May 04, 2003
New York City Cocktail Party
I went to Elizabeth’s apartment again last night for Dave’s birthday party. There were some serious hors d’ oeuvres. There was chicken pate and salmon spread, home roasted nuts, a bowl of crudite arranged in such a way that when you took out a carrot another one popped up to take its place so as not to disturb the balance of the presentation. There was a massive bowl of cocktail shrimp, and a basket of cheeses.
There was also a cheese there called the Stinking Bishop. Nobody names a cheese the Stinking Bishop for nothing. If you live in New York you will know this smell. It’s a hot day and the trains are packed and you are standing on the platform as the train approaches and you notice--what luck! -- the car that pulls up is all but empty. After you get on, of course, you are overwhelmed with the stench. It is hard to describe this smell to anyone who hasn’t experienced it. Lacking a civilized state mental health policy, crazy New York homeless folks are compelled to ride the air conditioned trains all day. And, as if in revenge to the city that has forsaken them, there are those that have a stench so powerful it will bring tears to your eyes.
This is what Stinking Bishop cheese smells like.
According to this website, the Stinking Bishop has “a sticky yellow-orange rind and smells of old socks.” Which is actually an understatement. It smells of the socks of old socks. It smells like the one old sock from which all other old socks are spawned. It is old-sock cthulu.
The Stinking Bishop is compared favorably to a French cheese called Epoisses, (which is actually banned from the Metro system in Paris, and considered the stinkiest cheese in all creation) however as of this writing there is no public effort to ban the Bishop from the public transportation system in New York.
I put a little of it on a wafer, smelled it, suppressed a gag reflex, and ate it. Everyone had assured me that it wouldn’t taste anything like is smelled, but by the time I got it down the hallucinations I was having involving deep wells filled with dead herrings wrapped in old socks had so muddled my senses that I couldn’t really tell you if it tasted ok or not. I can tell you that if you ever need to get information out of me, a plate of Stinking Bishop and some wafers should be more than enough.
At the end of the party we ate a delicious pink cake. Dave explained that he had always wanted a pink cake after seeing that old dishwasher commercial where a woman prepares a beautiful cake, puts it in the dishwasher, hits go, and opens it up to show the cake gone and the plate clean. “It has something to do with the deferment of desire,” he said, and I said,” yes of course it would.”
As we were leaving, Elizabeth gave me a copy of The Playboy Gourmet, by Thomas Mario, published by the Playboy Press in 1972. The last time I was there I had been admiring her copy, and she found one at the Strand for me. I can’t begin to tell you how happy the writing in this book makes me.
“In cooking oysters the first thing to remember is that their delicate flavor must be caressed, not bullied. When oysters go into a stew or sauce they must be escorted with spices that are titillating but not inflammatory. “
“In fish cookery there are more branches of learning than there are schools in the sea … (but) to enjoy this kind of largesse, you needn’t go spear-fishing by torchlight or take rod and line and go searching for tiger shark in tropical waters.”
“Whether it be Deviled Crab-Meat Pate or Cold Bisque of Shrimp Soup, the blender is the indispensable partner.”
“When Cicero said, “Things perfected by nature are better than those finished by art,” he couldn’t have been thinking of pork.”
“Only a few years back the whole idea of a barbecue party was to create a situation in which the male assumed complete control while delighted damsels sat admirably on the sidelines. But the day of the sitting Damsel is gone. Nowadays any female will be flattered if you ask her to spoon out the caviar or toast the garlic bread. “
Mmmmm.
