{"href":"https://api.simplecast.com/oembed?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcutting-the-curd.simplecast.com%2Fepisodes%2F21f19b36-21f19b36","width":444,"version":"1.0","type":"rich","title":"Episode 188: Book Review: The Telling Room","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_url":"https://image.simplecastcdn.com/images/5d3e67/5d3e671c-55d7-4e85-88b5-260e747f2777/7ad3f244-d339-4400-abb0-31db43581404/1458853930artwork.jpg","thumbnail_height":300,"provider_url":"https://simplecast.com","provider_name":"Simplecast","html":"","height":200,"description":"This week on Cutting the Curd, Diane Stemple chats with Michael Paternity, author of The Telling Room: A Tale of Love, Betrayal, Revenge and the Worlds Greatest Piece of Cheese. In the fall of 1991, while working at a gourmet deli in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Michael Paterniti encountered a piece of cheese. Not just any cheese. This was Paramo de Guzman, a rare Spanish queso reputed to be the finest, and most expensive, in the world. The cheese carried its own legend: Made from an ancient family recipe in the medieval Castilian village of Guzman (pop. 80), the cheese was submerged in olive oil and aged in a cave where it gained magical qualities-if you ate it, some said, you might recover long-lost memories. Too broke to actually buy the cheese, Paterniti made a quixotic vow: that he would meet this cheese again someday. Flash forward ten years, when Paterniti has finally found his way-family in tow-to that tiny hilltop village to meet the famous cheesemaker himself, a voluble, magnetic, heartbroken genius named Ambrosio. What Paterniti discovers in Guzman is nothing like the idyllic slow-food fable he has imagined. Instead, he wanders into-and eventually becomes deeply implicated in-the heart of an unfolding mystery, in which a village begins to spill its long-held secrets, and nothing is quite what it seems. This program was brought to you by Consider Bardwell.\n\n"}