Issue No. 102

Table of Contents

2018  |  No. 102

Le Brie, La Brie, Les Bries  Guélia Pevzner
The Most Parisian of Cheeses

The Silkiness of Buffalo Milk  Kareh Moraba
The Best Possible Rice Pudding and Other Gifts from the Marshes of Khuzestan

Cheese Anthology
Six Really Diverse Cheeses from France  Edward Behr
 Bleu des Causses
Caillé Doux de Saint-Félicien
Fromage des Pyrénées
Langres
Pérail
Picodon

Are They Street Hawkers If They’re Not on the Street?  Tse Wei Lim
Four Hawker Meals in Singapore

Poem
“A Country Breakdown”  Henry Rathvon

Why This Bottle, Really?
2015 SM, Partida Creus, Penedés, Catalonia  Andrew Tarlow
Not What You Think of When You Think of Spanish Wine
2014 Taylor Ridge Pinot Noir, Bohème Wines, Sonoma Coast  Alan Goldfarb
Effects of a Dry, Foggy, Sandy Place

Resources
Felco Nos. 8 and 9 Pruners  Edward Behr
After Nearly 40 Years, There’s Still Nothing Better

Restaurants
Canneti Roadhouse Italiana in Forestville, California  Alan Goldfarb
Hidden in Plain Sight, a Chef on the Sonoma Coast

Six Addresses
Singapore: Delicious Complications  Tse Wei Lim
Houston, Texas: So Much You Don’t Expect in the Bayou City  Alice Levitt

Books
Taylor Boetticher and Toponia Miller’s Jerky  Evan Bendickson
Shorts: Edward Behr on How to Eat a Peach; Forest, Harvest, Feast; The Provincetown Seafood Cookbook; and Jam Session


Letter from the Editor


This is a dairy issue. To show the breadth of possibilities, it opens with luscious buffalo-milk products of Khuzestan in Iran. Then on to a selection of mature cheeses from France, starting with half a dozen kinds of Brie and followed by six new Anthology cheeses drawn from the country’s extreme variety. In the last few years, especially in North America, exceptionally good new cheeses have come from the maker’s imagination, but drawing on timeless methods and cheeses, which result from conditions in a particular place. Take Langres, for example, in this issue, from wide plains just east of Champagne. The plains provide plentiful pasture for cattle, and by the 1700s the cheeses were being shipped to demanding city markets, including those of Paris.

The cheeses had to be durable, flavorful, and distinct. Langres was made somewhat dry and firm, ripened with a washed rind (but not washed so much as to make it soft and vulnerable), typically matured for two months or more, and, uniquely, it came with a concave top. Not that there is one tight recipe for each time-honored cheese — variation is good — but the facts of time and place pointed, and mostly still do, in a certain direction.

EdBehr-Signature

 

 

Contributors

Edward Behr (“Six Really Diverse Cheeses from France: Bleu des Causses, Caillé Doux de Saint Félicien, Fromage des Pyrénées, Langres, Pérail, and Picodon“; “Resources: Felco No. 8 and 9 Pruners”; Books: Shorts) is the author of The Food & Wine of France and the editor of The Art of Eating.

Evan Bendickson (Books: Jerky) started cooking bar food in his teens, graduated from Le Cordon Bleu, spent five years sous-cheffing in the Midwest, two years as a charcutier at Cochon Butcher in New Orleans, worked as an affineur and cheesemaker at Jasper Hill in Vermont, and is in now project manager of what is temporarily named VT99 Meats.

Alan Goldfarb (“Why This Bottle, Really?”; Restaurants: Canneti Roadhouse Italiana in Forestville, California) writes about wine and food; his work has appeared widely, including in The Wine Spectator, Decanter, and Wine Enthusiast. He lives in Marin County, California.

Alice Levitt (Six Addresses: Houston) is a freelance writer in Houston, Texas, focused on food, travel and medicine. She was dining editor and critic at Houstonia magazine and senior food writer at Seven Days newspaper in Vermont, where she was twice named best print/online journalist in the state.

Tse Wei Lim (“Are They Street Hawkers if They’re Not on the Street?”; Six Addresses: Singapore) was a co-chef and co-owner of Journeyman, a restaurant in Somerville, Massachusetts, which closed last year. He has been published in The Boston Globe and is currently working on a book about his experiences as a restaurateur.

 

Kareh Moraba (“The Silkiness of Buffalo Milk”) is a writer from Khuzestan in southern Iran, the land of citrus blossoms and water buffalo ice cream. She divides her time between Iran and the US.

Guélia Pevzner (“Le Brie, La Brie, Les Bries”) was born in Moscow and lives in France, where she writes for Fine Art, Paris Match, and Elle, as well as publishing columns in Russia and broadcasting on the BBC and RFI.

Henry Rathvon (“A Country Breakdown”) creates crossword puzzles for The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and The Wall Street Journal with his partner Emily CoxHe is working on a collection of poems about food.

Andrew Tarlow (“Why This Bottle, Really?”), the farseeing, formative Brooklyn restauranteur, opened Diner in Williamsburg in 1999, followed by other enterprises, including Reynard in the Wythe Hotel.

 


Top photograph: Ice cream shop, Dezful, Khuzestan, by Kareh Moraba.

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