As ridiculous as it may sound, I’m on the run from our house.  That’s how it feels -  not a place to be but a place to dodge whenever possible.

This feeling is due, of course, to the renovations we voluntarily put in motion at the beginning of January.  In fact, we bought the house knowing full well that life would boing into being pear shaped for a time because of said R-word.

Of what it would be like to live on site while the work went on we had inklings.  People advised us it would be worse than we imagined.  Like worse x 100.  It’s not that we disbelieved them.  Yet, even the most dismal and scary descriptions were more like partial explanations.

Until you experience it firsthand, you can’t quite grasp how COMPLETELY crappy and uncomfortable it is to be in a house where rubble rules…and grit conquers all…and you are left with one room in which to eat, sleep, work, find warmth, regroup, etc…and you have one bathroom you share with the builders.

Not even food lands with its usual levels of solace.  (We don’t really have much of a kitchen anyway, given that half is generally fuzzed with brick dust at any given time.)

Anyhow, this is why I’m on the run from the house even as I spend much of my time in it.  Because we have to be on site even if we don’t want to be, at least at this stage of things.

So, the bedroom that’s become our all-purpose room also has to serve as my growlery*.  Actual growling has happened.  It’s superbly cathartic.  Although the dog is not into hearing me make sounds that are his turf.

And, I’ve stopped trying to look for the upside and the silver lining.  They’re there, but at the moment they’re covered in sand.

And, every morning I get up early – at least an hour before the builders arrive – so that I can have my tea and staring time and free write for at least 10 minutes.

In these free writing sessions, I haven’t been able to detach from what’s going on around me.  It would be nice if I felt called to scribble about warm woolen mittens and cupcakes, but inevitably I circle back to the crusty exposed pipes and cement. As you do.

* “Sit down, my dear,” said Mr. Jarndyce. “This, you must know, is the growlery. When I am out of humour, I come and growl here.”  – From Charles Dickens, Bleak House

I love the fact that February is short.  Conversely I hate the fact that it’s yet another month that has an in-your-face holiday nigh impossible to escape unless you crawl into a deep pit.  Which I’m tempted to do, anyways, because this is also my birthday month. (Another year older but not necessarily wiser….)  Luckily I’d rather spend with chipper face and not a sour face by sending valentines to one of my absolute most favorite foods:  cheese.

I was a queso fundido virgin until a former Virginia Highlands hotspot called Sala.

Sala, it should be noted, had killer mojitos to match the canapes. We toddled home many a Sunday afternoon after having ignored vows for mojito/fundido restraint made earlier in the day.  Unfortunately Sala went the way of the Dodo bird a couple years ago. Still, this dish triggers a little homesickness.

Ah, home. Home, sweet home. Used to be a place with central heat and air, and with a tumble dryer that didn’t cost a fortune to use. Until recently it was relatively tidy, and not where I meet the morning with grit beneath my slippers.

We’ve entered the next leg of our renovation project. The builders are back for phase two, a much bigger ado of dust and demolition than phase one. Renovations are wonderful to experience in the abstract…retrospect scores even higher.

Oscar, having "a moment".

When we were an Atlanta household populated with three cats, one dog and one man, we were a hairy household. Sunbeams showed me when it was time to sweep. In the springtime we might have also been a pollen-ous household, what with yellow clouds of the stuff billowing off the pines. A yellow coating on the windowsills showed me when it was time to wipe.

That sort of dirt I can live with. It’s quiet dirt. Cleaning according to the decibel of crunch is a change-up I could readily live without.

Rescue eats, such as this queso fundido (melted cheese) with chorizo piquante and jalapeno pepper provide some comfort that we’ve brought this mess upon ourselves.

For many reasons I crave something smoochy like a queso fundido in stressful times.

Let’s start with the shopping list: just a few ingredients – cheese, sausage, pepper,  and tortillas.

No flatware beyond digits+ thumb.

Only one pan.

A cooking time kind to short attention spans.

Double and triple-dipping of tortillas into queso are appropriate manners

As is eating the queso with the pan still on the stove. It tastes as good standing up as it does sitting down, so why risk the cheese getting cold because we forgot to wipe the bits of concrete off the dining table?

If you want a recipe recipe – as well as a good backstory – mosy over to the Homesick Texan blog and peruse the Queso Flameado. Same concept as what I’ve mentioned here but with a variant name and an optional fireball.

I love the fact that February is short.  Conversely I hate the fact that it’s yet another month that has an in-your-face holiday nigh impossible to escape unless you crawl into a deep pit.  Which I’m tempted to do, anyways, because this is also my birthday month. (Another year older but not necessarily wiser….)  Luckily I’d rather spend the next 28 days with a chipper face and not a sour face by sending  valentines to one of my absolute most favorite foods:  cheese.

