Tasting profiles are the new dirty

The other night, I did a cheese and spirits pairing with my friend/distilled beverage guru Bryan Dayton. Bryan is the co-owner and force behind the cocktail program at Boulder’s much-lauded OAK at Fourteenth. He also digs cheese, and provided invaluable information for the pairing chapter in my book, Cheese for Dummies. I blame him for my current obsession with bourbon and aged Gouda.

Photo love: Flickr user Orofacial

We were at the Boulder Wine Merchant, a kick-ass shop owned by MS Brett Zimmerman–one of five Master Sommeliers living in Boulder. After a busy two-hour event, Bryan left to oversee dinner service at his restaurant, while I packed up. The cheeses and selection of four spirits (which included a heavenly Hans Reisetbauer Apple Brandy ) were still on the table. Suddenly, a tall, dark stranger appeared before me.

“Whatcha got going on here?” he asked. His considerable girth was barely contained by a bulky CU hoodie, and his beady eyes gleamed as they took in the array of free booze and cheesy nuggets. He looked not a day over 19, but upon checking his ID, I discovered he was barely legal, in drinking terms.

Still high on the vapors of a highly successful evening, I asked if he’d like me to walk him through the pairing. I noted the fistful of raw, local goat’s milk cheese already in his meaty paw, and poured him a taste of the late-harvest Riesling. He downed it before I’d even had a chance to mention its dominant notes of honey and melon, underscored by an earthy finish.

We moved on the brandy. Its searingly potent fumes were brilliantly tempered by the butterscotch and caramel flavors of the L’Amuse 2-year Gouda I’d chosen. Gulp! The spirit vanished down my pupil’s maw, followed by a handful of Gouda. “What’s next?” he asked, chewing with his mouth open.

By the time he’d pounded the Samuel Smith Imperial Stout, I finally clued in to the fact that this guy hadn’t been sober when he’d walked in the door. But I persisted, determined to see this through to the end. I poured him the final tasting–Averna–and went into my spiel:

Me: “This is a bitters, an herbal liqueur often served as a digestif. It’s made from a proprietary blend of botanicals, but you’ll notice it’s more syrupy and sweet than many in this category, such as Fernet, or Jagermeister….”

Him (starting to slur): “Hey, d’you, like, think this stuff when you’re just hanging out drinking wine?”

Me: “Um, no. I mean, this is a tasting, so it’s meant to be educational. I love food and all, but I don’t have these thoughts running through my mind when I’m trying them, unless it’s in a professional capacity.”

Him: “So, y’don’t, like, drink some wine ‘n say to yourshelf, ‘Ooh, I’m getting a lot of really ripe fruit in this. Oh, yeah, this is sooo good?’”

Me (squinting): “No.”

Him (leering, and gesturing to Averna): “I want you t’ talk to me about thisch like you would if you’re taschting wine. Like, for real. You know, like, describe it t’ me. Like thosch wine magazines do.”

Me ( Laugh, or vomit, laugh or vomit?): “Yeah, that’s so not going to happen.”

Mercifully, his frat friends found him at that moment, beer purchases made. And thus my would-be suitor shuffled into the snowy night, knuckles dragging. Drunk, lonely, horny, and doomed to yet another session reciting the Coors Lite flavor profile to himself. Tapping the Rockies just isn’t as easy as it used to be.

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Me, me, me.

Holy crap.  I wrote a book.

Or, as I like to call it, “Dairy Treats for ‘tards.”

It’s been a long journey and an incredible experience. I had no idea when I started this project that writing a cheese book would enable me to ace “Jeopardy” in my lazier moments. “What are Visigoths, Alex.”

Many thanks to my kick-ass co-author, Lassa Skinner, who helped save my sanity many, many times over, our star editor, Tracy Barr, and to culture magazine for presenting me this opportunity.

Buy now, and I’ll send you a personalized, signed copy. Woo! I’ll continue to post book tour info. here and on Twitter.

BOOK  EVENT SCHEDULE

August 4: American Cheese Society conference; Raleigh, NC, 10:30am

August 18: Boulder Wine Merchant; Wine and cheese pairing, book signing, 5-7pm.

September 16: Justice Snow’s Restaurant + Bar, Aspen; wine, cocktail and cheese pairing,  6pm.

October 3:  Book Passage, San Francisco; reading, artisan cheese tasting, and signing, 6pm.

October 11: Boulder Bookstore, Boulder, CO; reading, local artisan cheese tasting, and signing, 7:30pm.

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Goat girl

People often ask what inspired me to become a food writer and cooking instructor. I think they expect to hear heartwarming recollections of a childhood spent beside my mother at the stove, and reminiscences of glorious holiday repasts, table groaning with the bounty from our garden. They anticipate my memories of milking goats, and tangy chevre on homemade bread for an after-school snack. They imagine my Russian grandmother frying latkes for breakfast (using eggs I’d collected from our flock of Rhode Island Reds).

And, to a certain degree, there is truth in these examples. Looking back, I’m quite certain my formative experiences with food are what shaped my career. But the reality is that, while I grew up on a small ranch, the daughter of a large animal veterinarian and a former barrel-racing-champion-turned-homemaker, my own culinary education had a few…inconsistencies.

