Stinky Cheese

It's raclette season in the mountains! If you haven't heard of raclette, I'll fill you in. You start with a heated slab of marble that is piled high with sausage, peppers, onions and thin slices of pink steak. Under the marble is where you stick little trays of potatoes covered in cheese that broils to bubbly browned perfection.

Usually I stick with your basic mild white cheeses like Havarti or baby Swiss. Last week we had a brave bunch of diners that I subjected to the maximum stinky cheese test. I splurged and bought a chunk of real raclette cheese.

When eaten cold, this stuff is akin to culinary water boarding ... a virtual decent into taste bud hell ... worse than Wensleydale ... stinky socks meets dead mouse smell cheese. You get the idea. The trick is to pair the melted cheese with enough pickled condiments like capers, pearled onions and hot mustards so that the two extremes cancel each other out.

Of course fluffy homemade sourdough is enough to make even the stinkiest sock-cheese palatable. (Go ahead, click on that picture to experience the combination of flour covered crust against the red wall. I love it!)

Our guests were even better suited for the raclette challenge than I had hoped. Above is a shot of Christian's plate mid meal. When in doubt about the potential success of any given occasion, be sure to invite the Asplunds. Lara is the best cook on the planet and she'll read poetry. Christian will bring multiple musical instruments for plenty of inspiring new music.

After dinner we had a small music night. I think my favorite numbers were Glenn Cornett's contemporary version of the Prayer of the Zoremites and David's original tune about Jerry Springer. There was also a new piece of music Christian titled "Shadyside LLC". He can blame that one on the ambient fumes of stinky cheese.

I told a musical joke:

Knock-knock. Who's there? Knock-knock. Who's there? Knock-knock. Who's there? Knock-knock. Who's there? Knock-knock. Who's there? Phillip Glass!

Lara made this fantastic apple-lemon galette. But the best piece of performance art was when Glenn decided at midnight that a small group would drive up to the top of Sundance to see some of Kent Christensen's art work.

It was the kind of evening where we couldn't be bothered to clean up or actually put small children in real beds until the next day. We were all too busy chatting about our up coming spring time jaunts over the pond to London and the Sundance films we were going to see.

Little Zina finally dosed off on the sofa around midnight with her maraca still in her hand. I hope there was something about the smell of raclette cheese and the din of grown-up talk about the future of contemporary art in the Mormon world that her sleeping five year mind took with her to dreamland. This is the makings of a true Davis girl.