The Devil’s Larder by Jim Crace

Thanks to Dr. H for the photography.

Not so much a novel as a dreamily connected series of 64 short vignettes, The Devil’s Larder tells of the many differing viewpoints about, from, on and against food in our culture. It’s a pretty twisted read in many ways, subversive against so many deeply held beliefs about food and nourishment and cooking in society. Some of the short stories are disturbing – cannibalistic, incestuous, sad, or just plain weird.

The golden thread that runs seamlessly through all the tales is the luscious description of the various food. No matter how visceral the tale, it’s the food that is the centerpiece, pardon the pun. There are soup stones, manac beans, honey, blind-baked pies, razor clams, morels, kumquats, and aubergines. I warn you that many of the stories will probably turn your stomach, in that complex way that food sometimes tempts and disgusts us at the same time.

There were three that stood out to me. The first was the tale of the young man whose grocery store card tells the story of his life – his type of shaving cream, his cat died because he no longer buys cat food, he has a proclivity for expensive beer and croissants, he hasn’t had sex in nearly two years because the condoms he bought back then are past their expiration date. This was trippy because I’ve never really thought about how our food habits are tracked by these cards – talk about Big Brother!

The second tale was a disturbing story of a mother and 5-year old daughter who want to see if pasta really tastes the same through another’s mouth, so they proceed to eat food out of each other’s mouths. Disturbing, because it’s so matter of factly written, not overtly sexual or incestuous, but still viscerally creepy because the mother is completely all right with her daughter’s going past these boundaries. I certainly don’t look at pasta with pesto sauce quite the same now.

The third tale, and the one that stood out to me the most was the vignette about a fondue party going wrong. The heroine, having used subpar ingredients in her fondue and serving it to her obviously unimpressed guests, suggests a game. If a bit of food is left in the fondue pot after a dip, the perpetrator must drizzle the scalding cheese onto a body part and choose one of the other guests to lick it off.

The melted fondue was not as tasty as she’d hoped. Her seven friends were only playing with their long-handled forks. They pushed their cubes of bread inside the caquelon with hardly any appetite. She should have used a cooking cheese, or added chunks of blue, or paid the extra for some Gruyere or some Emmenthaler.

I’m a cheese-aholic, and my grandmother used to call me a little mouse because cheese was my absolute favorite snack. In keeping with the spirit of this tale, I had a fondue party and invited some friends. No one dropped any cheese on anyone and licked it off, though. I promise. This is the method that worked for me, based on a gazillion classic fondue recipes.

INGREDIENTS
1 lb total of different cheeses. I used Camembert, Brie, Gruyere, and a few sprinkles of blue.
1 and 1/2 cups white wine
2 tablespoons cornstarch
2 garlic cloves
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

METHOD
Cut up the cheeses into cubes.

Put into a saucepan over low heat. Add in 1 and 1/4 of the wine. Use something you’d drink.Mix together the cheeses and wine until you have a nice, thick, delicious, melty combination.

Whisk together the cornstarch and the remaining 1/4 of the wine in a bowl. This will help thicken the cheese.

Add the cornstarch/wine mixture to the melted cheese, stir again, and turn off the heat. Grate in the two garlic cloves, season with salt and pepper, and mix again. Cover the cheese while you prepare the fondue pot.

Decant the cheese into a fondue pot over a Sterno can or spirit lamp and serve with whatever you’d like. I used cubed steak that was nicely cooked for a protein boost, and also because meat dipped in cheese is so damn good. I also used red radicchio, baby carrots, and endive leaves for dipping. So delicious! And you can lie to yourself that it’s healthy, because the vegetables offset the calories in the cheese. What, you didn’t know that?

I would like to end this post with a little tribute to my sweet pug Sparky, who had a stroke early Thursday and who I had to put down on Friday. He was a darling baby, and brought such happiness to my life. Not to mention that he loved cheese, so he would have been particularly happy with this blog, as I’m sure I would have accidentally on purpose dropped some cheese on the floor for him. I miss him so much, my little furry baby.