Tag Archives: blue cheese

Cheese Collection on Society6

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As many of you know, last year Tenaya Darlington (Madame Fromage) and I worked on a series of seasonal cheese articles. We were both dreaming of turning these cheeses into some kind of illustrated products. And today we are finally opening the doors to our cheese collection over at Society6*.

I’m totally over the top excited about doing this with Tenaya and the best thing is, I’m learning so much about cheese.  And don’t you agree that for any cheese loving person, these products makes great holiday gifts?

Our cheese selection includes art prints, greeting cards, iPhone cases, laptop sleeves, tote bags, pillows, mugs, wall clocks, hoodies and T-shirts etc. One of my favorites is this pillow with a Provelone patternIt’s decorative and hilarious at the same time! In the future we hope to add duvet covers and shower curtains to our cheese collection. Or how about some blue cheese leggings? We also hope that Society6 one day will add tea towels and aprons to their standard products.

We really hope you will enjoy our selection.

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See also…
Madame Fromage’s Cheese Lovers Gift Guide

Cheese Calendar by Tenaya Darlington & Johanna Kindvall
Your Spring Goat Cheese Primer (part 1)
Late Summer Cheese Picnic (part 2)
Smoke and Funk: A Fall Cheese Board (part 3)
Winter Blues: A Pairing Party for 8 to 12 (part 4)

Selection of cheeses in my portfolio.

*Society6 is an online print-on-demand shop which offers many different product with printed artworks on them. Which is great as we don’t have to keep everything in stock. The product will be printed and handled just when ordered.  Society6 ships anything almost anywhere in the world.

Winter Blues: A Pairing Party for 8 to 12 (part 4)

© Johanna Kindvall

 

I hope you all are having a wonderful start of 2015. Winter is here and it’s time for Tenaya Darlington, aka Madame Fromage and my final post in our seasonal cheese calendar, Winter (below you can find links to the other posts). As it is the end of the series, we thought it was suitable to celebrate with a blue cheese pairing party.

I hope you have enjoyed our Seasonal Cheese Calendar as much as we have. Eventually we will create cards and prints. They will be for sale in both our shops.
Cheers.

Winter Blues: A Pairing Party for 8 to 12
by Madame Fromage

Late winter is an ideal time to host an Around the World with Blue Cheese party. In the cold months, who doesn’t dream of traveling abroad? Since so many countries make iconic blues, it’s delightful to take one’s taste buds on a cruise from Stilton to Roquefort, then home again for a taste of artisan American funk.

Blues vary widely in taste and texture. Some swing savory with notes of creamed spinach, fresh herbs, or even pine — while others deliver a sweet song to the tongue. Gorgonzola Dolce tastes like ice cream (try it with cherry jam and graham crackers), and Valdéon can deliver notes of grape and white chocolate. Other blues make me think of oysters – all minerals and brine. Exquisite.

Here’s what to do if you want to host a blue cheese pairing party:

1) pick a wide range of blues, like the ones listed below – aim for five or six hunks, you’ll need ¼ or ½ pound each.

2) Invite 8 to 12 friends, and tell each person to bring an after-dinner drink: stout, barleywine, Scotch/whiskey, or a fortified wine (like Port, Madeira, or Sherry).

Then, set out all of your cheeses – let them come to room temperature before serving, and use notecards to label them – and garnish them with some grapes, dates or apricots, walnuts, berry jam, honey, and dark chocolate.

At your tasting party, let the blues talk. Try them one at a time with a variety of beverages. You’ll go through every glass in your cupboard. Between bites, you can eat grapes or baguette slices to cleanse your palate. At the end of the night, snap photos of your favorite pairings. If you forget, don’t worry – everyone will remember the night they came to your house for a blue cheese initiation.

Note: if you don’t want to mix too many kinds of alcohol, just pick dessert wines or stout/barleywines.

Five Iconic Blue Cheeses

© Johanna Kindvall

Stilton
Britain’s iconic blue is savory with hints of tobacco and leather. It’s sold in wheels with a cigar-colored rind, making its whole disposition rather grandfatherly. Think of it as a craggy, cozy old character – ideally suited for slushy days and a back-drop of scratchy folk records. “Potted Stilton” is sold in crocks – a sort of holiday treat. It’s soft and pungent, delicious with chutney and a plate of oaty biscuits. For a much-loved pairing, sip a glass of Port (or even Scotch). Stilton also loves stout.

© Johanna Kindvall

Valdeon
Spain’s most famous blue is a “granny” cheese, sweet and a little salty with a shawl made of Sycamore leaves. Lean in and you’ll smell a damp cottage with a front walkway made of slate and violets sticking up between the cracks. Lovely for dessert, try serving it with a spot of dark chocolate – it has a hint of white chocolate on the finish, which is lovely to play off. Walnuts and honey are a fine pairing, too. Sherry and barleywine make especially good matches.

