Scrabble Words In My Heart: GJETOST
My grandmother (the same one who spent a season looking over the shoulders of the chefs at New York's famous Sardi's restaurant, in order to record the recipes that they carried in their heads) was 100% Norwegian. Her family had emigrated to England during WWII, changing their name from Hvisendahl to Whistondale. I'd always considered this transformation especially apt, as the result sounds so Terribly British.

It turns out there is all sorts of scandal and rivalry among the various branches in the Norwegian side of my family (as there are among most branches of most families), but I've never learned the details. Someone was very wealthy (and likely undeserving), but didn't help the needy ones; someone else was a black sheep. That sort of thing.

Whichever part of the drama my line fell out of, I grew up feeling a great deal of respect for my Norwegian heritage. The Norse had resisted Hitler, for one thing, not like those collaborator Swedes. The country is spectacularly beautiful. The language -- nominally similar to Danish and Swedish -- is spoken with a charming sing-song cadence. (You can hear its echo in the Lutheran rhythms of Lake Wobegone.) The Vikings discovered America.

And then there's gjetost.

Gjetost -- literally 'goat cheese', pronounced YEH-tost -- is a staple at any smörgåsbord, particularly at breakfast (which in Norway is generally eaten mid-morning). The brown, creamy, slightly tangy cheese comes in large rectangular blocks, and you scrape off thin slices with a cheese plane. You then pile these on toast or flat bread (rye crisps). Sliced thinly enough, the cheese curls into fun cylinders and coils, which make great decorative elements for open-face sandwiches and hors d'oeuvres.

My mother recently gave me a piece off a block she'd ordered from a Wisconsin importer, and the rich, flavorful authenticity was eye-opening -- quite unlike the blander Ski Queen import you might see in your local (USA) supermarket.

Americans have a particularly hard time with gjetost, because its color, and to a certain extent its consistency (gjetost can stick to the roof of one's mouth), puts them so strongly in mind of peanut butter. Several times I have heard someone attempting to describe gjetost to a gjetost-virgin by likening it to peanut butter.

How wrong this is! It tastes nothing like peanut butter. "Oh, taste, schmaste," they say. "The color, the consistency, is paramount."

I am passionate about this divisive issue on the world stage. Buy some gjetost, put a couple thin slices on a hot buttered english muffin, close your eyes, expunge all thoughts of Skippy from your mind, and take a lingering bite....

... or at the very least, play GJETOST in your next Scrabble game.

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Poll #340771 taste
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

When you consider the 'taste' of a food, do you include:

Enter other components of 'taste', in your opinion: