I've been thinking about the phrase "you can take the girl out of the trailer park, but you can't take the trailer park out of the girl" today. Not because I'm from a trailer park, unless you call White Lake Hills -- a, like its name implies, mostly-white-middle-class residential development where the average age was 50 and after 7 p.m. almost all the residents had gone to sleep because that's what old people do -- a trailer park. Which you would not, because it was not. But in the gourmet-food sense, I'm trailer trash. I eat french fries with mayonnaise. I enjoy cheeseburgers. I've been known to eat a potato-chip-peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. I use just your average olive oil, nothing special. And today we went to the South African Cheese Festival, where I was shown, yet again, my gustatory limits.
Yes, an entire festival devoted to cheese. Has there been a better idea, ever? Nevermind the fact that I'm probably lactose intolerant, I enjoy dairy more than anything else in life. And nothing goes with cheese quite like wine. Or ice cream. Or biltong (the South African version of beef jerky, only better), in a variety of flavors: bees (the guy assured me it was "beef", but in Afrikaans), rhino, kudu, springbok, ostrich. Or chili-flavored chocolate. Or salami-flavored chocolate. Luckily for me (and all the South Africans with extremely warped tastebuds who actually like that stuff), these were all in abundance.
Also, let me just say, if my planned career fails to pan out, I might just become a chef. The uniforms are adorable, and I love watching Top Chef, if only to salivate at that pretty blond guy and the weird-yet-powerfully-appetizing dishes they put together. Mango-bacon sausage with parsley? Sign me up.
And, in between all the cheese stalls (call me old-fashioned, but I still love aged cheddar and edam the best) were wine stalls galore. For the price of admission, you could try literally hundreds of wines. Because I had a little wine tasting of my own in the dorm a few nights ago which ended rather badly, I wasn't quite in the mood to be pouring shiraz down my throat, but I took one for the team. (The team = me.) And though I was hoping to, as the semester progressed, become like Paul Giamatti's wine snob character in Sideways -- minus the huge eyes, scarily-receding hairline, annoying verbosity and getting the cute blonde at the end -- I still wouldn't be able to tell a Shiraz from a Pinotage if I met them in a dark alley. I do know pinotage = hermitage + pinot noir. (Note: if I'm wrong, forget I said that.) But I like red wine better than white, and I tend to gravitate toward the pinotage. And only wimps drink rose wine (sry, roommate). Plus, Vitamin C. And higher alcohol content than in beer and cider. Need I say more? Though, to be honest, the whole "hints of freshly-mowed grass" thing... I'm a little skeptical about that. Who's going to call b.s. on your palate?
At around noon, we sat in on a cooking class. Like The Food Network, only live! And this chef was saucy: she stuck her fingers in several men's mouths ("oh, taste this!") and overtly flirted with the middle-aged male audience members she selected to help cook the lamb. She was really obsessed with double entendres, good-quality olive oil, Moroccan spices and parsley. I really enjoyed the highly-inappropriate comments she made about the poor nerdy guy's attempt at rubbing the lamb shank with olive oil: "Oh, wow! Lucky you!" at the wife, while Mr. Glasses gently massaged the meat. Plus, she'd constantly refer to food products as "sexy", especially the apples, which were caramelizing quickly. It almost made me forget how she basically advertised herself the entire time: "This isn't just any sea salt. This is JENNY MORRIS sea salt!" as she handed another unsuspecting audience member his free gift.
And when the stuff was all cooked -- seven dishes in all, including a bread pudding with ricotta cheese, caramelized apples, raisins and honey that has got to be one of the tastiest things I've ever had, even though I'm really not a fan of bread pudding at all -- the audience hurried over, all 80 of them, to partake in what we'd been smelling for the past hour. I don't even enjoy red meat tremendously, but the lamb was seasoned deliciously (also, South Africans enjoy their meat practically still moo-ing; my middle name is "Medium-well, please", so it's been a bit of a learning process) and the cheese/tomato/olive dip was superb. I love the way gourmet cooking makes everything taste delicious, even the ugmo vegetables, like asparagus. I think it was the most delicious food I've had so far.
But the line, it seems, was drawn at some of the weirder goat cheese concoctions. I like goat cheese, but the more aged and sharper it gets, the less I like it. There was one version of particularly soft goat cheese with wine mixed in that was disgusting. Also, the chili pesto (is nothing sacred?) failed to impress. I swear, Afrikaners are obsessed with biltong and chili. And with invading others' personal space. I am so American.
To conclude: in six hours, I failed to get drunk, but I tried some excellent wines, cheeses and bread. It was a little warm and a lot crowded, but I wish I had more days where I could spend hours stuffing myself with delicious-and-slightly-unhealthy food with little to no consequences.
P.S. That's a cheetah in the picture, plus me creeping up on the unsuspecting feline (thus the shadow). Moments later, I had that thing in a headlock.
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