Category: Flavors

More cheese, please… with a wee bit of honey

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Rabbit: “And help yourself, Pooh. Would you like condensed milk, or honey on your bread?”
Pooh: “Both. But, never mind the bread, please. Just a small helping, if you please?”
Rabbit: “There you are. Is uh… something wrong?”
Pooh: “Well, I did mean a little larger small helping.”

 The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

Twice a year it would happen. I could not breathe, and hives would gradually creep up from my calves. When they finally began to stretch up for my neck, where they would show, I would finally give in to the discomfort and go see my allergist for a steroid shot.

Now he is a well-respected allergist, and he ran all those stick-you tests. Cedar elm was one of the largest culprits, and they completely surrounded our home in Olmos Park. Red wine (Inner Pooh voice repeatedly interrupting the doctor’s words: I’m not listening.). And dairy products (Inner Pooh voice: I can’t hear you.). You mean as in milk, right? No, you can’t mean cheese?

So what’s a girl to do but give up drinking milk and live with periodic outbreaks of hives?

I had never been much of a fan of honey. But that was because I had never had a dab of it dribbled on the ideal vehicle for it – cheese. And we had to travel to Sevilla, Andalusia, Spain, last year to make that discovery.

The cheese plate at this beautiful restaurant we loved came with a nutty, orange-flavored honeycomb in the middle. Hold the bread; no need for it. Just pure cheese and honey. I feel guilty about not remembering the name of the restaurant in Sevilla, so am trying to atone by including photos of it as well.

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A year later, only a month ago, we were wandering the streets of Perugia, Umbria, Italy, in search of a bite for lunch. I was feeling virtuous for not being seduced by the stunning chocolate confections in the window of Sandri Patisserie on Corso Vannucci.

We settled instead at Ristorante Gus, pleasantly shaded in the middle of the pedestrian-only Via Mazzini. According to a New York Times article that came out while we were in Italy, Gus is new. The locals seemed to love it and were all ordering sushi, but we were too recently de-planed to want that.

Good intentions still intact, I ordered a smoked trout salad, and Lamar had a vegetarian panino and chickpea soup. Everything was great, but that pesky little inner Pooh voice started singing about the bees once I spied the cheese plate. This bountiful cheese board came with a palette of eight different honeys to dabble on the cheese.

Now I am hooked. A comb full of honey leapt into my cart at Mustafa Asian and Middle Eastern Grocery Store. And from there, the blame’s all on Central Market with those banners tempting me with “For the Love of Cheese” every time I drove by.

Since vacations are not around every day, I’m resigned to letting Central Market shop around the world for me. Although I wish CM’s blog did not mention the word “dairy” and then this:

While cheese is a good source of protein, calcium and vitamin D, let’s face it: Fat is what gives cheese its beguiling texture and depth of flavor.

(Inner Pooh voice: I can’t hear you.)

To go with the honeycomb, I selected some rosemary Asiago, blue Stilton, Bucheron and some other powerful blue-veined, ancient-looking cheese. Sorry, doctor, but such behavior would be great for your business… if I had not moved away from all those cedar elms.

And sure wish I had a bottle of Umbria’s Montefalco Sagrantino to go with that cheese and honey.

So Pooh ate, and ate, and ate, and ate, and ate, and ate, and ate, and ate… and ATE! Until at last he said to Rabbit in a rather sticky voice: “I must be going now. Good-bye, Rabbit.”
Rabbit: “Well, good-bye, if you’re sure you won’t have any more.”
Pooh: “Is there any more?”

The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

Post-Thanksgiving Thought: Why 1963 Was a Very Good Year

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1963: Innovations in the kitchen, while even more helpful, begin to grow more complex. The P-7 self-cleaning oven is introduced. In developing the oven, which uses a pyrolytic system to remove food soil, GE engineers are granted some 100 patents.

While it took about another two decades for a self-cleaning oven to enter any of the houses in which we have lived, what a great invention GE brought to life.

Last night I pressed a button, and this morning I woke up to find all traces of Thanksgiving had vanished from my oven.

Pledging never to be persnickety about persimmons again….

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If it be not ripe, it will drawe a man’s mouth awrie, with much torment; but when it is ripe, it is delicious as an Apricocke.

Captain John Smith (1580-1631)

A small grove of ancient-seeming, gnarly persimmon trees came with the century-old house we bought years ago on Mistletoe.  Whether past their fruit-bearing years or asexual, they never provided us with any of the fruit regarded as a symbol of prosperity for the New Year by the Japanese.

Dismissing the trees in the genus Diospyros as old-fashioned relics, I do not recall gazing upon the fruit until this Thanksgiving.  Yet the Greek translation of Diospyros is “fruit of the gods.”

But there they were, a plastic carton cradling eight glistening orange persimmons capped with a warm brown hat shaped like the flower of a dogwood – perfect to throw into the mix of gourds, winter squash, pomegranates, mums and fall leaves we stretch down the middle of the three long tables we fill at Thanksgiving.  Leftovers dispersed with relatives heading back across the country, huge acorn squash and persimmons remained.

Although reticent to risk ruining dinner, the persimmons looked too perfect to toss.  I plunged in and made a dinner of roasted acorn squash with cilantro pesto and a persimmon pilaf.  The following night, the combination became a creamy rich soup. 

I’ll never snub a persimmon again. 

The persimmon’s mouth-puckering reputation seems unjust, as poet Max Reif wrote: 

Should any of us
be judged
before we’re ripe?

Noted Added on December 2:  Here I have just discovered the persimmon only to find out a grove on the south side of San Antonio is about to be bulldozed.  A small “save the persimmons” movement  has sprung forth on facebook.