Cheese Admiration and Celebration
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With some apologies to @acpgee in advance, I decided to try a bit of a "slop-proximation" of the "smoky goat cheese plus sweet topping" idea. I haven't had the calories lately for a big cheese indulgence (cut partly back on exercise because reasons), but I was curious.
Cringing a little when I admit it, I put a bit of the smoky goat cheese on a plate, microwaved it (WTH?!?!!) until browned at the edges (I know, I know). Then I put some of the Cornelian Cherry jelly my friend made on top. (Cornelian Cherry is not an actual regular cherry, it's related to dogwood (botanically, it's Cornus mas, whereas cherries are Prunus sp.) The jelly is a bit more tart whereas good regular cherry jelly is more rich/sweet, to me.)
It was good as a flavor combination, despite being a sloppy, half a**ed attempt at similarity to the much better sounding original concept. I'll get there!
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When I was served this in a tapas bar in Las Palmas they cut a neat rectangular slice of the smoked cheese on a rectangular plate and popped it under the broiler until the edges were brown and the centre was gooey. To serve, they put the hot plate on top of an identical cold plate and topped with a little dollop of blueberry jam before bringing to the table. It was served with little bread rolls for mopping up the cheese.1
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My own attempt at the melted cheese tapa. I used old goat gouda and some pajonales cheese (an aged goat cheese, the last of what we brought home from vacation on the Canaries). Didn't manage to make a neat square slice. Broiled in the air fryer and drizzled with date molasses. A rather shocking amount of fat seeps out of the melted cheese. This was 21g of cheese so not too decadent calorie wise.
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Tried this for the first time yesterday - oh my goodness, it’s amazingly yummy. Just needs a plain or lightly flavoured cracker to go with it, nothing harsh or strong. Slightly sweet cheese with an amazing taste which develops as you eat it, and it’s very smooth. I’m in love!
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@claireychn074, that looks good! I had to look it up, haven't seen it before. Side-on, in your photo, it looks somewhat similar to Cypress Grove Lamb Chopper or Midnight Moon, both of which are gouda-style cheeses, the former sheep's milk, the latter goat (both tasty, too). When I looked up Ossau Iraty, some of the photos (of bloom-y rind types) look similar to a goat milk cheese (photo below) I bought recently from my local farmstead cheese guy at the farmers market. He describes it as a Raw Rustic Goat Milk Tomme.
I really like it. Yesterday, I layered some roasted eggplant slices with thin-sliced sweet onions, smoked tofu, and fire-roasted diced (canned) tomatoes, topped it with some of the Tomme, and baked. I thought it was pretty darned good, though I know tofu isn't everyone's thing.
The stripe-y appearance in the photo is because I thin-sliced some with a serrated knife! 😆
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Oh @AnnPT77 a tomme cheese is on my list of must makes! I’ve never had it before, but it’s a favorite in the cheesemaking group I belong to.1
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I'm liking that Hickory Knoll (local farmstead) raw goat milk tomme so much - the one I posted about mid last week - that it's nearly gone. I need to go back to the farmers market today, see if he has more. (Yes, I was able to moderate it, but have eaten around an ounce of it, thin sliced, all on its own, as a snack, most days this week. So good!).
I also used a good dollop of the same maker's plain chevre in last night's dinner. I had a big box of cremini (portobello/brown/etc.) mushrooms I needed to use, so I softened and lightly browned some thin-sliced onions, added a bit of minced garlic to heat briefly when the onions were near-perfect, then heaped my cast iron skillet with sliced mushrooms. When those were done, I tossed some dollops of chevre on top to soften over low heat, then used that mixture to top a serving of red lentil spaghetti. I'm not complaining about the result. (A splash of red wine in there would've been nice, too, but I would've had to open a bottle just for that, and didn't really have wine in my beverage plans, so . . . .)
I've mentioned before that the photos of the giant cheeses and big cheese counters up-thread were from a big local produce market. It's a fun place, in many ways. I stopped by there yesterday, on my way home from an appointment, got guavas and kumquats (also 😋).
I'd mentioned that they have a whole 2-room walk in for dairy products, including a big section of the routine commercial block cheeses, in quite the range of types/flavors, plus that's where most of the ricotta, mascarpone, and similar cheeses are. Below is a photo of part of the room that has a lot of the cheese. The photo shows most but not all of it: The 2 refrigerated rooms also include regular milk, kefir, kombucha, yogurt, etc., on other walls. In the front of this photo, you can see a growing section of vegan cheeses and a few related vegan products.
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Hubby and I had both independently heard people raving about Saltspring Island cheese, and a couple of days ago we discovered that our new favourite tiny organic & specialty store brings it in. We picked up a tub of Ruckles, which are little cylinders of chevre packed half-submerged in grapeseed oil with rosemary, thyme, garlic and chives. I've cut one up into tiny pieces and put it on my lunch salad the past few days and OMG SOOOOO nice!! I can't wait to explore some of their other offerings.2
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SuzanneC1l9zz wrote: »Hubby and I had both independently heard people raving about Saltspring Island cheese, and a couple of days ago we discovered that our new favourite tiny organic & specialty store brings it in. We picked up a tub of Ruckles, which are little cylinders of chevre packed half-submerged in grapeseed oil with rosemary, thyme, garlic and chives. I've cut one up into tiny pieces and put it on my lunch salad the past few days and OMG SOOOOO nice!! I can't wait to explore some of their other offerings.
I've never heard of that one. It sounds wonderful! Herbs and cheese are an excellent combination.
Looked up the maker online: BC is a bit distant for me, but a place it would be lovely to visit, and it looks like the cheeses may be available more regionally, too.
Me, I did go back today and get more of the raw goat milk tomme. Tonight's dinner is also cheesy: I think I may've mentioned up-thread the "roast cherry tomatoes with a hunk of feta" pasta topping that seems to have originated on TikTok of all places. I'm making that tonight, with a separate roasting dish of sliced onions, garlic and (to be added to those soon) some chunked up cremini-portobello-brown mushrooms, to use those up. Maybe cut up some fresh basil leaves (from plants a friend started & gave me) to add, late on, since you reminded me of the fresh-herbs concept.1 -
@AnnPT77 I want to eat dinner at YOUR house! You make the most interesting meals!3
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I made my second pan de higo to go with a tapas spread with Spanish tortilla, cheese, charcuterie and vegetable sides (pimiento de padron and tomato salad). This is a great addition to a cheeseboard that contains salty cheese.
I used 90g toasted almonds with 400g of dried figs (stems removed) and and 2 tablespoons of brandy or cognac.
Blitz the nuts for a few seconds very roughly and set aside. In the food processor blitz the dried figs with the brandy until the sticky paste forms a ball, scraping down stuff stuck from the sides if necessary. Add the nuts to the fig mixture and use the food processor to knead the nuts in. Press into silicon muffin tins, top with another muffin tin and press down with a flat bottomed glass and refrigerate using a jar for weight. Most recipes say wait a day or two, but I often use after a few hours. Keeps several months in the fridge.
You can experiment with other dried fruit or nuts.
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[quote="AnnPT77;c-46683371"[/quote]
I’ve just drooled onto my pillow 🤣
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So, here's a thing I found fun. The local Whole Foods has a basket where they put small bits of wrapped cheese for sale, odds and ends from cheese cutting. It can be a good way to try new things, so I usually check it out when I go there. Today, as I approached, I was disappointed to see that it had a bunch of small chunks of blue cheese that all looked the same. To my surprise, they were quite varied!
So, I bought six (!) small chunks of blue cheeses, all different sources/types, ranging in price from 20 cents to $1.40. For way less than the price of a movie ticket, I had myself a luxe cheese tasting of:
Saint Agur
Point Reyes
Roth Buttermilk
Jasper Hill Bayley Hazen
Igor Gorgonzola Dolce
Gabriel Coulet Roquefort
In the photo below, the fork tines point toward the Saint Agur, then they go clockwise from there. (The blue paper at the edges is my post-it note strips used to label.) They all look quite similar, but there were a range of flavor experiences - really fun. I enjoyed them all, but I'd give the edge to Saint Agur and Gabriel Coulet, subjectively. The Igor was really good, too, but idiosyncratic. Thinking
it might be especially good with the right fruit. (I still have some of each of them left - these were just 5-9g chunks, enough to go around the circle twice for small tastes, with a neutral cracker bite and some water in between.) Estimated 170 calories for the plate, including the cracker-y thing (not shown).
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Thanks for all the pictures. This is what sweet dreams are made of.
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I love Saint Agur. In the UK it is sold in regular supermarkets, and pretty inexpensive. We use it mostly in green salads that include fruit and maybe candied walnuts or pecans.1
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I love gruyere cheese1
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Can't decide whether to post this in the cheese thread or the produce thread. Maybe both? 😉
There was blue cheese left over from the tasting (posted above), so I took one of the middling-preference ones that was a bigger remaining chunk (Point Reyes blue), and put it in dinner. This is dinner . . . uncharacteristically, eating almost like a grown-up tonight!
