Baked Feta with Dates and Honey

In winter, feta becomes an orphan, a forgotten cheese. Unless you’re basking in the Greek Isles surrounded by plump tomatoes and cukes, you skip over feta in favor of triple crèmes, butterscotchy Goudas, balsa wood boxes of Epoisses. Am I right?

I’m here to negotiate in favor of feta. If you bake it with honey and dates, you’ve got an easy appetizer, a succulent puff of briny softness, a winter warmer, if you will. I love an island of baked feta accompanied by dried fruit, a handful of walnuts, a sprig of thyme, and some homemade pita chips. To continue reading, please visit the DiBruno Blog.

Full disclosure: This is part of a freelance series I write for Di Bruno Bros. Twice a month, I select a cheese and develop a post for their blog. This is how I cover the cost of my dairy habit.

Roquefort Meatloaf

Saturday's cheese tasting at Tria put me in the mood to cook with big blues. Lo, when I came across a recipe for Roquefort Meatloaf in a dog-eared copy of The Silver Palate, I knew I had to make it this week. Today, it appears in my column on the Di Bruno Bros. blog. 

This is a good recipe for the winter months. It's hearty, company-worthy, and it keeps well. It's also crazy delicious -- this from someone who is not a big meatloaf lover. Consider this the luxury liner of meatloaves. The center is like bread pudding, light and fluffy, while the exterior is dense and toothsome.

If you're tired of serving turkey for Thanksgiving, this could be your salvation. It's a bit of a project, but on a wintry afternoon when the house is cold, why doesn't want to rock a fur hat and roll up a meatloaf?  For the recipe, please click here.

Yours Truly, during Saturday's ice storm

Cheddar Breakfast Bread Pudding

Now that we’re entering fingerless-glove weather, I find myself craving The Hot Breakfast. Usually, I can sneak out the door on a cracker and be fine until I dip into my cheese valise at lunch, but when the wind kicks up, I want a heavy belly when I board the train. I’ll take oatmeal, groats, gruel – but what I really love is breakfast bread pudding.

Once you discover this use for stale baguette, you will dream of this dish in your blackest sleep. I am the sort of person who falls asleep by thinking about future meals, and this is one recipe that I use in place of Ambien – if I think about making this, I fall asleep quickly just so I can get up to eat it.

Breakfast bread pudding is similar to strata, but it’s less eggy and you don’t have to prepare it the night before, though you could. It takes about 30 minutes to bake, which is all the time you need to shower, walk the dog, and pack a lunch.

Although the recipe below calls for sundried tomatoes (I used some that I’d oven-roasted), you can really use any tidbits rattling around in your crisper – leftover roasted veggies, scraps of bacon, some chopped onion. On a whim, I tossed in kielbasa. Boom. Delish. The result is custardy and fluffy with just a little crunch from the toasty bits on top.

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Cheddar Breakfast Bread Pudding

Serves: 2

4 eggs

1 cup whole milk 

2/3 cup cheddar, cubed or grated (I used Quickes Clothbound Cheddar)

6 thickly sliced baguette rounds, preferably stale

½ cup cherry tomatoes, halved; or sun-dried

½ cup kielbasa, bacon, or chopped ham (optional)

Fresh herbs, such as basil or chives

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease two oven-proof ramekins with a pat of butter or a little oil. You can skip this step, but the ramekins will be a little tough to clean.

2. Cube or shred baguette rounds, and divide them between the two ramekins. Tuck cheese, tomatoes, and kielbasa into the bread, leaving plenty of crannies.

3. Mix together eggs and milk in a tall measuring cup, then pour over the bread mixture in each ramekin.

4. Fill a casserole pan half full of water, then set the ramekins into this cozy water bath. Pop the whole thing into the oven, and bake for 30 minutes, or until a fork comes out clean and the puddings are nicely browned. Top with fresh herbs. Devour.

Bread Puddings are baked in a water bath. Easy peezy.

Note: These are best right out of the oven. If you're making these for yourself, store the extra one -- unbaked -- in your fridge, and bake it up fresh the next morning.

August Cheese Round-Up

At the American Cheese Society, earlier this month

August was a good month for cheese, from recipes to reports on the American Cheese Society (ACS) conference in Montreal. Greatly inspired by these, I submit to you my dairy montage from the blogosphere. If I missed any choice posts, drop me a line. 

Here's what August looked like on the cheese web:

Cookbookman examined the canned cheese, Cougar Gold.
Kevin over at Closet Cooking waxed poetic about blue cheese guacamole.
Maddie, a lit lovin' cheesemongeress at Artisanal, launched a cheese and poetry web.      Alexandra Cooks concocted homemade ricotta pizza.
AskChefDennis rocked the squash blossom with zucchini blossom cannoli.
Janet Fletcher's column in The San Francisco Chronicle plugged new cheesemakers.     
The grrls at Cheese and Champagne offered an all-American goat cheese round-up.
Cheese Underground highlighted new WI cheeses.
At the sandwich blog, Grilled Cheese Social, MacKenzie fried a Bee Sting.
In Montreal, Gordonzola captured cheese graffiti.
And in case you missed it, cheesemonger Anne Saxelby made The New York Times.
Off the cutting board, a cool new organization formed, Bloggers Without Borders.

Oysters Rockefeller

I have always wanted to make baked oysters, ever since I was a young girl and read M.F.K. Fisher’s Consider The Oyster, a mini masterpiece about the bivalve. In the spring, I am teaching this book in my Food Writing class at St. Joseph’s University, so I decided this winter that the oyster would be my pet project.

