Tag: cheese

Palmiers au Fromage

21 November 2024

It’s Friday evening, friends are coming over for dinner, a nice bottle of crémant d’Alsace is waiting to be opened, you switch on your oven, slice the dough and transfer the slices to the oven. An hour or so later you serve a glass of crémant, accompanied by crispy, lukewarm, aromatic Palmiers au Fromage. Aren’t they lovely?

What You Need
  • Puff Pastry
  • 50 grams of Butter
  • 25 grams of very, very old cheese
  • (optional) Black Pepper and Mustard
What You Do

We used three sheets (12* 12 cm) of puff pastry. Combine the sheets into one by folding the dough. You want to keep the layered structure of the puff pastry. Transfer to the refrigerator for 30 minutes or so. In the meantime, combine 50 grams of very soft butter with 25 grams of finely grated very old cheese until it’s fluffy and creamy. This may take some time! Taste and decide if you want to add more cheese, mustard and/or black pepper.
Dust your work top with flour, roll out the dough, size 12 by 36 cm. Used a brush to coat the dough with the butter mixture. Pick up the left short side of the dough and fold until halfway. Do the same with the right size. It should now be 12 by approximately 18 cm. Repeat. Probably you can’t repeat it after having folded the dough twice. If you think you can, please do so. Now brush halve the dough and fold. The result looks like a 12-cm-long sausage. Wrap in plastic foil, transfer to the refrigerator and let cool through and through.
Preheat your oven to 200 °C or 390 °F. Use a sharp knife to slice the dough-sausage, 0.5 cm is perfect. Cover a baking tray with parchment (baking) paper and bake the Palmiers au Fromage for 10 – 15 minutes or until golden-brown.

Palmiers ©cadwu
Palmiers ©cadwu

Fromage de Fribourg

12 September 2022

When reading La Cuisine Niçoise d’Hélène Barale: Mes 106 recettes, we noticed that she uses only one kind of cheese in her recipes. Not Parmesan, not Pecorino, but Fromage de Fribourg. She adds it to her fish soup, to her ravioli, to her tourte de blette and to various other dishes. But what is Fromage de Fribourg?

It’s also known as Vacherin Fribourgeois and it originates from the region around the Swiss city Fribourg. It’s a semi-hard, creamy cheese made with raw cow milk. It matures for at least 6 weeks in a damp cellar. Its taste is aromatic, floral, full-bodied and lasting, with a touch of sweetness, bitterness and umami. It is used in a fondue called moitié-moitié (50% Gruyère and 50% Fribourg). It’s also possible to make a fondue with Fribourgeois only, using three ingredients: water, cheese and garlic.

Obviously we wanted to taste this cheese and we assumed that in the home town of Hélène Barale we would be able to buy it. We found a great cheese shop and bought a nice slice of this complex cheese. At home we decided to make an omelet with spinach, following a recipe from Hélène Barale for Omelette aux Blettes.

Omelet

For this omelet you need spinach, shallot, garlic, bay leaf, egg and freshly grated Vacherin Fribourgeois. No thyme, black pepper or salt. We were much surprised by the perfectly balanced flavours of spinach, cheese and eggs. Wonderful omelet.
You’ll find all the details you need in La cuisine niçoise d’Hélène Barale: Mes 106 recettes.

Wine Pairing

We enjoyed our omelet with a nice glass of Côtes de Provence Rosé. You could also enjoy it with an unoaked Chardonnay.
If you decide to eat the cheese as dessert, then we suggest a glass of full bodied red wine (Bordeaux, Côtes du Rhône etcetera).

PS

From a culinary point of view we think we understand why Madame Barale favored Fromage de Fribourg. If it’s her personal choice, something typical for the Niçoise cuisine, a culinary trend or perhaps because she was fond of Fribourg, that remains a mystery to us.

Fromage de Fribourg ©cadwu
Omelet with Spinach ©cadwu

Belgian Endive with Cheese Sauce and Ham

17 February 2022

When asked for a typical Flemish dish, award winning chef Jeroen Meus immediately mentioned Belgian Endive with Cheese Sauce and Ham.
At home we found the recipe in my mother’s kookschrift, a notebook with recipes she learned as a young woman. She would cook the dish often, typically on a Sunday evening, and serve it with mashed potatoes. Her recipe is fairly straightforward: wash and clean the Belgian endive and cook it for 30 minutes (the recipe is from 1950!) in salted water. Then make a béchamel sauce, add cheese, wrap the endive in ham, spoon the sauce over the vegetables, add butter and breadcrumbs and transfer the combination to the oven for 15-20 minutes. Done!