I did watch my mom cook sometimes; she still has a way with instant mashed potatoes and cracks open a mean jar of Prego. Our neighbors had a garden, and at the age of ten, I established a roadside produce stand, yet Birds-Eye was still a staple at my own dinner table. The eggs I gathered each morning (when I wasn’t being held hostage in the henhouse by our sadistic asshole of a rooster) my mother whisked in a microwave-proof bowl, before being nuking them into rubbery oblivion. I was in college before I learned that scrambled eggs aren’t traditionally made in a microwave.

My paternal grandmother was the daughter of a Russian émigré. Grandma Miller possessed a heavy New York accent, and she was—my dad will agree—the worst cook this side of Minsk. The (real, not instant) potatoes in her latkes were an oxidized grey, the resulting pancakes flabby and greasy from improperly heated oil. Small wonder I was the pickiest eater on the planet, utterly exasperating my Depression-era parents who, let’s face it, were only trying to embrace the advent of convenience foods.

“What breed of dog am I, you ask?”

The one time my mom tried making yogurt and cheese from our goat’s milk (she was having an early 1970’s back-to-the-land moment), the results were not exactly edible. In retrospect, I don’t think she realized the milk required starter cultures. So we instead drank goat milk by the gallon, and in the process my family became huge caprine aficionados. We bred our Nubian doe, Go-Go, every year, and ended up keeping several of her doelings; the bucks we donated to Heifer Project International. For my part, I adored our goats. Even when I fed Go-Go an uninflated balloon, it was with the best of intentions (it was Easter, and I thought she’d appreciate its pretty pink color).

In sixth grade, I decided to follow in my older brother’s footsteps and raise goats for a 4-H project. I bounced out of bed each morning to milk Rose, a distant relative of the late Go-Go (who died of natural causes, not from ingesting peony-hued rubber). Despite my rural upbringing, our property was located in a peaceful canyon only a couple of miles from what is today a populous, yuppified bedroom community of Los Angeles. There were a few other families with children up the road, but I was the only one living on a ranch.

The rooms at Westlake Elementary School were packed with upper-middle-class, mostly white kids, and it turned out they didn’t share my  goaty enthusiasm. It was Jason Racinelli, a criminal in the making if ever there was one, who dubbed me “Goat Girl.” It was the first week of school, and as part of our “What I Did for Summer Vacation” oral reports, I’d waxed poetic about Rose and the wonders of lactation. If memory serves, I even passed around Dixie cups of her milk for my classmates to taste.

I was waiting for my mom to pick me up from school in our elderly, wood-paneled station wagon, when Jason appeared by my side. He looked me up and down, a sneer on his handsome face. “Hey Goat Girl,” he drawled, leaning in close and taking a long, exaggerated sniff. “You smell like a goat. Why would anyone want a goat, anyway? Why do you even go to this school? Why don’t you go back to your stupid farm?”

Mercifully, my mom arrived at that moment, but before I could escape to the safety of the car and the slobbery kisses of our three dogs, Jason yelled, “’Bye, Goat Girl! Don’t forget to wear your overalls tomorrow!”

I think it’s pretty safe to say that someone, somewhere, eventually kicked Jason Racinelli’s ass to Kingdom Come or incarcerated him. Unfortunately, before that could happen, I essentially became known as Goat Girl for the remainder of the year, and developed several nervous tics that abated only after we sold Rose and I instead concentrated on raising rabbits (fuzzy, rodent-like creatures were apparently on the list of “cool” pets to own). I don’t recall exactly when I allowed my goat obsession to resurface, but suffice it to say, I’m now a contributing editor at culture: the word on cheese and live in Seattle, one of the few cities in the U.S. that allows residents to keep backyard dairy goats.

So, while my somewhat dichotomous culinary upbringing played a large role in my career of choice, I usually opt for a shorter, easier, wholly truthful answer. “I became a food writer because when I was eight years old and walking my brother’s goat at the county fair, a middle-aged man asked me, “What type of dog is that?” It was at that moment I realized: most people don’t have a fucking clue where their food comes from.”

Thanks, Mom and Dad. And yeah, you too, Jason Racinelli.

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Now we know why we hanker for a hunka’ cheese.

Those of us who grew up during the “Schoolhouse Rock” era have an undying love of these obnoxious, Saturday morning  musical “educational” cartoons. Along the same lines was “Time for Timer,” a similarly irritating ABC network PSA series featuring a guy named Timer.

I have no idea what the hell Timer is supposed to be–he resembles, more than anything, a jaundiced scrotum with a pointy nose. But more importantly, he taught us young ‘un’s that a healthy afterschool snack is a “wagon wheel,” aka a piece of cheese sandwiched between crackers, in his memorable ditty, “Hanker for a Hunk o’ Cheese.”

Timer’s legend lives on, as I discovered last night while doing some (legtit…don’t ask) research. He makes a short-lived, albeit memorable appearance on “The Family Guy.” If you fail to find this utterly hilarious, I urge you to watch the original version, circa 1974ish.

[Photo love: Kurt's Shirts]

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