SC - My anti modern cheese thing

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Christine A Seelye-King wrote:
> 
> I agree with the sentiment about not wanting to use cubed cheeses for
> feast beginnings.  It reminds me of my days in hotel food service, and
> all those garde manger trays!!!  Cheese is an expensive way for people to
> fill up early in the feast, and then not eat the later courses.  I
> usually use an herbed cheese spread if I'm doing cheese in the beginning,
> with things like olives, bread, and other nibbles appropriate to the
> theme of the meal.  Using cheese later on in the meal seems a better use
> of funds to me, as well as balancing the foods out better. Doesn't the
> humoral theory call for eating it at the end of the meal, to close the
> stomach?
> Christianna

Admiral, Khan is highly intelligent, but shows signs of 20th-century
thinking (a liberal paraphrase, but you get the idea, I expect). The
desire to fill people up in the first course, in theory with something
cheap, is part of an American restaurant or hotel mentality that largely
died in the late 60's or so (that being the heyday of the concept of a
nice, filli-- I mean refreshing, yeah, thass the ticket, salad at the
beginning of the meal). European meals, and increasingly American ones
nowadays, tend to either have the salad as an entremet somewhere, as the
name implies, in the middle of the meal, or near the end.

I agree, I'm deficient in that a big ol' bowl of cubed Velveeta (or
equivalent) in front of me at the beginning of a meal, let alone a
feast, is not the way to stimulate my appetite. Not that I don't
appreciate the well-meant desire to do so, it just isn't the way. For me.

Given my druthers, I'd begin with bread, a dryish beverage for
preference, possibly some good olive oil for the bread if the feast
scenario/geography make it appropriate, and maybe some sugared nuts
(prolly almonds). The sugared nuts are specifically recommended in some
sources as being the way to open a meal, in that they open the stomach
and chest, to set the stage for later digestion. Cheeses, conversely,
are often seen at the end of the meal in the same system: they close the
stomach (so do custards and other dairy products) for better digestion
of all that food: rather like putting the plug back in your gas tank
after filling up, but before driving away. 
Butter, though, seems to have been an at-least-sometimes-documented
exception. I vaguely recall seeing some reference to its having been
served at the beginning of a meal, although I'm not sure how, exactly.   

Candied spices and hypocras, also at the end of the meal, would
constitute the spark plugs, I guess.

Now, of course, as with the original postor in this thread, I'm not
always given my druthers, and will sometimes allow honey butter (gak!)
and herbed curd cheese to appear. 

Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com