That's roasted cremini mushrooms, roasted asparagus, crumbled blue cheese, red lentil penne pasta, salad with some yummy long-aged balsamic vinegar on it, as a side. Cheeeeeese!
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This past weekend we tasted three of my homemade cheeses. They all turned out so good!
Left to right: butterkase, Cambozola, and farmhouse cheddar.
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@Nicoles0305 . . .
Oh, yum! I have serious cheese envy: Those look beautiful and delicious. Lovely presentation there, too.
Nice work!1 -
Not a fancy brand or anything, but, oh my goodness, so yummy (and sharp)! Private Selection (Kroger) Cheddar Gruyere. Just had some…simple happiness.4
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Hubby bought some goat gouda. Not as good as the stuff we used to buy when living in the Netherlands but still delicious. Aged goat gouda his one if my favourites. A little like pecorino.3
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I've been turning blue cheeses into blue cheese butter when it gets near it's sell by date. Mash with butter, roll into little logs, wrap in baking paper, pop into a ziplock and freeze. The first batch I made was mild enough to serve on steak when I sliced the log into coin sized disks. My second batch was much cheesier and too strong for steak. Instead I have been using chunks to make blue cheese croutons. Cube a slice of bread and set aside. Melt some of the stilton butter in the microwave using a bowl large enough to toss the the bread cubes, drizzling with some olive oil if your blue cheese butter if it is very cheese heavy. Toss the bread cubes in the melted butter then toast in the air fryer or oven for 5-8 minutes at 160C in crunchy. Salad with roasted grapes and the blue cheese croutons. Might make some more to toss onto tinned tomato soup.
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On the reduced calorie cheese front, I'm liking this lately (and I don't think I've posted about it on the thread before: Jarlsberg lite.
It has the kind of nutty flavor of regular Jarlsberg, has more protein than fat, and is actually a fairly efficient source of non-meat protein, IMO. The melting qualities are not the same as full-fat, of course, but it's pretty nice in sandwiches, salads, or just to eat.
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Cheese is life!!
Last weekend I had my foodie bestie over and we had a cheese platter made some some really interesting cheese - raw sheep cheddar, ashed soft buffalo cheese, a washed rind d'affinois, a soft blue - which spanned a couple of nights. By Saturday, we had a lot of bits and pieces (which went with other bits and pieces in my fridge because cheeeeese)... so we made a Fromage Fort. Chopped/grated all the leftover cheese (minus moulds and rinds) and threw it in the food processor with a glug or 2 of white wine and some butter and blitzed it into the most amazing, smooth, cheesey dip. Oh lordy... it was a thing of beauty.3 -
Alatariel75 wrote: »Cheese is life!!
Last weekend I had my foodie bestie over and we had a cheese platter made some some really interesting cheese - raw sheep cheddar, ashed soft buffalo cheese, a washed rind d'affinois, a soft blue - which spanned a couple of nights. By Saturday, we had a lot of bits and pieces (which went with other bits and pieces in my fridge because cheeeeese)... so we made a Fromage Fort. Chopped/grated all the leftover cheese (minus moulds and rinds) and threw it in the food processor with a glug or 2 of white wine and some butter and blitzed it into the most amazing, smooth, cheesey dip. Oh lordy... it was a thing of beauty.
That's truly cheese celebration. Invite me next time, eh? (JK! 😉 But yum.)2 -
A cheese thread…..a dram come true! Cheese is life! Bookmarked to read before bed tonight! 🧀1
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A nice little heap of mango-ginger white stilton. 😋
Bedtime snack, I guess?
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@AnnPT77 yum!
My favs: Brie! 🇫🇷 Gruyère 🇨🇭 Burrata 🇮🇹
And my hometown mozzarella 🗽 hehe
Brie and fig anything would be great right now.2 -
Y'know, I just made a quick post-biking dinner of mixed-together leftover roasted cauliflower and summer squash, plus red lentil penne, and I briefly melted some thin-sliced Oaxaca cheese over the top then stirred it in. The Oaxaca is mild, fairly calorie efficient**, and made a nice quasi-mac'n'cheese with the veggies & penne.
** It's a part-skim cheese, very melty. It's about 80 calories per ounce (roughly 28g), 7g protein. I think its role in its home culture is for quesadillas and that sort of thing.1 -
See, this is dangerous, I just discovered I can get Oaxaca cheese, but only in 1kg lots... Hmmmmm2
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