© Johanna Kindvall

Gorgonzola
Italy produces a pair of twin blue cheeses, dolce (sweet) and piccante (sharp). Piccante loves pasta and is terrific shmeared on steak or stirred into white bean soup. Dolce loves a light clear honey and a crack of black pepper, alongside some pears – it’s so gooey, you can spoon it up like mousse. Try pairing it with a fruity lambic (Kriek) or barleywine.© Johanna Kindvall

Roquefort
Really good French Roquefort tastes like a cheese from the sea – salty and mineral bright. Its indigo veins shimmer, and its paste is the consistency of melting butter, thanks to sheep’s milk. Roquefort gains its extraordinary combination of flavors from aging in seaside caves that are famous for their “fleurines” – fissures that allow the damp air to circulate. Quality Roquefort (I like Carles), served with a chilled glass of Sauternes, will leave you speechless.© Johanna Kindvall

Rogue River Smokey
One of the great American artisan blues, RRS tastes like bacon in the form of cheese. It loves camping, pancakes, and long walks on the beach. Rogue Creamery, in Oregon, makes a dozen different blues, each one subtly different. This selection is gently smoked over hazelnut shells, making for a nutty, buttery rogue. Pair it with an achingly dark stout or a Manhattan.

Wondering how blue cheeses get their dark veins? They’re pierced with long needles. The piercings allow air to flow through the wheels, and that promotes “blue-ing.” Many people think that blue mold is injected into the cheese, but that’s not so. The “blue” develops naturally, thanks to a special culture (Penicillium Roqueforti) that cheesemakers stir into the curds. That said, “blue” likes to wander, so you’ll want to store your blue cheeses away from other cheeses in your fridge.

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Please also read the other parts in this Seasonal Cheese Calendar:

Your Spring Goat Cheese Primer (part 1)
Late Summer Cheese Picnic (part 2)
Smoke and Funk: A Fall Cheese Board (part 3)

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Spinach Lasagna

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Well Alice on her lovely Swedish food blog Brax on Food asked me for a kitchen confession and here is one of them…
The other day we had some friends over for spinach lasagna. Just a half an hour before everybody arrived there was a small crisis in the kitchen. I had forgotten about the cheese sauce on the stove, it cooked for at least 45 minutes too long. Even though it was on very low heat the sauce had separated and the cheese had transformed into some kind of porridge that was floating in the saucepan. It did not taste burned or bad it just looked a little uneatable. One solution could be to try to get some new cheese in the supermarket. But they would probably not have a great replacement for the Gorgonzola that was floating in my saucepan. I had nothing to lose, so I poured everything in the blender and out came the smoothest cheese sauce I have ever done…

(Serves 4-5 people)

You will need lasagna noodles enough for three layers. Precook the noodles in a big pan or use already precooked noodles.

spinach sauce

2 bunches of spinach
olive oil
3 cloves of garlic
chili
40 ml (1/6 cup) tamari sauce
40 ml (1/6 cup) of water

Clean the spinach carefully and let it dry while you peel and chop the garlic into small pieces. Heat up some olive oil in a pan and fry the garlic and the chili. When the garlic starts to get a little golden brown, add the spinach and sauté until it gets softer. Add the water and the tamari, cover the pan and let it cook for five minutes. If necessary season with salt and pepper.

blue cheese sauce

50 gram (about ½ stick) butter
50-60 ml (¼ cup) flour
700 ml (3 cups) milk
about 250 ml (1 cup) of any blue cheese (depending how strong taste you want)
salt and pepper to taste

Melt butter and stir in flour. Cook under very low heat for 2-3 minutes. Constantly stir the flour mix. Add the milk gradually and stir to a smooth blend. Add the cheese and stir until cheese is melted. Season with salt and pepper.

Grease a baking tin. Start the layering with some cheese sauce and some spinach in the bottom. Keep layering with pasta in between layers of both cheese sauce and spinach. At last cover the last layer of pasta with only the sauce. Bake the lasagna in the oven at 375º for about 20-30 minutes. When the lasagna is nearly done sprinkle some fresh grated Parmesan over. Put in the oven for further cooking until the cheese is melted and got a nice color. Serve with a nice mixed salad, for example arugola, apple, grated carrots and walnuts.

… and the guests loved the lasagna.

Inger’s Blue Cheese Pie

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This cheese pie is made after being inspired by my former neighbor Inger’s great pies. I just had to do my own version as we don’t see each other often enough any more. The pie is great to do when you have some old blue cheese left over that is too ripe to eat by it self.

filling
blue cheese
chopped walnuts
3 eggs
300 ml milk
salt and pepper

dough
75 g (2.6 ounces) butter
flour 300 ml (1 ¼ cup) white flour
salt
some water

Mix the dough together and let it rest for a while in the fridge. Spread it on a round dish and poke at it with a fork. Pre bake the shell with pie-weights for about 10 min at 200°C (392 F). Remove the pie weights and keep baking the pie shell for about 5 minutes. Let cool.

Mix the eggs and milk together in a blender. Add the blue cheese to your own taste. It often tastes more intense before it’s baked so don’t be afraid to add a little too much. Blend it to make a smooth filling and poor the filling into the pre baked shell. Add the chopped walnuts and bake the pie until the filling is firm.

I serve my cheese pie with a salad and some red whine.