For The Love Of Cheese
Ever noticed that cheese (apart from Paneer) is visibly absent from our dining tables when scoffing gorgeously spiced Indian food? I mean at the end of an Indian feast what does one turn to, to finish the evening? Sure there’s cornucopia of Indian lip licking desserts, milky, sweet, fragrant, creamy, crunchy, icy and as my grandmother would say very nicey. Yet cheese courses, seem to be the reserve of European influenced cuisine wheeled out at the end of the evening, an epicurean response to extending the party. Yet given the trend towards cross over food and fusion styles...I’m yet to encounter a suitable rejoinder to a cheese course in Indian cuisine.
Intrigued by the challenge of introducing a Stinking Bishop or Fourme d’Ambert or two into the fray I turned to the family who’ve been stalking Europe’s food markets and artisan cheese makers discovering the finest cheeses and bringing them to our larders. The Cheese Boutique a clan of cheese lovers took my quandary into food development, consulted the Grand Fromage and here it is...a stupendous result which is perfect with or without a curry course.
Behold The Cheese Challenge
The Cheese Boutique is a guest of the Urban Rajah
Loving cheese as we do we were set the challenge by the Urban Rajah to come up with a cheese that would lend itself to scrummy spicy food. We remixed a French classic, baked Mont d’Or. Quick to prep, easy to bake and beyond our own expectation, we scooped and glooped the cheese with chapatti shovels until we scraped the wooden baked box clean.
It was the first time we tried out this recipe, experimenting with bold spices and it’s fair to say that this cheese stood up to the challenge, wonderfully gooey it transformed its personality into something far more complex. There is definitely a knack to peeling back the top of a Mont d’Or and we found the best way of doing this is cutting a cross in the top of the cheese rind and pushing back each leaf. With the cheese exposed add a tea spoon of chilli, ground cinnamon and ground ginger. Re-cover the cheese with the rind and get ready to bake it.
Whilst the cheese was being transformed into a creamy spicy delight we toasted some chapattis in a frying pan ready to scoop the piping hot cheese.
How To Make A Spiced Cheese Round
Ingredients
- 1 Mont D’Or
- 1 tsp chilli flakes
- 1tsp ground cinnamon
- 1tsp ground ginger
Method
Heat your oven to 160 degrees. Remove the packaging from around the Mont d’Or, cut a cross in the top and peel back the layer of rind. Add a teaspoon of Chilli Flakes, Ground Cinnamon and Ground Ginger and place in the oven for 20 minutes if the cheese is at room temperature or 40 minutes if you took the cheese straight out of the fridge. When the cheese has 10 minutes baking time left toast the chapatti’s in a frying pan until crispy.
Remove the cheese from the oven, stir the spices into the runny, creamy, salty cheese and scoop with toasted chapatti. If it drips everywhere use your fingers to clean up and check your chin before leaving the house.
Drop by www.thecheeseboutique.co.uk for this and scores of other artisanal cheeses
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For The Love Of Cheese
Ever noticed that cheese (apart from Paneer) is visibly absent from our dining tables when scoffing gorgeously spiced Indian food? I mean at the end of an Indian feast what does one turn to, to finish the evening? Sure there’s cornucopia of Indian lip licking desserts, milky, sweet, fragrant, creamy, crunchy, icy and as my grandmother would say very nicey. Yet cheese courses, seem to be the reserve of European influenced cuisine wheeled out at the end of the evening, an epicurean response to extending the party. Yet given the trend towards cross over food and fusion styles...I’m yet to encounter a suitable rejoinder to a cheese course in Indian cuisine.
Intrigued by the challenge of introducing a Stinking Bishop or Fourme d’Ambert or two into the fray I turned to the family who’ve been stalking Europe’s food markets and artisan cheese makers discovering the finest cheeses and bringing them to our larders. The Cheese Boutique a clan of cheese lovers took my quandary into food development, consulted the Grand Fromage and here it is...a stupendous result which is perfect with or without a curry course.
Behold The Cheese Challenge
The Cheese Boutique is a guest of the Urban Rajah
Loving cheese as we do we were set the challenge by the Urban Rajah to come up with a cheese that would lend itself to scrummy spicy food. We remixed a French classic, baked Mont d’Or. Quick to prep, easy to bake and beyond our own expectation, we scooped and glooped the cheese with chapatti shovels until we scraped the wooden baked box clean.
It was the first time we tried out this recipe, experimenting with bold spices and it’s fair to say that this cheese stood up to the challenge, wonderfully gooey it transformed its personality into something far more complex. There is definitely a knack to peeling back the top of a Mont d’Or and we found the best way of doing this is cutting a cross in the top of the cheese rind and pushing back each leaf. With the cheese exposed add a tea spoon of chilli, ground cinnamon and ground ginger. Re-cover the cheese with the rind and get ready to bake it.
Whilst the cheese was being transformed into a creamy spicy delight we toasted some chapattis in a frying pan ready to scoop the piping hot cheese.
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