Actually, her recipe is not very different from how Jeroen Meus prepares the dish. He doesn’t use breadcrumbs and he adds nutmeg and a splash of lemon to the sauce. He suggests steaming or braising the endive.

Most recipes mention removing the bitter core of the Belgian endive. Perhaps that was necessary in 1950, but today’s Belgian endive is not as bitter, so there is no need to do that. Belgian endive must have some bitterness.

Wine Pairing

Enjoy your Belgian Endive with a nice glass of red wine, one with a bite and not too complex. For instance a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Syrah from France, a Carmenère from Chili or a Spanish Rioja (Crianza or Joven). 

What You Need

  • For the Endive
    • 4 Belgian Endive
    • 4 slices of Excellent Organic Cooked Ham
    • For the Cheese Sauce
      • 20 grams of Flour
      • 20 grams of Butter
      • Milk
      • 75 grams of grated Cheese (preferably a combination of Gruyère and Emmentaler)
      • optional: one Egg Yolk
    • Nutmeg
    • White pepper
  • For the Mash
    • Root Parsley
    • Parsnip
    • Nutmeg
    • Fresh Parsley
    • White Pepper

What You Do

Chop the bottom of the base of the endive and remove the outer leaves if they don’t look great. Steam the endive or braise it in butter. We prefer braising in butter, which may take 30 minutes on low heat. This way you keep all the flavors and the texture. If steamed: make sure you squeeze the endives gently to get rid of the water excess.
Make the cheese sauce with flour, butter and milk, adding most of the grated cheese when the béchamel is ready. Add grated nutmeg and white pepper to taste. You could turn it into a classic Sauce Mornay by adding one egg yolk to the sauce.
Preheat the oven (200°C or 390 °F). Wrap a piece of ham around each endive and arrange in a shallow baking dish. You don’t want any space between the endive. Spoon sauce over the endive. Sprinkle remainder of the cheese over the sauce. Bake until golden brown on top, 15 to 25 minutes. We prefer using the grill.

For the Mash: clean and dice the root parsley and the parsnip (ratio 1:1). Cook quickly in a limited amount of water. When ready, drain and mash using a blender. Add nutmeg and white pepper. Just before serving add lots of finely chopped fresh parsley.

Belgian Endive with Cheese Sauce and Cooked Ham ©cadwu
Belgian Endive with Cheese Sauce and Cooked Ham ©cadwu
Recipe for Belgian Endive with Mornay Sauce and Cooked Ham ©cadwu

Cod with Bleu d’Auvergne

17 March 2021

Bleu d’Auvergne is amongst our favourite cheeses. It’s creamy, semi-hard, moist, powerful, pungent and not too salty. It was created around 1850 in France when a farmer combined cow milk curd with the mould of rye bread. He also noticed that the cheese benefits from increased aeration using needles (similar to the process used when making Stilton cheese). Nowadays Bleu d’Auvergne is a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO), just like the other excellent cheeses from that region (for example Saint-Nectaire and Cantal).
For some reason Bleu d’Auvergne combines extremely well with cod. We tried other combinations, experimented with adding butter, cream or crème fraîche but we always return to this one. It’s a tribute to both the fish and the cheese.

Wine Pairing

The combination may be very specific; wine pairing is not too difficult. In general a fairly present, white wine will be great choice. Could be a Verdejo from Spain, a mildly oaked Chardonnay or a glass of your favourite white wine. No reason to open a bottle of Chablis; the flavours are too bold for a really elegant wine.

What You Need

  • Skinless Cod Loin
  • Bleu d’Auvergne (preferable mature)
  • Olive Oil

What You Do

Heat a heavy cast iron skillet through and through, add olive oil, dry the cod with kitchen paper and fry on the firm side (where the skin used to be) until it’s nice and golden. Flip the fish, reduce the heat and start adding chunks of cheese. It will melt, but make sure you still have these blue bits in there. Baste the fish with the melting cheese. Check the cuisson of the cod (the fish must be opaque and flaky) and serve on a warm plate.

  • Cod with Bleu d’Auvergne ©cadwu
    Cod with Bleu d’Auvergne ©cadwu
  • Blue d'Auvergne ©cadwu
    Blue d’Auvergne ©cadwu