Cheese and India are not two words synonymous with eachother. But paneer has to be one of my favorite milk products. Firm and actually without flavor, it absorbs the herbs and spices it is cooked with. The perfect vehicle. The cheese itself dates back 6000 years and is a curd, made by curdling heated milk with lemon juice, or vinegar. It is then left to set. It is served either in a curry (or gravy as it is called in India), fried or made into fritters. Indian food is in abundance in the city where I live. So when my friend Carlotta demanded we try a legendary Indian restaurant…
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Expert? Just add water…
Someone whose opinion I care a lot about questioned my claim to being an proper “expert” in the field of cheese because I lacked any formal qualifications in the area. At the time I was stung by the comment (in hindsight it was perhaps their blunt delivery) but it did make me think about the millions who blog about food and any other subject. Just by writing about the subject, immersing ourselves in it, does that make us an expert? As a journalist for a daily newspaper in a previous life, I was an “instant expert” on the issue I was writing about that day. This was pre internet and…
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East of Edam…aka Pass the Dutchie
OK, so my last post about my apparent dislike of Gouda cheese caused a bit of a firestorm of protest from Dutch blog readers and friends. Apparently I insulted their national icon. Various other words were uttered, they may have been bad, all Dutch words sound dirty to me, so I wouldn’t know. I should have been a diplomat. In the spirit of reconciliation and being able to show my face around town, I searched for the famed aged Dutch Gouda cheese many had told me about. I found it at Dean & Deluca here in Doha – two year aged cheese from Wyngaard. The Reypenaer VSOP Gouda is aged…
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Friend in Cheeses – Lenten Edition 2013
Today is Ash Wednesday. If I were half the Catholic I allege that I am, I would be giving up cheese for Lent. But instead I am giving up drinking at home, sugar and talking to strange men. Which pretty much leaves me with sitting at home (sober) in my dressing gown watching the Kardashians…and cheese…as my only remaining vices. Speaking of drinking at home and vices, this is the second part of coverage of our American Cheese Tasting held at my friend Alicia’s house. It wasn’t meant to be a series. I just forgot to post the other ones…
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Canadian Cheese Crisis Averted
Canadian Cheese Crisis Averted I have always liked my fellow Commonwealthers, the Canadians (and not just because we beat them in most non- Winter sports). I like them even more now they saved this previous cheese from melting into oblivion
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Fast Food Notion – Maccas Goes Gourmet
From the country that brought us 400 types of cheese, you would expect they would find a way to make Maccas palatable.
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Fromage a Trois…Paris three, four, four, five… cheeses as a time
It’s Paris and great food, especially cheese is everywhere. Herewith my cheese porn diary from a week in Paris…
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Getting My Goat…
I think my cleaner judges me. One day I came home to find my decorative papal rosary beads artfully arranged on my bedside table. Once she told me I was sick because I “didn’t have a husband”. Another time, I had reason to call her because I couldn’t find a suit jacket. “It’s in your jacket closet Madam,” she answered with a sigh. When quizzed about said closet, she told me the location was in the guest bedroom and had been the “Jacket Closet” for at least six months. It’s rare our paths cross. I usually come home to find she has been and gone, like a midget hurricane. But…
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Going Whey Back…Evidence of Cheese Making Dating Back Thousands of Years Unearthed
Going Whey Back…Evidence of Cheese Making Dating Back Thousands of Years Unearthed What is it with Poland these days? Milk extracts have been identified on 34 perforated pottery vessels or “cheese-strainers”, which date back 7,500 years have been excavated in Poland. The only other written evidence for cheese-making activity occurs much later in the archaeological record, around 5,000 years ago. That’s some aged goodness…
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Pole Dancing
Warning. There are Poles, but no dancing as such in this post. If you feel misled, please feel free to complain. There is much ado about Poland this week in Doha, with the start of flights to the Polish capital Warsaw, which in my view is more famous for shipyards and some bloke named Lech. But it seems that there is more to Polish cuisine than piroskis and beer. I was invited to a gourmet dinner to launch this new route at the Grand Hyatt Doha The five course menu included venison, duck and an amazing cod dish, but I was stuck on the amuse bouche, which was a cream…