Cheese

BEIJING -- Price and prejudice might combine to keep the average Chinese away from the Pizza Hut that opened in Beijing yesterday.Pizza means cheese, and cheese wrinkles Chinese noses.The Chinese have a marked aversion to dairy products in general and to cheese in particular. To a sensitive Chinese nostril, cheese packs a powerful and unpleasant reek of spoiled milk."To us, cheese smells rotten," said one young woman when told the ingredients of pizza.@

Food Network star Giada De Laurentiis says that her mother would make frittatas, the Italian egg dish, with whatever leftovers she had in the refrigerator. " That was the joke," she tells viewers in segment of her cooking show. "What's in the frittata today, Mama?" What better dish to serve Mom on Mother's Day? A frittata is quick and easy, and the kids can help. As a bonus, Mom wakes to a clean fridge. An omelet without the fold and a quiche without the crust, the frittata has its own selling points: It can be sliced and eaten, hot or cold, with a fork or fingers.

Around this time of year, I start getting phone calls and e-mails asking for holiday entertaining advice. A cousin in North Carolina who is planning a large open house put in one such plea. A few days later a friend in Ohio solicited ideas for something special. At the finish of my holiday cooking classes, students line up for recipe counseling. This flurry of questions isn't surprising, because in the weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year's Eve we open our homes more often than during any other period of the year.

Last week's episode gave us bombs over Orange County, and now the ladies are looking to calm their nerves with a nice wine and cheese party. We start the episode with Vicki accompanying Tamra to a lingerie store as she attempts to fit her new “girls” into a new bra. I don't even mind that the camera follows them into the dressing room. The threat of a nip slip doesn't faze me - I'm just excited because tonight there is very little Heather exposure! During their shopping trip, Vicki drops the bomb on Tamra that Briana eloped.

The first time I encountered the savory pleasures of chicken breast, ham and cheese was at my high school's honor society dinner in 1972: Chicken Cordon Bleu. It seemed so exotic: chicken pounded thin, stuffed with ham and Swiss cheese, then breaded and deep-fried. Then again, I was only 17. These days, I still like the combination of lean chicken breast, salty ham and creamy cheese. But I'm just as likely to use prosciutto and the creamy Italian cheese Taleggio, as this recipe does, and I wouldn't even dream of breading and deep-frying.

Baltimore's newest food truck is debuting today. It's a gourmet food truck named GrrChe. The basic menu includes "plain and simple" sandwiches on white or wheat. Specialty sandwiches include the Lobster Grill and the Crab Delight. GrrChe also will be selling gourmet breakfast sandwiches and desserts. The truck's website is here . The Facebook page is here . The Twitter page is here .  

The flavors of rum and Parmesan cheese invade these two recipes, one from Baltimore and the other from Quebec. They are miles apart in origin and flavor, but totally even in good taste.Lee Connelly of Baltimore wanted a recipe for those "wonderful rum buns once served in the Chestnut Room of the Hecht Co. at Charles and Fayette streets. That was many years ago but good food is haunting," she wrote.Her answer came from Marilyn Liebegott of Baltimore who was not sure her recipe was that of the Hecht Company kitchen.

How can I learn more about cheese? The best way to learn about cheese is from someone who knows. Seek out the "big cheese" at your local cheese counter. The rise of artisanal-cheese sales has been accompanied by an increase in cheese-related books. One good place to start is Cheese Essentials by Laura Werlin. Werlin's first book, The New American Cheese, is one of the best guides to the renaissance in American cheese-making. Now she addresses the cheese novice with clear instructions on how to navigate the cheese counter and how to read cheese labels, and explains the eight main styles of cheese and how best to eat and cook with various cheeses (including which melt best)

* Item: Farm Rich Italian Four Cheese Sticks* Servings: About 5* Cost: $2.39* Preparation time: 6 minutes in conventional oven* Review: Two new frozen cheese snacks caught my kids' eyes recently -- Farm Rich's four-cheese sticks and OreIda Hot Bites stuffed jalapeno peppers. Sorry, OreIda. Farm Rich's four-cheese sticks won the taste test hands down. They're tangier than regular fried mozzarella sticks and much less stringy. OreIda's Hot Bites, on the other hand, didn't match the restaurant version of a fried jalapeno appetizer.

Editor's note: Wallace P. Flynn loves smelly cheese so much that his family leaves him, his pets can't stand to be around him and even the skunks have to move.There was an old man named Wallace P. FlynnWho lived in a house in the trees --You could smell him for several miles downwindBecause of his fondness for cheese.For the cheese that was dear to W.P.Was not the mild kind, such as Brie,The cheese of polite society --No, he liked cheese that was in your face!That smelled like socks from a marathon race,Cheese that really stank up the place!

