Old Country Cottage Cheese Cake

For a short while, I actually loved going to the dentist. Though we had left Manhattan for the suburbs when I was five, we didn’t change dentists for a few years. So when my appointment to have a cavity filled coincided with my father’s gin game night—often the case, since he played two or three times a week in those years—I usually spent the night alone with my parents in the city while my brother and sister remained home with my grandfather.

I always wore a party dress, because af