Blue Cheese Soup, an original recipe

The bulk of my mothers side of the family fled from Hungary in 1956. A few years later my great grandmother was called to Canada to help take care of the children, my mother and uncle. Thankfully, in-amongst the turmoil of fleeing their home and living as a refugee in a cold foreign country, my grandparents and great grandmother safeguarded a few wonderful traditions and personal quirks, not to be forgotten by future generations. I'm still not sure whether my memories of my childhood at my grandparents were spent learning traditions from the old country, or simply being indoctrinated by my grandfather with his own eccentric love affair with food.

For some reason this story only came about in the last couple of years, yet it characterizes my grandfather perfectly. After eating a diner which my grandmother had prepared, my grandfather and great grandmother would look at each other and wink, as my grandmother describes it. This was signal that it was time to slip away from the kitchen table and make their way to the garage where they kept The Cheese.

I never got a chance to experience The Cheese, and today nobody seems to remember what it was named (though to my grandmother, it has many nicknames), however we do know that it was kept in the garage on account of my grandmother not allowing it in her house, and that it was selected by virtue of its unique qualities which no other cheese available in Canada possessed. 

In my imagination, it has a delicate cream colored tone, interrupted by sharp cords of faded gray. Some might look at it and imagine it pulsates with terrible life, only biding its time before it unleashes its devilish powers on their palate. I see it as I would a beautiful slab of marble, its character a virtue to be relished, not avoided. It would, of course reek like the goddess herself, as all good blue cheeses should.

I should probably stop here and discuss the qualities that scare people away from blue cheese. There is aroma, texture, taste, and aftertaste. All the things you expect when you put something in your mouth for the purpose of consumption.

the aroma is strong, but not in itself unappetizing 
...... the texture is slimy and oily, yum
the flavor is like eating blue socks
and the aftertaste is there for hours.. unlike your friends
I will edit this section later, as without a hunk of cheese under my nose for inspection, I am finding it difficult to describe the peculiar character of good blue cheese without resorting to sarcasm.

However, if you like blue cheese, or even just the thought of blue cheese without my trying to sell you on it, then you're OK in my books.

I may never get to sample the cheese of my grandpas delight, however I did inherit a natural affinity for blue cheese. This recipe is a subtle reminder for those who have experienced the delights in the past, and a great starter dish for someone who is wary.

If you need more encouragement, which I am generally not apt to give, then know that this soup is consciously designed to accentuate the wonderful qualities of blue cheese, while minimizing the so called bad. In the end, there are enough other familiar flavors that the cheese takes on a fairly subtle role. 

And if it turns out, after all this that you simply don't like blue cheese, then at least you will be left with a substantially nourishing soup.
mmmmmm substantial nourishment

My Hungarian Grandmother's Silvas Gomboc

My Hungarian Grandmother's Silvas Gomboc, sweet plum dumplings wrapped in potato dough.

There are several dishes which marked my childhood at grandma's house. I didn't know it at the time, but these few dishes would form the basis of my love of cuisine, and my desire to learn the culture and traditions behind foods. 
I grew up in a city with little ritual to its food, though it is a major city, it just doesn't have the same panache or history that some of the great world cuisines have (mind you, we are getting a whole lot better now-a-days at bringing our ancestral heritage and cultural food into the spotlight).

Though we ate regular north american food most of the time, there were these rare occasions when my grandmother would make certain Hungarian delicacies. At the time I couldn't figure out why she didn't make these items all the time, but that was, apparently, before I learned about seasonality. 

I will eventually write about all of these such dishes as I can remember. Pogacha, Palacsinta, and todays article, Silvas Gomboc, plum dumplings wrapped in potato dough, and coated in toasted bread crumbs.

Celiac not Celeriac

It doesn't take much to pique my interest in the culinary world. A dish, a smell, a picture, an attitude, almost anything can become a catalyst for new endeavors. A dear friend developed Celiac Disease a few years ago, the perfect motivation to flex my culinary muscles you might think, but its been a long time since I first learned this about her.

Why have I been so stubborn in this regard? I should have very easily filled this role, and by rights I should be a master of gluten free cooking today. The reason, internet logophiles, is simple.