Janet Powell from Oak Ridge, Tenn., was looking for the recipe for a cheese pie that both of her grandmothers made. She said that it was a dessert pie made with cottage cheese. Vivian Glover from Joppatowne sent in a cheese pie recipe that her best friend's mother used to make back in the 1940s that was always a favorite of hers. Glover said she still bakes it when she needs some comfort food. I received several different versions of this pie. Some of the recipes were slightly more elaborate then this one, with additions like cinnamon or nutmeg, raisins or nuts.

The Reserve in Federal Hill shut itself down at the end of February and reopened on March 9 as 1542 Gastropub. The chef at 1542 Gastropub is Cyrus Keefer, formerly of Saute and Brasserie 10 South. 1542 Gastropub has a new website , a new Facebook page and a new Twitter account (@ 1542Gastropub )/. You can read about the restaurant's rebranding efforts here . A menu of snacks, greens and meats and cheese is posted on the website.

Pop Goes the Meatball, Baltimore Diner's continuing coverage of the Year of the Meatball, continues. But first enjoy "Sophia Meatball Hut," a prescient 1984 SCTV video short with Andrea Martin as Sophia Loren. In Baltimore meatball news, Aldo's in Little Italy has a new Kobe meatball on the menu. Sergio Vitale of Aldo's says it's made  with 100% A5-grade Kobe beef. The new Aldo's meatball, says Vitale, is a decadent version of the signature veal meatball at Chazz: A Bronx Original , his nearby Inner Harbor restaurant.

It was with a profound sense of personal validation that I opened Volume V of the Dictionary of American Regional English  to discover an entry for the term my family back in Kentucky used for the chamber pot: thunder mug .  There are also entries for thunder jar  and thunder jug,  little maps showing regional distribution. And I was also happy to see that what we called a sweat bee  is also known as the hayfield wasp , the ice-cream bee , and other terms.  For scholars of American English, this volume and the series it completes are a hoard of riches, and also a work of heroic proportions for more than four decades.

The latest healthy recipe comes from Consumer Reports Food & Fitness Magazine. It's  a healthy twist on what is many people's favorite comfort food, macaroni and cheese. Except this is mac-and cheese with cauliflower. Nothing wrong with getting some veggies with your mac-n-cheese. The recipe also uses multigrain pasta, which is better for you than the white variety. Do you have a healthy recipe to share? Email me at andrea.walker@baltsun.com . Meanwhile, check out the latest recipe.

Grilled Cheese & Co. opened in Federal Hill last Friday. The new restaurant takes over the Dangerously Delicious Pies space on the block of Light Street just north of Cross Street Market -- you know, right where those two banking machines are. This makes three, including the original in Catonsville and a second store in Sykesville. Grilled Cheese & Co. is also Ravens Walk at M&T Bank Stadium on Ravens home games. The new Grilled Cheese & Co. is open Sunday through Wednesday, from 11 a.m. until 9 p.m., and Thursday through Saturday, from 11 a.m. until 2:30 a.m.  You're reading that right -- 2:30 a.m. Grilled Cheese and Co. is located at 1036 Light Street.

Move over mozzarella.Although this perennially popular pizza topper most assuredly will never be replaced as the best-selling Italian cheese, American markets have more types than ever to tempt shoppers away from it.From seductively creamy fresh cheeses to the sharp piquancy of an aged Parmigiano-Reggiano, here's a rundown on some of the treasures available in the United States:Asiago: Produced in the foothills of the Dolomites, originally from sheep's milk,...

In today's low-fat times, cheese has been cast in the role of high-fat, artery-clogging villain. In response to that, manufacturers are refashioning cheese by lowering its fat content. Their success may be seen by the fact that cheese was the only refrigerated dairy product category to show increased sales in 1995.A study conducted by A. C. Nielsen for the International Dairy Foods Association found that cheese gained 2.7 percent in sales for the year ended Sept. 9, 1995, with $4.6 billion in sales.

Did you hear the one about the hamburger that went to college? Bobby's Burger Palace opens Thursday in College Park, the seventh in a small but quickly expanding group of restaurants launched in July 2008 by the chef, restaurateur and television celebrity Bobby Flay. Upscale burger joints are huge right now, and Bobby's Burger Palace is opening in a particularly crowded field of upscale burger restaurants. What distinguishes Bobby's Burger Palace is the clear evidence of a chef's personal touch.

April brought a new restaurant to Waverly Woods. There's no pretension in the name: Players Bar & Grill. And this restaurant owned by Simon Sadoun is just that, featuring a larger-than-average eat-in bar, dozens of high-definition televisions and a few video games. Nicely separated from the action at the bar are three other dining areas, including a covered patio. The Players menu, called the “Playbook,” lists myriad pub classics, many devised by chef Doug Jones (formerly corporate chef at Liberatore's)