-based equivalent of Burrini, but has a blander flavor.)

4. Kasseri (Greece)—Yeah, it’s the basis of saganaki, that flaming dish brought to your table with cries of ”Oppa!” and doused with squeezed lemon. Never mind the ceremony, Stavros, just gimme the damn cheese, which is fabulous. (It’s made purely from goat’s milk, by the way.)

Finally, let me finish this post with the essay referred to above. Enjoy.

Cheese
by
G.K. Chesterton

My forthcoming work in five volumes, “The Neglect of Cheese in European Literature” is a work of such unprecedented and laborious detail that it is doubtful if I shall live to finish it. Some overflowings from such a fountain of information may therefore be permitted to springle these pages.  I cannot yet wholly explain the neglect to which I refer.  Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.  Virgil, if I remember right, refers to it several times, but with too much Roman restraint. He does not let himself go on cheese.  The only other poet I can think of just now who seems to have had some sensibility on the point was the nameless author of the nursery rhyme which says:"If all the trees were bread and cheese”—which is, indeed a rich and gigantic vision of the higher gluttony.  If all the trees were bread and cheese there would be considerable deforestation in any part of England where I was living.  Wild and wide woodlands would reel and fade before me as rapidly as they ran after Orpheus.  Except Virgil and this anonymous rhymer, I can recall no verse about cheese.

Yet it has every quality which we require in exalted poetry. It is a short, strong word; it rhymes to “breeze” and “seas” (an essential point); that it is emphatic in sound is admitted even by the civilization of the modern cities.  For their citizens, with no apparent intention except emphasis, will often say, “Cheese it!” or even “Quite the cheese.” The substance itself is imaginative. It is ancient—sometimes in the individual case, always in the type and custom.  It is simple, being directly derived from milk, which is one of the ancestral drinks, not lightly to be corrupted with soda-water. You know, I hope (though I myself have only just thought of it), that the four rivers of Eden were milk, water, wine, and ale. Aerated waters only appeared after the Fall.

But cheese has another quality, which is also the very soul of song. Once in endeavouring to lecture in several places at once, I made an eccentric journey across England, a journey of so irregular and even illogical shape that it necessitated my having lunch on four successive days in four roadside inns in four different counties. In each inn they had nothing but bread and cheese; nor can I imagine why a man should want more than bread and cheese, if he can get enough of it.  In each inn the cheese was good; and in each inn it was different.  There was a noble Wensleydale cheese in Yorkshire, a Cheshire cheese in Cheshire, and so on. Now, it is just here that true poetic civilization differs from that paltry and mechanical civilization which holds us all in bondage. Bad customs are universal and rigid, like modern militarism. Good customs are universal and varied, like native chivalry and self-defence. Both the good and bad civilization cover us as with a canopy, and protect us from all that is outside. But a good civilization spreads over us freely like a tree, varying and yielding because it is alive.  A bad civilization stands up and sticks out above us like an umbrella—artificial, mathematical in shape; not merely universal, but uniform. So it is with the contrast between the substances that vary and the substances that are the same wherever they penetrate. By a wise doom of heaven men were commanded to eat cheese, but not the same cheese.  Being really universal it varies from valley to valley. But if, let us say, we compare cheese with soap (that vastly inferior substance), we shall see that soap tends more and more to be merely Smith’s Soap or Brown’s Soap, sent automatically all over the world.  If the Red Indians have soap it is Smith’s Soap. If the Grand Lama has soap it is Brown’s soap.  There is nothing subtly and strangely Buddhist, nothing tenderly Tibetan, about his soap. I fancy the Grand Lama does not eat cheese (he is not worthy), but if he does it is probably a local cheese, having some real relation to his life and outlook.  Safety matches, tinned foods, patent medicines are sent all over the world; but they are not produced all over the world.  Therefore there is in them a mere dead identity, never that soft play of slight variation which exists in things produced everywhere out of the soil, in the milk of the kine, or the fruits of the orchard.  You can get a whisky and soda at every outpost of the Empire:  that is why so many Empire-builders go mad.  But you are not tasting or touching any environment, as in the cider of Devonshire or the grapes of the Rhine. You are not approaching Nature in one of her myriad tints of mood, as in the holy act of eating cheese.

When I had done my pilgrimage in the four wayside public-houses I reached one of the great northern cities, and there I proceeded, with great rapidity and complete inconsistency, to a large and elaborate restaurant, where I knew I could get many other things besides bread and cheese.  I could get that also, however; or at least I expected to get it; but I was sharply reminded that I had entered Babylon, and left England behind.  The waiter brought me cheese, indeed, but cheese cut up into contemptibly small pieces; and it is the awful fact that, instead of Christian bread, he brought me biscuits.  Biscuits—to one who had eaten the cheese of four great countrysides!  Biscuits—to one who had proved anew for himself the sanctity of the ancient wedding between cheese and bread! I addressed the waiter in warm and moving terms.  I asked him who he was that he should put asunder those whom Humanity had joined. I asked him if he did not feel, as an artist, that a solid but yielding substance like cheese went naturally with a solid, yielding substance like bread; to eat it off biscuits is like eating it off slates. I asked him if, when he said his prayers, he was so supercilious as to pray for his daily biscuits.  He gave me generally to understand that he was only obeying a custom of Modern Society. I have therefore resolved to raise my voice, not against the waiter, but against Modern Society, for this huge and unparalleled modern wrong.

I feel the same way when I’m asked to shoot a Glock, instead of a Colt 1911.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to the fridge.