More chopped liver, continued

Dear Friends and Family,

I posted the earlier version and then couldn't figure our how to un-post it to continue it, so here is the continuation in a separate post.

Here is what EP had to say about "gribbinis":

"Thanks for gribbinis (my grandmother's pronunciation) recipe. Lived on the stuff back in the 1940s, haven't had it in years. Served over grated black radish or mashed Lima beans in our culinarily-distinguished family. w/ black bread to mop up the schmaltz."

Yum: it almost makes me want to give up being a vegetarian.

Here is a new dish I concocted:

Prepared 1 lb. fuselli noodles the usual way, al dente. Put about 1/2 pound in oiled shallow 8" Pyrex baking dish. Cut up monouri ricotta cheese in small bits and mixed in all over. Added some grated cheese. Baked in oven till hot, then added frozen baby peas (in last few minutes to keep them firm) and broiled to crisp the top. Delicious. The monouri does not melt, as one would expect, but is delectable nonetheless.

Monouri cheese is something we discovered in Greece many years ago. Never saw it in the US, until it began to appear in the best NYC cheese stores. Now our wonderful North Shore Farms in Sea Cliff carries it, very proudly. Monouri ricotta is new to me. The previous version I had was plain manouri, which is like a goat cheese, but with a distinctive flavor. In Greece, we walked into a cheese shop, where only marble counters were visible. When one asked for cheese, a marble lid was lifted, a fork went in and pulled, out of the brine I guess, a hunk of cheese, and you would indicate how much you wanted. Then you would get a loaf of bread in another shop and eat by the roadside a most delicious meal of bread and cheese.

There was a little leftover of the noodle dish, enough for one small meal. So the next night, I added a few more noodles, some more manouri, a little bit of butter and heated it in the micro. I then broke into it two eggs, to make poached eggs, 1 minute more in the micro. This dish was for Merwin, and he liked it a lot: whites solidified, yolks runny.

Today was very special: we went to the MET's HD opera film, "Der Rosenkavalier," with Renée Fleming and Kristinn Sigmundsson. I didn't know if I could last 5 hours, but I did with no trouble. The performance was compelling, as I could tell because I cried during a lot of it. I think I am the only one who does that: artists excelling greatly at what they do make me weep. We had arranged to go with the Dzens with whom we share a wedding anniversary month and year: January 1951. Our friend Doris was there too, and afterward we 5 had a splendid dinner at Bistro Toulous in Port Washington. Really splendid.

Love to all,
Bernice