For three weeks in January our house underwent some renovations, as in existing walls brought down and new walls built elsewhere.   We lived in the house while all that was going on which makes for very dusty living.  Which is not ideal for kitchen puttering or for crumbophobes.  During the three days we spent cleaning up, we found that dust even managed to leach into the fridge.  {sigh} I wiped the dog’s paws so many times I suspect he yearned for the days he had to wear socks.  But the much loathed paw handling was non-negotiable if wanted to keep his sofa privileges.

Pink dust, gray dust, brown dust, white dust, black dust, hellfire and damnation dust notwithstanding, our stomachs helped us cope by demanding a steady influx of treats, like fried cheese with a cauliflower dipping sauce.  Both of which are easy enough to throw together of an evening once the builders have gone home for the day and the day’s layer of dust has been hoovered for the nth time from the nooks and crannies and counters.

I know, who would have thunk that cauliflower would lend itself to such an arrangement, not being the most flavoricious of cruciferae.   Yet, on a stack of good books (however you define “good”) I swear it does.

Truth be told the sauce requires a brave hand with the seasonings.  Otherwise it won’t land in the piehole with impact. The silver lining, though, is the nutritional edge the sauce offers.  I mean how often do you dunk bites of gooey, deep-fried naughtiness into a bowl of pureed veg that’s been simmered until soft in only semi-skim milk seasoned with a bay leaf and a clove?  Plus, if your not over-enthusiastic with the dunking, you’ll have enough sauce left over to be thinned with more milk and re-warmed as a bowl of vegetable soup.

The recipe below is not mine, it must be noted.  I discovered it last year watching River Cottage on Channel 4.  The serving suggestions is for two as a starter…actually I prefer to make this recipe as lunch for two.   Should you be tempted – and this is a temptation I understand – to serve it as a party canape you’ll need a plan to keep both the cheese bites and the cauliflower sauce warm.  Both halves of this recipe become terribly terribly wrong if allowed to grow cold.  Just saying.

Experimentations

Having experimented with the recipe a few times, I’ve run across a couple of snags and a few things to consider.

A)  The Cauliflower

I like to use a couple special salts I bought in a spice shop in Nice.  The fave du jour is a sel au piment d’espelette.  An espelette is a kind of chili pepper grown in the commune of Espelette in a Basque area of France.  The second fancy pants salt I like to use is mixed with herbs du Provence.  This won’t give the sauce a kick but it will make it more savoury.

You don’t need special salts available only through mail order to get the flavoring job done.  Try a little hot sauce or a dash of cayenne pepper.  Or, use a couple drops of white truffle oil if you’ve aleady procured some for the purpose of magicfying slices of Manchego.

B)   Thick or Thin Skin for the Cheese?

Actually, I now ignore the recipe instructions to twice dip the cheese in egg and flower before the bread crumbs and only single dip:  once in flower, once in egg, once in bread crumbs.  For me, all that egg and flour creates a gunky a coating.

The trade-off:  you have to be a lot more watchful about how long you fry the cheese, because single dipping creates a thinner protective skin around it.  Listen carefully for the difference in the sound of the cooking oil and be on high alert to scoop out the cheese when you hear the changeover.

C) The Cheese that Most Pleases

The recipe is geared towards a smoked cheese, and it’s been maddeningly hard for me to find a smoked variety that’s also soft.  You do need a soft cheese so that there’s a little melting action within the walls of the flour/breadcrumb crust.

While the hunt for a suitable smoked type goes on, I’ve tried Brie, Camembert and Gouda in that order.  The Brie proved to be a bit blah.  The only type of Gouda I could get my hands on was young and not smoked and the end result was a flavor best equated to a pair of plaid pants on a lumpy body – not the desired effect.  Thus far, the Camembert has yielded the best results.

I have not given up on sourcing a smoked Spanish cheese.  The next time we’re in Valencia I hope to find a San Simon or a Idiazabal at the main market.  It’s also entirely possible that a local variety exists right under my nose that I’m not aware of. Still learning to read the labels and ask questions in Spanish.

Ten Reasons This Dish Deserves A Valentine…

1. It’s like defying your mother and making your swing soar higher than what’s within her comfort zone.
2. It’s like getting over your fear of S-curves when you first learn to drive by going faster than the posted limit.
3. It’s like sneaking into your second grade classroom at recess when the teacher was catching a little nap and freeing the class’ pet garter snake into the grass.
4. It’s like breaking away from your tour group to find your own adventure.
5. It’s like a nude swim in the middle of the afternoon.
6. It’s like realizing that poetry doesn’t have to be high art to be worthwhile reading.
7. It’s like being content with getting a B.
8. It’s like deciding to not answer your cell phone just because it rings.
9. It’s like offering to pay for the peanuts you’ve filched from the bin in the supermarket for the past five years.
10. It’s a mixed bag of good and bad, happy and sad, naughty and nice – just like love.