Soy flour noodles.

Somewhere along the line, during a very misguided experience in alternative health care, I was convinced that soy flour was the end all solution to all my worldly problems. I purchased a canister (very ritzy) of the stuff and noticed a recipe for noodles proudly adorning its cardboard periphery. "Haw" I thought, "noodles made from soy, surely this is not a ploy, definitely I can enjoy, ooh noodles made from desiccated soy", I laughed at my subtle wit, and then proceeded to crack eggs and beans alike into an amalgamate of crumbly yellow lentil scented, dough resembling material. I'll save you from the suspense now and tell you that nothing about this particular experiment worked, and 14 dollars worth of soy flour canister, and the 62 cents of soy flour it contained was destined for compost faster than a space ship travels through interstellar space, assuming that the space ship travels at the same speed by which a canister filled with broken dreams falls at terminal velocity from hand to trash.

The noodles became a yellow crumbly mess, and of course, they broke apart when boiled. Furthermore, the flavor was very unlike any pasta I had ever had before, and one I would rather not have again. This was 6 years ago, perhaps with newfound ambitions I could quash my gluten free inabilities. 

After weeks of putting it off I made my plight internet bound, and I was immediately struck by the convolution and general backwardness of most of the resources to be found. Comparatively, if I am searching for a regular wheat bread recipe outside of my frequented and trusted websites, I would go for the website with the fewest and most basic recipes, and as much input from home bakers as possible. Unfortunately some digging is required before finding such a golden resource. 

Separating the wheat from the chaff (gluten humor... HAW!) which litters the internet stores of gluten free baking recipes and information became a difficult and obsessive task for me. There are many websites with very poor quality recipes, and not having the history with obscure flours and ingredients, I had to rely on my previous experience in recipe reading to determine which websites could be trusted, and which needed to be avoided. First I searched simply for Celiac recipes, of which there are many. However I am not willing to buy prepared flours, or expensive gluten free bakers mix #5. Thats not the point of this whole exercise. The lack of feedback was also unsettling and a cause to rule out the vast majority of otherwise likely informative websites.

I searched blogs, knowing that in the world of blogs, feedback would not be an issue. Being assured of a real human behind the scenes testing out recipes was also a boon. Unfortunately, the number of professional Celiac bakers in the world is apparently pretty small, or at least those willing to put up authentic sounding recipes for free to the public.

Finally I directed myself to the BBC website, a website for british folk, and one which I have used with good success in the past. Their selection of recipes is very small, a good sign in my books, and they claimed a rigorous selection process for the recipes they were willing to stand behind. I chose to make their white soda bread, and their strawberry sponge. Alien looking recipes which required I abandon everything I knew previously about soda bread and sponges, which took less effort than expected. 

Hilarious Conversations about Food, an ongoing chronicle thereof (pt.1)

This is part one of a series I find myself calling, Hilarious Conversations about Food, an ongoing chronicle thereof. Here, if everything goes according to plan, you should find transcripts of actual conversations had or overheard by myself, of a nature which I deemed worthy to post on the Worldly Wide Web. Since I have yet to really meet anyone with my peculiar craziness towards food, I fear this section wont be updated often. I shall try my best.

An msn conversation between Kait and myself from earlier this summer:

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Patrick - I had stampede mini donuts.. they were more than enough for me.

Kait - he he he.... maybe that's what's causing you such grief.

Patrick - Id rather blame the state of the world today.. but I guess minidonuts pretty much sum that up, dont they??

Kait - in a sick way they do.

Patrick - the sugar represents the harsh conflict of political forces. the cinnamon represents the thin veneer of lies they use to cover up the sugary conflict. the shape is indicative of the never ending plight of our ancestors. And the dough harkens to a stronger realization that we are simply eating our world away.

It all makes so much sense now.

Kait - you need to include this in your food blog.

Patrick - ooh and the bag.. the bag is there to keep the sugar in so when you are done you can lick your fingers and stick em into the sugar.. you pig.

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I am well aware that this section of the blog could easily be called, Patrick's boundless arrogance, and how "ooh I just love my own wit", a chronicle thereof.