holy roman empire

Just as the Meyer lemon is not a lemon, the cocktail grapefruit is not a grapefruit: it's a cross between a mandarin and a pummelo.  Since a grapefruit is a cross between a pummelo and the sweet orange, you can see why there are some similarities.  But both the pummelo and the cocktail grapefruit lack the true grapefruit's characteristic bitterness: the cocktail grapefruit is instead a sweet, juicy, low-acid fruit with a mild grapefruit flavor.

(An easy way to cut supremes, as you can see, is to "carve" the grapefruit like you would a pineapple, and then slice the segments out in wedges.)

The cocktail grapefruit supremes were part of a composed salad, if you like that term: blanched charred chilled Savoy cabbage, lamb's lettuce, three hard cheeses (Pecorino Romano, gouda, cave-aged gruyere), bresaola, salami, cocktail grapefruit, cocktail grapefruit/lemon juice, hazelnut oil.

(Bresaola is sort of like beef prosciutto, though it's not especially salty: air-dried lean beef, sliced tissue-paper-thin.)

of course of course

Horseradish and Brussels sprouts are two of those ingredients that people think of as having strong, overpowering flavors, but which can be mellowed quite a lot by cooking.  In fact, horseradish can piss you off that way -- if you've ever made a roast beef with a fresh horseradish crust, you may have been disappointed to discover that it wasn't the western beef-based equivalent of a wasabi pea.

But it also makes these ingredients more widely usable.  Making Brussels sprouts inoffensive to people who don't like the cabbagey-ness of the sprouts is simple: separate the leaves and cook them quickly, whether by roasting or frying, until they start to brown.  The flavor is sweet, a little nutty, and nothing like the cruciferous flavor of boiled cabbage.

Horseradish, once it's mellowed by cooking, can nearly disappear next to other strong flavors, but can also blend with them to give you this nice flavor, sharp but not acrid or pungent, right in the middle.  

Some examples:

"Special sauce" for a hamburger: a mayonnaise made with bacon fat for the fat component and Tabasco sauce for the acid.  Grated horseradish was cooked in the hot bacon fat and then mixed in along with some of the crumbled bacon.

Trout and sprouts.  The trout was sprinkled with water and then dredged through freshly grated horseradish and a sprinkle of cornmeal, and fried in bacon fat.  The Brussels sprouts were sauteed in the same fat with a little horseradish and topped with a few bits of bacon.

Lamb chops (they're small) with sumac, over sauteed Brussels sprouts with a very simple vinaigrette (malt vinegar, preserved lemon olive oil, sumac, thyme) and Kopanisti ...

... which brings us to Kopanisti.  This is basically Greek pimento cheese, using feta.  I'm not clear on whether or not there's a more traditional cheese used for it in Greece -- I've seen conflicting statements in blogs, and I am far from an expert on Greek food, much less Greek cheese.  All I know is it certainly works well with feta: feta, roasted red peppers, a little bit of hot pepper (I used hot peppadews), and garlic, blended together.  Because feta is so much wetter than Cheddar, this is a dip rather than a spread like pimento cheese -- it's pourable, really.  It's also tasty and tangy, with a little heat and a lot of pepper flavor.

The Kopanisti also made a good sandwich, on pita bread with a few strips of roasted piquillo peppers, feta, and a handful of pea shoots for sweetness and crunch.

hanker for a hunka

Cheese is weird.  You take milk and you coagulate the fat and protein by injecting it with bacteria that eats lactose and turns it into lactic acid.  If you hadn't been eating it all your life, you'd freak out over the concept of it.  If I told you, hey, I'm going to take that beverage you're drinking and ferment it, drain the solid chunks out, and turn those into a couple hundred different variants depending on the type of bacteria I use, whether or not I let it get moldy, and how long I let it sit around, you would probably not come over for dinner.

Most "foodies," when they like cheese, like the smelly, oozy cheeses.  Not me.  I've never even particularly liked blue cheese.  No, the cheeses I like are aged cheeses.  Parmigiano and Pecorino Romano.  Well-aged Gouda and Manchego, which are noticeably different in character from their younger selves, as we all should aspire to be.  Beemster's aged Goudas in particular are ridiculously good.  And above all else, a really good, sharp, aged Cheddar.

It's probably not coincidence that my favorite cheeses are all prone to forming crystals.  Aged cheddars form calcium lactate crystals, like little flakes of salt embedded in the cheese, as a result of the interactions between the lactobacteria and the lactic acid.  The parmigiano-type grating cheeses (and that Gouda) can form either calcium lactate crystals or tyrosine crystals from protein breakdown.  Either way, if there are enough crystals, you get a little crunch in your cheese.  It's great.

There are two cheddars I especially love.  The above photo is a ten year old -- yes, ten year old -- cheddar from Carr Valley.  This is the IPA of cheddars.  It's downright bitter, but in a good way, a beer-sort of bitter.  A slightly milder but also more crystal-laden cheese is Grafton Village's four year cheddar, which is also cheaper for me since it's made in NH.  For purposes of comparison, the sharp cheddar in your supermarket is usually less than a year old.

I used the Grafton four year in a grilled cheese sandwich, with sourdough bread and beer-braised onions.  The onions are like caramelized onions (though I should have caramelized them first and then reduced the beer with them, rather than cooking them in the beer the whole time -- but they're good this way too) which have been cooked all day in beer ... specifically Old Viscosity, a hoppy and very roasted-malty beer that works perfectly with the onions and cheddar.

Now, I know I'm a big fan of sandwiches in general, but this particular sandwich, this combination ... this is one of the greatest sandwiches ever.  The funny thing is, I was planning on using rye or pumpernickel, but the store where I buy the Grafton cheese didn't have any, so I went with sourdough (from local bakery the Dutch Epicure).