* * *

The Recipe – Cheese Cauliflower  ©River Cottage

For the sauce:

• 1 small cauliflower
• Semi-skimmed milk (enough to cover cauliflower while cooking)
• 1 clove
• 1 fresh (or dried) bay leaf
• Salt
• Freshly ground black pepper

For the cheese:

• Dried white breadcrumbs made from a few stale slices of good bread
• 150g smoked soft cheese (use Camembert or Brie) cut into bite-sized pieces
• Plain flour for coating
• 3 organic eggs, lightly whisked
• About 1-1.5l sunflower oil for deep frying

Method:  How to make cheese cauliflower

1. To make the cauliflower purée, divide the cauliflower into florets. Cut any green bits from the stem, but chop up the stalk and stems to use in the dish too as they will give a stronger flavor.
2. Put the pieces of cauliflower into a saucepan and add enough milk just to cover. Add the bay leaf and clove and bring to a gentle simmer.
3. When the pieces of cauliflower are tender, remove the clove and bay leaf, then blitz the cauliflower and milk in a food processor until you have a smooth purée. Season with salt and pepper.
4. Pour the oil into a deep, heavy bottomed saucepan to a depth of at least 15cm. It’s hot enough when a cooking thermometer reads 180ºC or a cube of white bread dropped into the oil turns golden brown in a minute.
5. Coat each piece of cheese in flour, knock off the excess then roll in the egg until covered, repeating the process for a double coating so that the cheese is completely sealed.
6. Dip in the egg again and then roll the cheese pieces in bread crumbs and fry until lightly golden all over – you hear the frying noise change when they’re done. Serve with the warm cauliflower purée.

If you go to the Channel 4 website you can print out a copy of the recipe.

I love the fact that February is short.  Conversely I hate the fact that it’s yet another month that has an in-your-face holiday nigh impossible to escape unless you crawl into a deep pit.  Which I’m tempted to do, anyways, because this is also my birthday month. (Another year older but not necessarily wiser….)  Luckily I’d rather spend the next 28 days with a chipper face and not a sour face by sending story-tines – valentines by way of stories – to one of my absolute most favorite foods:  cheese.

The Story-tine:  Manchego + Truffle Oil = Better than ________ (Fill in the blank as you wish.)

The day after New Years day our neighbors held a small gathering, and we were invited.  It wasn’t a big event, just some champagne and nibbles.  Tim swears he was told to come any time after 1 PM.  We arrived around 1:30 to find that the party was winding down.  Except for a Swedish woman and us, everyone else still clustered around the appetizer table were from The Netherlands who chose Spain, as most northern European transplants do, for the sunshine and mild winters.  To our relief they all spoke at least a little English.  So, our job from thereon was to be charming – didn’t want anyone to resent the switch to the minority language just because we showed up!  As latecomers no less.

While the invitation may been for “a glass” of champagne, we were more or less treated to a bottle.  The beer drinkers among us didn’t know thirst either, and plates of smoked salmon on toasts frequently passed hands.  About an hour and a half plus several rounds of bubbly later, slices of Manchego made their first appearance.  I don’t think this was by design.  I think our hostess simply ran out of salmon but not boozers.

I’d noshed on Manchego many times before, but something about those slices on that day were notably different, and no, it wasn’t the champers talking.  Within a few bites my table manners felt the effects of an inner hungry wolf, awakened and slavering.  Triggered as such I even ate the rinds on my appetizer plate.  I usually skip the cheese rind.  But I loved that rind, almost as much as I loved that offering of creamy sheep’s cheese with its strange, heavenly-earthy aftertaste, kind of like eating a sandwich of dark chocolate covered bark and salty, slick milk.  Which might sound gross.  Yet it wasn’t.  (As evidenced by it’s storytine worthiness.)

Way, way too soon, the first and then the second platter of cheese emptied.  The gannets murmured their approval, their immense satisfaction, their longing for more.  Our hostess collapsed into a chair next to Tim, looking pleased but like she wouldn’t say no to a coma either.

This was my chance, I decided, to lure from her where she’d found that cheese – the maker, the store.  Didn’t care about the price.

Couldn’t remember, she said, except that she’d picked up from Lidl*.

Lidl!!?

Yes, Lidl, she repeated before adding -  as casually as if lint were the topic of conversation – that she’d drizzled truffle oil over the cheese after slicing it.

Truffle oil?

Yes, truffle oil, the white kind.

Remember that, I told Tim, backing up the seriousness of this order with a poke in the ribs.  He owed me this tiny tiny piece of his memory, having muddled the single most important detail of the party invitation.

Our hostess smiled.  Through her drowze she could tell that the little wolf-ette lingering too long on her patio and gnawing on cheese nubs was giving a most sincere compliment.

More About The Cheese
As mentioned, Manchego is a sheep’s milk cheese from the Castilla-La Mancha region.  True Manchego is made with only whole milk from only Manchego sheep.  You know you’re in the company of a the real deal if the round of cheese is stamped with “Denomincation de Origen Protegida” (D.O.P.) and is produced in the provinces of Toledo, Ciudad Real, Cuenca or Albacete.

There are only so many Manchego sheep in the provincial pastures of Castilla-La Mancha, so in the marketplace you’ll often find “Manchego style” cheese which is produced by different sheep, possibly elsewhere but using similar methods of molding, curing, etc.  It’s good, too.  Just not as good.

Even as a young cheese, Manchego packs a punch.  Tastebud-wise, it plays very well with strong red wines, and strongly-flavored partners such as sundried tomatoes, olives and – hell, yes – truffle oil.

I used to buy it at Whole Foods in Midtown, Atlanta, although come to think of it I can’t verify if was true Manchego or the knockoff.

More Still About The (Precious) Truffle Oil
In your personal life you might have sworn off lovers who lie, cheat, or forget to pay compliments, but when it comes to truffle oil you’re going to have to respect the good intentions of its deceit.  The truth is that 99% of the time, the stuff you buy – even by mail order from Italy – is a chemical concoction and not a single nubbin of actual truffle participates in the production process.  (The New York Times did a piece about it in 2007.  See the notes below for the link.)  Unless the bottle reads Infusion of Truffle, you’re experiencing the heady effects of 4-dithiapentane, and that is what generates the essence or aroma of truffle, as printed on the bottle, 99% of the time.

I know, bummer.

However, try to not let the facts pee on the magic, because 4-dithiapentane tastes far better than it looks on paper.  Besides, you have your lucky laboratories to thank for the affordability of this enhancement-in-a-bottle that has some versatility.  It’s good for more than just tarting up a cheese course.  It will add a little something something to soups and sauces, omelettes and risottos.  All you need is a few drops.  One bottle lasts a long time.  That is unless you knock it back like it’s Sangria.

I bought my bottles of truffle oil (one essence of black truffle, one essence of white truffle) in France, but in the states you can find sources online if not in your local fancy pants grocery store.

The Asteriks:

* Lidl is a discount supermarket with outlets across Europe.  It’s like an Aldi, another european chain with a footprint in the US.

**  To read this NY Times article about truffle oils in full you may have to register.  Them’s their rules.

For as much as I love puttering in the kitchen, I’m not that good at cooking.

I can easily produce something edible, but it’s rare for me to produce something of plate-licking caliber.  God knows it’s not for lack of trying either.  Edible, however, is what tends to shake out of these kitchen sessions.  There’s no bitterness attached to this statement even though edible just isn’t good enough…if I’m being honest.

It’s obvious I haven’t a latent stash of culinary talent waiting to be coaxed out of hiding, and I can accept that.  Likewise I’ll continue to love my afternoons or evenings consumed by the promise of a new – or even an old -recipe.  But all the while I still have an entrenched faith in dogged persistence, that a sweet, fat payoff awaits:  eventually I’ll progress from mere edibles to delectables.

You have to dream in big, drippy, meaty haunches or you have nothing but watery broth at stake, to guide. And there’s no fun in that, even if you’re a vegetarian and the only haunch you can stomach is of tofu.

I was all set to devote this year to becoming a far better, more skillful, more knowledgeable cook – which sounds sort of haunchy – but as I was writing about that framework I realized that that was not “it”.

No, “it” is thicker than how deftly I can mince shallots, stickier than my defeatist attitude towards cake.  “It” is my lifelong mixed-bag relationship with food, not my aspirations for the making of food, that call out.  We have some rifts to heal and a vision for the future to flesh out, food and I, neither of which will happen if I don’t defrost the freezer they’ve been sitting in.

By chance or luck (whichever you believe in) my quarterly order to Amazon included several books* that touch on different aspects of a food relationship I’ve been quietly or nervously noodling.

There’s the Eat-better-spend-less aspect that drew me to Economy Gastronomy by Allegra McEvedy & Paul Merrett.

There’s the screw restrictive diets/sensible adoration aspect à la Miss Dahl’s Voluptuous Delights by Sophie Dahl.

There’s the global-citizen/huge-swell-of-pride aspect from knowing how to cook both seasonally AND indigenously that spurred me to explore Spanish cuisine via Seasonal Spanish Food by José Pizarro, Culinaria Spain by Marion Trutter, and The Real Taste of Spain by Jenny Chandler.

I’m pleased with these new additions to my food lit library.   I’m not so pleased by the hard stuff that lies ahead and outside their pages.  But now is the time to engage with it, because now is the time.

* Note – These links are indeed Amazon affiliate links.  If you use them to buy something, I receive an affiliate commission.  Thought I should let you know so that you don’t feel mislead.