This gives great scope for contrasting cheeses in one and the same dish.  In a shallow baking pan put a foundation layer of grated Cheddar and a little butter.  Cover with a layer of tender parts of asparagus, lightly salted; next a layer of grated Gruyere with a bit of butter, and another of asparagus.  From here you can go as far as you like with varied layers of melting cheeses alternating with asparagus, until you come to the top, where you add two more kinds of cheese, a mixture of powdered Parmesan with Sapsago to give the new-mown hay scent.

 Garlic on Cheese

For one sandwich prepare 30 or 40 garlic cloves by removing skins and frying out the fierce pungence in smoking olive oil.  They skip in the hot pan like Mexican jumping beans.  Toast one side of a thickish slice of bread, put this side down on a grilling pan, cover it with a slice of imported Swiss Emmentaler or Gruyere, of about the same size, shape and thickness.  Stick the cooked garlic cloves, while still blistering hot, in a close pattern into the cheese and brown for a minute under the grill.  Salt lightly and dash with paprika for the color. (Recipe by Bob Brown in Merle Armitage’s collection Fit for a King.)

Spaniards call garlic cloves teeth, Englishmen call them toes.  It was cheese and garlic together that inspired Shakespeare to Hotspur’s declaration in King Henry IV: 

    I had rather live
    With cheese and garlic in a windmill, far,
    Than feed on cates and have him talk to me
    In any summer-house in Christendom.

Some people can take a mere soupcon of the stuff, while others can down it by the soup spoon, so we feel it necessary in reprinting our recipe to point to the warning of another early English writer:  “Garlic is very dangerous to young children, fine women and hot young men.”

 Blintzes

This snow white member of the crepes suzette sorority is the most popular deb in New York’s fancy cheese dishes set.  Almost unknown here a decade or two ago, it has joined blinis, kreplach and cheeseburgers as a quick and sustaining lunch for office workers.

2 eggs 1 cup water 1 cup sifted flour Salt Cooking oil 1/2 pound cottage cheese 2 tablespoons butter 2 cups sour cream

Beat 1 egg light and make a batter with the water, flour and salt to taste.  Heat a well-greased small frying pan and make little pancakes with 2 tablespoons of batter each.  Cook the cakes over low heat and on one side only.  Slide each cake off on a white cloth, with the cooked side down.  While these are cooling make the blintz-filling by beating together the second egg, cottage cheese and butter.  Spread each pancake thickly with the mixture and roll or make into little pockets or envelopes with the end tucked in to hold the filling.  Cook in foil till golden-brown and serve at once with sufficient sour cream to smother them.

 Vatroushki