Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Amy E. Reichert

Quote by Amy E. Reichert

“The batter was crispy, like tempura, but it didn't have much flavor other than beer- which was fine, but not what he wanted. It added a malty bitterness that didn't balance right with the cheese. He wanted everyone to love these curds, not just beer fans. And it didn't have the crunch he wanted. It was too tender, which meant perhaps a batter wasn't the route to go. Maybe breadcrumbs would give him the texture and structure he craved. But the cheese- the cheese was perfect. Melty, stringy, yet still retaining a bit of the squeak that made fresh cheese curds so special. It would be easy enough to get the supplies from a local dairy or even the grocery stores. In Wisconsin, great cheese was easier to find than a bagel in New York. He ate another one. The cheese itself was salty. What would work with that? Something with a little sweetness? Like a Wheat Thin or a graham cracker? He could mix crushed graham crackers with breadcrumbs for his next attempt.”

Quote by Amy E. Reichert

Work

The Kindred Spirits Supper Club

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Amy E. Reichert

Browse famous quotes and profile details for Amy E. Reichert. more

You May Also Like

“Tokyo boasts similar food theme parks devoted to ramen, gyōza, ice cream, and desserts. If you don't like takoyaki, you're not entirely out of luck: the stand we visited, Aizuya, also offers radioyaki. You would think radioyaki would mean "takoyaki that grows arms and legs after exposure to nuclear radiation," but no, it replaces the octopus with konnyaku and beef gristle. Konnyaku is a noncaloric gelatin made from the root of a plant closely related to the stinking corpseflower.”

“The guidebooks aren't wrong; Osaka is not a textbook beautiful city. Not a seamless stretch of civilization, but a patchwork of skyscrapers and smokestacks, Gucci and ghettos, that better approximates life as most of us know it. With all this in mind, it's not surprising that Osaka is a center of casual food culture. Its two most famous foods, okonomiyaki (a thick, savory pancake stuffed with all manners of flora and fauna) and takoyaki (a golf-ball-sized fritter with a single chewy nugget of octopus deposited at its molten core), are the kind of carb, fatty, belly-padding drinking food that can sustain a city with Osaka's voracious appetite for mischief.”

“Iris and I will eat at a skeezy yakitori joint and enjoy char-grilled chicken parts on a stick. We'll go to an eel restaurant and eat several courses of eel, my favorite fish. Iris's favorite is mackerel, saba no shioyaki, tearing off fatty bits with our chopsticks. We will eat our weight in rice... we'll have breakfast at Tsukiji, the world's largest fish market. And we'll eat plenty of sushi from a conveyor belt.”

“Marjan's heart quickened as she browned the ground meat and onions together over the low, dancing flame. The satisfied pan hissed as she introduced dried versions of her precious herbs, the only sort she had been able to buy at such late notice. Even in Iran, there had been times when Marjan had had to resort to cooking 'dolmeh' with dried herbs. By soaking them overnight, she had discovered, they worked almost as well as their fresher relatives. Using her entire torso, Marjan mixed the herbs with the cooked rice, fresh lime juice, salt and pepper.”

“Sirine learned about food from her parents. Even though her mother was American, her father always said his wife thought about food like an Arab. Sirine's mother strained the salted yogurt through cheesecloth to make creamy labneh, stirred the onion and lentils together in a heavy iron pan to make mjeddrah, and studded joints of lamb with fat cloves of garlic to make roasted kharuf. Sirine's earliest memory was of sitting on a phone book on a kitchen chair, the sour-tart smell of pickled grape leaves in the air. Her mother spread the leaves flat on the table like little floating hands, placed the spoonful of rice and meat at the center of each one, and Sirine with her tiny fingers rolled the leaves up tighter and neater than anyone else could- tender, garlicky, meaty packages that burst in the mouth.”

“Um-Nadia says that great food needs darkness. It requires letting the dough inhale the very early morning and letting the kabobs drink up wine and garlic all night long, and- on occasion- it requires stuffing the small birds, squabs, pigeons, and other sweet, wild game under the round moon, "when they have let go of their songs," Um-Nadia says. Sirine dreams of cooking and wakes to thoughts of cooking- even when she can't stand the old smells of rancid butter and oils hanging in her hair. She still wakes too early, to grind and salt the lamb by hand, to fan the parsley over the chopping block.”