A Literary Feast

Behold the Power of Cheese Affinage

Posted on February 28th, 2011

If you were to look up cheese affinage in a dictionary or even in Google, you wouldn’t find much. Perhaps it’s because the word is French. Or perhaps it’s because we, in the States, don’t have a very long history of cheesemaking. Either way, affinage – or cheese refining – is not on the tip of most people’s tongues. And yet, if you’ve ever tasted a European cheese or any aged American artisan cheese, you’re hopefully eating the result of some damn good affinage. So here it goes:

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101 Ways to Ruin Your Supper or Fast Bites for the Ill-Informed

Posted on February 28th, 2011

1. PEPPERS A LA PLACARD: First, find a pepper. Then, put it in the crisper drawer. Forget about it. Offer your guests your palpable sense of regret and resignation.
2. MARK BITTMAN’S INSTANT LASAGNA: Place three carrot sticks in a pan, each an inch apart. Using a citrus reamer, juice one ripe tomato over the sticks (freeze the tomato rind for stock). Let infuse for twenty-five seconds, then serve immediately with hummus and cranberries.
3. THE PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY: Here’s a doozy. Take a scant handful of sesame seeds, and press them into softened black-eyed peas. Voila! Crab cakes nobody has to walk out on.

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I Am Trying To Clam Your Heart

Posted on January 4th, 2011

I will get to the point where the clouds parted, and I uttered perhaps the only prophetic words of my entire existence, and there will be a sentence with a rainbow in it presently. There will be low tide and salt, and the wind and the rain, and a mollusk fetched up in a spiny shell that was not, in fact, what I was looking for. But not yet. First, there’s a death, an idea, and a slim book with a deceptively simple cover by Curtis J. Badger.

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