That green celery delivers a wallop in eating pleasure. It is tender, it breaks with a snap, few strings to remove, the hearts are like clubs, the leafy top is useful for soups and stews. All this is minor to flavor. Crunch a bite; vibrant of juice, it fills the mouth with a sweet nutty richness. The butts are good sliced wafer-thin, salted and peppered, the texture remindful of the Chinese water chestnut. In cooking don't use as much of this celery as you do of the bleached, or the flavor's overpowering.
Pascal celery can be purchased trade-marked “Andy Boy,” window-box-packed by the D'Arrigo brothers, Andrew and Stephen, operating from California. This celery is handled with the greatest of care. After cutting, it is immersed immediately in 34-degrees-cold water to take out the field heat and loosen the dirt. It is trimmed, jet-spray-washed, dried under blowers, cellophane-wrapped, and into the package. No hand touches the product until it's safe in your kitchen. Packaging is done at the coldest possible temperature workers can stand to decrease the rate of the celery's breakdown. The boxed vegetable is packed in crates, stored in a refrigerated vault until loaded into refrigerator cars for the cross-country trip.
If Pascal isn't in your local stores, the Green Brothers, 12th and Wazee, Denver, Colorado, pack it to sell by mail at ＄3.55 for an enormous bunch of eight to nine stalks delivered any place in the United States from November through February. The celery has a delicate nutty taste, the stems tender, absolutely without strings.
United Nations headquarters for the cheeses is in the Public Market, 230 East 10th Street, New York City, Phil Alpert's stand, with a collection of over three hundred varieties including cheese from forty countries and from thirty-five of the forty-eight states in the Union.
Here are the cheese types one finds only in off-the-trail foreign sections, kinds like Polish Warzawski, Turkish Kajmak, Spanish Fontine, Russian Travnick, Greek Kasseri, the Roumanian Kascaval, Norwegian Gjetost, Hungarian Brinza. There you can find almost any cheese you desire—the French Calvados, the old-fashioned Bierkäse, a Nova Scotia Cheddar given the sturgeon smoke treatment. There's a Vermont “rat” cheese, meaning a well-aged Cheddar that bites back at the tongue.
“A lesson in geography,” Phil Alpert told us with a wave of his hand. As a result of going global with cheese Mr. Alpert has become something of a linguist. “I can talk cheese in nine languages,” he said. “I love cheese, it's my life, it's my hobby.”
Phil Alpert has loved cheese since he went to work as an errand boy at the age of twelve in 1926 in an East Side grocery. Those little bites he snitched from the big Cheddar kept under the glass dome tasted like heaven and decided this boy to make cheese his business. He finds it a ceaseless passion. After the market doors close Alpert stays a few hours to experiment with cheese blends, his pride a Cheddar creamed and blended with brandy. Cheeseman Alpert carries on a vast correspondence with cheese-makers in all parts of the country. In the past five years he has written the chambers of commerce of most of the larger cities to ask for the names of outstanding cheese-makers in their area. When he gets the name of a likely place he orders a sampling. This winter he is starting a mail-order business. Write to Phil Alpert, 230 West 10th Street Market, New York City; tell him about that cheese you like and can't find. By return mail you will receive a chunk of the same—or something very reasonably a facsimile.
Pinterest
