I’m sure you are familiar with Gouda cheese, arguably Holland’s most famous, accounting for over fifty percent of the total production of cheese in that country and these days as ubiquitous, even in this country, as Kraft singles. I too am familiar with the cheese and have been enjoying it all my life. But recently I discovered, upon visiting the Dutch city from which the cheese gets its designation, that for all these years I have been mispronouncing its name. The locals call it “how-da”, not “goo-da.” Since my visit I’ve been trying to remember to pronounce the name of the cheese, and the city, correctly. However you say it, Gouda deserves to be taken more seriously than it often is. For example, the internationally acclaimed cheesemonger Steven Jenkins, who hails originally from Columbia, Missouri, says Gouda, at least the grocery store kind, is among the most unexciting cheeses imaginable. He admits, though, that when properly aged it becomes a “miracle of flavor.” You might expect

KRCU's A Harte Appetite

A Harte Appetite: Gouda - Holland's Most Famous Cheese

Recently the Ritz, the most famous hotel in the world, reopened its doors after a $450 million renovation. Situated on Paris’ Place Vendôme, where dukes and princes used to live, the accommodation is no less palatial than any royal residence and those who are able to afford a room there (running as high as $25,000 a night) surely must feel like a king or a queen, which was the goal of the hotel’s founder, César Ritz. Ernest Hemingway was a regular guest who even took some of the credit for the hotel’s liberation during World War II (starting in the bar which these days bears his name). He once observed, “When I dream of afterlife in heaven, the action always takes place in the Paris Ritz.” And no wonder that when in 1934 Nabisco introduced a new cracker brushed with coconut oil to make it look rich that it named it Ritz. Just as the Ritz has become the most famous hotel in the world, the Ritz cracker has become arguably the most famous snack food in the world. (Nonetheless, even though

A Harte Appetite: "Puttin' on the Ritz"

I have a confession to make. For years I have been making a chocolate cake that everybody raves over. Once I took it to a committee meeting and one of the committee members said it was absolutely the best chocolate cake he had ever tasted. Another time I took it to a party and people actually fought over the last slice. Without fail, whenever I serve it, somebody asks for the recipe. Well, the cake does contain some flavorful ingredients— Kahlua , sour cream, and almost a pound of chocolate. But, and here’s the confession, it begins with a mix. I’m prompted to let this skeleton out of my oven by the success of a series of books by Anne Byrn , “The Cake Mix Doctor.” Because of her, I’m now convinced that proper embellishment can make a cake mix taste as good as home made. Partly this is because cake mixes have come a long way since their introduction a little over fifty years ago. For example, in 1977, after noticing how many winners of its Bake-Off relied on pudding mix to enhance

A Harte Appetite: Cake Mixes Have Come a Long Way

Jack Conaway was cutting peat for fuel in the Emlagh bog in County Meath, Ireland, back in 2016 when he made a stinking discovery. Buried twelve feet underground was a twenty-two pound lump of butter estimated to be about 2,000 years old. The surprising thing about this finding is that it is not all that surprising. Hundreds of specimens of so-called “bog butter” have been located across the Emerald Isle. I’ve even seen one. It’s on display at the Butter Museum in Cork, Ireland, near the old Butter Exchange, in its heyday the largest exporter of butter in the world. The museum houses all kinds of exhibits which testify to the important role of butter in the economy of Ireland and the lives of its people. You cannot spend any time at all at the museum without realizing that butter is woven into practically every aspect of Irish life. As Ari Weinzweig, the co-founder of Zingerman’s, one of America’s best specialty food stores, puts it, “Butter is in the culture, in the countryside, in

A Harte Appetite: Irish Butter

What do award-winning cookbook author Rick Bayless , Food Network Iron Chef Bobby Flay, nationally acclaimed pastry chef Gale Gand , and Chloe, my granddaughter, have in common? They all began their culinary education by slaving over a hot light bulb. Chloe, just like those three celebrity chefs when they were youngsters, has been the recipient of an Easy-Bake oven, which, famously, can produce cakes, cookies, pies, and other goodies using only the heat generated by an ordinary 100-watt incandescent bulb. Over the last four decades literally tens of millions of kids have been turned on to cooking by an Easy-Bake oven. Its manufacturer says it is the best-selling girl’s toy since dolls, though, judging by the number of male chefs who once owned one, the Easy-Bake also appeals to boys. It all started in 1963 when Norman Shapiro, the New York sales manager for Kenner Products (now a division of Hasbro), intrigued by the city’s pretzel vendors, suggested the company create a miniature

A Harte Appetite: The Easy Bake Oven Has Launched Many Chefs

I have much for which to thank the nuns of the Catholic Church. After all, one of them taught me how to read. But I’m almost equally grateful to Roman Catholic nuns for their role in inventing and perfecting some of the most heavenly pastries on earth. Collectively called convent sweets because they originated in the convents of Italy, Spain, and particularly Portugal as far back as the 15th century, they ultimately made their way far beyond the Iberian peninsula. The best of these creations relied on egg yolks, of which there were plenty available. Egg whites were used variously to clarify wines, as part of the building material for church walls, to starch nuns’ habits, and in sugar refining, so the remaining yolks were sent to the convent kitchens. Faced with this profusion of yellow leftovers, the sisters hit upon the idea of combining them with sizeable amounts of sugar and heating them, thereby raising the making of custard to an art form. The most famous of the Portuguese convent

A Harte Appetite: Convent Sweets

I enjoy baking cookies. It gives me great satisfaction to see how my family and friends enjoy the results of my efforts. But the truth is I really do it for the dough. Let’s face it. It’s hard enough to keep your hands out of the cookie jar, but what’s really difficult is keeping your fingers out of the mixing bowl. In fact, the practice of eating raw cookie dough has become so popular that many people buy packaged cookie dough from the grocery store with absolutely no intention of ever baking it. This situation, of course, can be dangerous. The obvious risk is salmonella (named after Daniel E. Salmon in whose lab it was first discovered). It’s found in eggs, a principal ingredient of cookie dough. Yet people keep on eating it. No one can be sure just when people discovered that cookie dough could be just as good as—or better than—cookies themselves. Perhaps it goes back to the very invention of cookie dough which likely predated the invention of the cookie by only a few minutes. The

A Harte Appetite: Cookie Dough is Hard to Resist

Though it was not part of the last Olympics, olive oil wrestling is the national sport of Turkey, where an annual tournament has been held since 1346, making it the oldest continuously running, sanctioned sporting competition in the world. Following Greco-Roman traditions, contestants slather themselves in olive oil and try to come to grips with one another, a process which, before time limits were instituted, could go on for days. Now if your interest in olive oil involves giving an opponent the slip, it doesn’t make any difference how it tastes, if it’s pure, or even whether it’s rancid. But if, like me, your interest is culinary rather than athletic, you want the very best oil you can find. That’s why I recently headed down to the Hill Country of Texas. You might find it surprising that I would expect to find high quality olive oil in Texas, the land of barbecue, chili, and pecan pie, but it turns out they’re experiencing something of an oil boom in the Lone Star State—an olive oil

A Harte Appetite: Texas Olive Oil

KRCU's Tom Harte shares a few thoughts on food and shares recipes. Listen to archived episodes and get recipes at http://krcu.org/topic/harte-appetite.

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KRCU's A Harte Appetite

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