Luckily, Oysters Rockefeller calls for cheese...Parmesan sprinkled over the top. I searched all over for recipes – it seems every famous chef, from Julia Child to Emeril Lagasse, espouses a different version. (Lagasse’s recipe requires green food coloring. Ix Nay.) Most involve oysters, breadcrumbs, spinach, and a splash of Pernod. Yee-haw.

I can’t seem to make any recipe without tweaking it, so my version below is a mélange – I based it on the original, from Antoine’s Restaurant in New Orleans, then gleaned a few ideas from epicurious,com, which features 5 different versions.

All this goes to say: these were the hit of our family Christmas dinner. With a little champagne, this put everyone in a loving mood. I think I will make this a tradition, as everyone was very eager to help peel potatoes in the kitchen once we’d had a round of bubbly and oysters. On a snowy day, it was a perfect afternoon snack.

Oyster’s Rockefeller

2 cup fresh spinach, loosely chopped

½ cup chopped scallions

1 garlic clove

1 Tablespoon chopped parsley

1 stick melted butter

½ cup dry breadcrumbs

2 Tablespoons Pernod (or Pastis)

1 teaspoon fennel seeds

Splash of hot sauce

15 oysters (local, if possible)

½ cup freshly grated Parmesan

Combine first nine ingredients in a food processor (or finely chop everything) – you don’t want to grind this too intensely; there should be some chunky bits. Then find a family member with a strong forearm to shuck the oysters, leaving the little mollusk on the half shell. A Madeleine pan makes for a great platter and will keep you from spilling the coveted oyster liquor.

Preheat the oven to 450. Then, top each oyster with 1 Tablespoon of the filling and sprinkle with cheese. Bake until browned, about 10 minutes. (If you have leftover filling, you can make a divine nibble by toasting it on a baguette.

Serve with lemon wedges, bubbly, and a broad grin.

Blue-Cheese Stuffed Pumpkins

Today's cheese tasting at Quince is sold out! Yee-haw. Here's the recipe I'll be sharing for a quick Thanksgiving side dish. It's adapted from a Deborah Madison recipe that I've had marked for about the last three years.

I tested several versions last weekend, using different cheeses; the original recipe called for gruyere, but that got gluey when baked. The blue cheese melted beautifully, combining with the cream to form a piquant cheese sauce that was a pleasant contrast to the sweetness of the pumpkin.

You can use ornamental pumpkins for this dish – yes, the squat, ridged ones that most people use as decorations. Several people at my local farmers’ market expressed skepticism about this idea, insisting that these squash were merely decorative, but I baked them up, and they tasted wonderful – similar to acorn squash in flavor and texture. In fact, they were tastier than the small pie pumpkin I also tried for this recipe.

The nice thing about this recipe is that you can adapt it to the number of guests at your table, and very little prep is required, other than slicing off the caps of the pumpkins and scooping out the seeds. The presentation is simple and memorable – who will forget the year you served baby pumpkins stuffed with blue cheese?

Baked Miniature Pumpkins With Blue Cheese

1 miniature pumpkin

Salt

freshly ground pepper

2-3 Tablespoons cream

1-2 Tablespoons crumbled blue cheese*

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and slice off the top of the pumpkin, scooping out the seeds. Rub the inside with a dash of salt. Pour in the cream, cheese, and add several cranks of black pepper. Replace lid and bake in pan, 45-50 minutes. Serve hot.

*I used Roaring Forties Blue, which is on the sweet side and very creamy. Hook’s Blue Paradise (from Wisconsin) or Cashel Blue (from Ireland) would probably be comparable.

Cheesegiving Ideas

One of the things I like to do when I can’t fall asleep is dream up menus. It’s a strange obsession, I know. Lately, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to the Thanksgiving dinner I’m planning for my Pops and his wife, Dayle, who will be flying in from Iowa. I’m even considering changing the name this year to…yup…Cheesegiving.

It might be overkill to put cheese into every dish, but I’m definitely planning to blast through tradition and try some new recipes. Here are some fave ideas, culled from food blogs, that I'm considering:

- Ezra Poundcake posted a butternut squash casserole recipe with cheddar cheese. This could be a nice change-up from sweet potatoes with marshmallows.

- Who doesn’t love a cheese appetizer, or an amuse served after the salad course? The Cheeselover posted about tumblers full of marinated goat cheese served with a mini baguette. It looks fairly easy to recreate, although she doesn't give an exact recipe.

- Blue Kitchen’s wild mushroom casserole with ricotta has me moaning within. Maybe for supper the night before Thanksgiving?

- I have a weird food crush on Closet Kitchen’s Jalapeno Popper Dip. It’s a little bit bowling-alley, but it would make for great nosh while people are chopping.

- Homemade butter at Food in Jars looks like something good to have on hand. I'm a cheese lover and a butter gal.

- Because I hate the thought of not having a solid breakfast before I start cooking, here’s what I’m thinking for Thanksgiving morning: Smitten Kitchen’s Bloody Mary’s, baked eggs, and chive biscuits. I’d add some cheddar to the biscuits, of course.

Finally, I can't resist previewing the baked blue-cheese-stuffed miniature pumpkins I tested the other night, thanks to Deborah Madison. The photo is at the top of this post. I'll be sharing the recipe at this Saturday's tasting, then I'll post it online. I think it's the best of Cheesegiving in a shell -- blue cheese, cream, black pepper, and individual pumpkins, all baked into a glorious blend of sharp, sweet, and saucy!

What are you making for Cheesegving, dahhhhlink?