Cheese, Book, Restaurant, Thing #26
Farting grandmothers, a radish (!!) I can't stop thinking about.
Hiya!
Cheese: Okay, Whole Foods free samples, you win this round. Clarina is a crowd-pleasing 18-month aged gouda rife with those fun crystallized bits. This is a cheese for non-cheese people so that they can become cheese people. It’s nutty, lingers nicely, and tastes great with anything you want to put on a cheese plate. It’s a happy cheese. Come in everyone, the water’s warm.
Book: A few weeks ago, I had a couple hours free and ventured to the National Museum of Asian Art (embarrassingly, my first time there—strong recommend. Go to the Peacock Room!). I’m a sucker for a museum gift shop (I have dreams of writing a highly niche comedy sketch about all those colorful scarves older ladies wear that can only be described as “museum gift shop scarves”) and was lured by the beautiful illustrations in Our Story: A Memoir of Love and Life in China. Also, it was on sale for a paltry $11! Author Rao Pingru chronicles his 80+ years living in China, and his 60+ year relationship with his wife Meitang. The prose is spare with a lot unsaid. It lightly glosses over many major political upheavals… and the fact that Pingru spent years in a labor camp. Yet, he remains optimistic about his extremely challenging life. It’s a meditative, steady read worth it for the drawings alone.
Restaurant: Major props to our server at Perry’s in Adams Morgan who sold us on a daikon special. After all, when has anyone ever been excited by daikon? It was an incredible dish, despite looking like a big lump of soft poop (with a lovely fine dice of herbs on top). The daikon is double braised (the second time with rice to bring out its flavor) and served with a porcini cream sauce that was beautifully mushroom-heavy. The cream is merely a supporting actor who doesn’t have too many lines. There were two other stunners: the crispy-outside-chewy-inside mochi agedashi, and floofy-pillowy garlic edamame dumplings, served with a heavy rain of Parm. I cannot think of another dumpling in years that I have enjoyed more. While there were a few “eh, just okays” (spicy octopus salad, kabocha & burrata dish that would have been better without the burrata), these three dishes were so knock-out that I greatly look forward to a return visit. I’ve thought about the daikon every day for a week now.
Thing: Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó, a 17-minute short documentary up for an Oscar, is absolutely worth your (very minimal) time, especially if you are delighted by grandmothers arguing over who farted. Okay, that minimizes the film—it’s a beautiful look at aging, how you spend your time, and who you care about. Nǎi Nai and Wài Pó, the filmmaker’s grandmothers, are charming and full of life in their old age. It’s an endearing film, but I let out a guffaw at one point too. The movie runs through all the emotions faster than it takes to fold a load of laundry.
Happy false spring,
Carey