Raw vs. Pasteurized: Stilton vs. Stichelton

Stilton (left) and Stichelton

If you love cheese, you probably know about the recent crackdowns on two prominent raw milk dairies in Washington State. I’ve been reading a lot about food policy this week, and so I treated myself to a side-by-side tasting of two British blues – one made from raw milk, the other pasteurized... To read on, please visit the Di Bruno blog.

Full disclosure: This post is part of a paid bimonthly series I write for Di Bruno Bros., one of my fave cheese haunts in Philadelphia.   

Blue Cheese Baked Pears

The highlight of our last tasting at Quince: these luscious Anjou pears stuffed with blue cheese, cranberries, and walnuts -- basted with cider-port sauce. We even managed to convert a tentative cheese eater with a new French boyfriend (she attended the tasting on the sly, while he was out of town).

Because blue cheese makes some people nervous, we selected a mild temptress, Bleu d'Auvergne. However, you could ramp up the blue flavor by using Stilton in this recipe. Serve these pears on a bed of greens at Thanksgiving -- that's my plan. They are a little bit salad, a little bit dessert, with a nod to the world of stuffing. Perfect.

Blue Cheese Baked Pears

            Adapted from a recipe by Ina Garten

            3 ripe Anjou pears

            ¼ cup fresh lemon juice

            3 oz. crumbled blue cheese

            ¼ c. dried cranberries

            ¼ c. walnut halves, toasted, chopped

            ½ cup apple cider

            3 Tablespoons port

            1/3 cup light brown sugar

            ¼ cup olive oil

            6 oz. baby arugula or spinach

            salt

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Toss toasted walnuts, cranberries, and blue cheese in a bowl. Peel pears and slice in half, removing the core. In a new bowl, combine cider, port, and brown sugar. Arrange pear halves in a pie pan so that they fit snugly, and top each half with cheese-nut mixture. Then drizzle with cider mixture.

Bake for 30 minutes, basting occasionally. Remove and let pears cool. Combine any remaining basting liquid from the pan with olive oil and lemon juice to make a dressing. Dress the greens, and set out six plates. Arrange baked pear halves on top of dressed greens, adding a pinch of salt if desired,

           

Future Tastings with Madame Fromage:

November 20, Thanksgiving Cheese Plate with Marisa McClellan (foodinars.com)

December 18, Holiday Cheese Pairings

January 22, Fondu

Please reserve in advance by calling Quince in Philadelphia at 215.232.3425.  

Stilton Shortbread

So, Cheesemas approaches. Until this year, I’d never started off the baking season with anything savory, but this time around it’s different. I have a lot of cheese on hand, and lately, I’ve been eyeing a very veiny block of stilton every time I open the fridge. I love stilton, especially at the Mann Center in June – there’s nothing better than hearing the Philadelphia Orchestra live while crunching down on a huge baguette shmeared with chutney and Colston Bassett.

Our friend Emma, a Scottish scientist, used to meet us there, arriving with a blanket under one arm and a backpack full of smelly cheese slung over her shoulder. (The mosquitoes always swarmed the other direction.) Then Emma took off to California to eat oranges and gab in a lab, leaving us stilton-less. To commemorate those days, Dr. E. sent me a stinking mass of cheese for my birthday a few weeks ago. There’s no better birthday present than stilton.

Today, I put on some Ravi Shankar and began working my own lab of sorts, baking away in the blue kitchen. I think everyone in Fishtown knows I baked stilton shortbread today because the house is whiffy…wonderfully so. Even the dog is roaming in a stupor.

I’m going to take these stiltony biscuits to a potluck tonight, and instead of breaking out the port (which I’d do at home), I’m taking along of jar of onion-fig jam that I’ve been saving for just the right occasion. Truth is, this Mt. Vikos onion-fig jam may be better than my shortbread. It’s so good, my brother still remembers when I served him some two years ago, and he asks for it by name. I was planning to save this jar for him, but alas, the stilton beckons, and these shortbready biscuits need some sort of sweet side. They’re very heady.

A stiltony shout-out to Lauren T., of the blog Sensuous Particulars, who gave me the idea to make blue cheese shortbread in the first place. She sent me a Washington Post recipe for walnut-blue cheese cookies; I took a detour into Epicurious because I only had pecans on hand, and friends, the wind is a sourpuss today, and I didn’t want to walk to the store. Instead, I stayed home and rocked some sitar’n stilton. What could be more…cheesemasy?

Stilton Shortbread

1/2 cup unsalted butter at room temperature
1 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 3/4 cups flour
1 cup Stilton, crumbled
1/4 cup ground pecans (or walnuts)

parchment paper

Combine butter, sugar, and salt -- I used a mixer. Add stilton and ground pecans, then mix dough with your hands until the mixture holds together, loosely. It will be dry, the consistency of damp ashes. Mold the dough it into two logs, the thickness of your wrists. Wrap the logs in plastic wrap and refrigerate for an hour. Dance around the house to stay warm, then preheat the oven to 325. Cut parchment paper to fit a large cookie sheet, then slice the logs into quarter-inch rounds. Bake about 20 minutes. Cool before serving with port, figs, dark lipstick.

Note: Mt. Vikos Fig-Onion Jam is available at Quince Fine Foods, and at Downtown Cheese in Reading Terminal Market.

Roquefort vs. Stilton

Here’s my million-dollar idea: blue cheese playing cards.  What?  You don’t think there are enough poker-playing strong-cheese-lovers out there?  Or, are you under the misguided impression that there are only a few blue cheeses in the world? 

Well, here’s my latest revelation:  there are more different blue cheeses on the market than I can keep track of.  Possibly hundreds.  Maybe thousands.  In fact, I have at least a dozen Saran-wrangled wedges in my cheese drawer, and I don’t think I’ve even sampled one percent of the moldy blues that are being cave-aged at this moment.  It looks like I’m going to have to embark upon a blue cheese summer.

When I first started this blog, I had the silly notion that I would take on a different kind of cheese each month.  Newsflash: it takes more than a month to really know a cheese, kind of like dating.  Blue cheese and I are still on first base.  I’m only now beginning to understand the nuances of “liberal blueing,” and I’m just beginning to appreciate the wild differences between a rough-rinded blue (like, say, a stilton) and a foil-wrapped blue, (i.e. Roquefort).

Take last weekend’s second cheese-off.  I finally got to try these two world-class blues side-by-side, and I was stunned by how different they tasted.  The Roquefort was creamy and sharp, but salty as a starfish, whereas the stilton was crumbly and robust with much subtler flavors – hints of leather and woodsiness.  They even looked different – the Carles Roquefort was wet, the color of porcelain.  Trés elegante.  The Colston-Bassett Stilton was dry with an egg-nogish color that deepened as you got to the rind.  It made me think of a fine wool suit.

In my pack of cards, the Roquefort would definitely be the Queen of Diamonds – edgy, refined; think delicate veins on a high forehead – whereas the stilton would have to be the King of Hearts – a smooth operator with a crusty smile and a penchant for ascots and cummerbunds. Which do I prefer?  The stilton, of course.  Who wants to play blue cheese rummy?