The Blue Cheese Lover's Cookbook -- Recipes and More!

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Not Just for Salad Dressing

Do you love blue cheese? I do. Not everyone does. Oh well. More for the rest of us.
If you love blue cheese, I think you'll enjoy this mix of recipes, sources and comparisons of some of the myriad of varieties, history, cookbooks and more goodies.

Recipes from French cuisine, the mother of all cuisines. Provencal and other regional favorites. Geared to the home cook.

Contents at a Glance

Can you say "Fromage"?
Featured Recipe for Finger Food
Featured Recipe for Small Plates and Starters

Featured Recipe for Salads
Featured Recipe for Fish and Seafood
Worth the Click

more...

Can you say "Fromage"?

Some Tasty Bites from French Cuisine

It's not just about Roquefort, you know.

Blue Cheese Dressing -- 3 Recipes: Basic Blue Cheese Dressing, or with Savory Herbs, or Spiked with Jalapenos (GREAT on steaks!)
Bleu Cheeseburger: Rather than the usual cheese slice melted on top, this recipe recommends mixing the blue cheese crumbles into the ground beef mixture.
Spicy Buffalo Wing Slaw: You knew there was no actual buffalo in these, right?
Eleven French Blue Cheeses: Did I say there was more than just Roquefort?
Blue Cheese Potatoes au Gratin: Yes, your Mom's Au Gratin Potatoes can have more flavor. Not that they were bad, Mom. I loved them. And I think you might like these, too.
Mac & Cheese for Grownups: Go ahead. Admit it. You've loved it. You still can. It's not just for kids anymore.
Mushrooms Stuffed with Smoke Sturgeon and Oregon Blue Cheese: Easy and elegant. What more could you ask for in an appetizer or small plate? Smoked salmon works just as well.
Soft Polenta with Three Cheese: I served this to one dinner companion compared this to great sex. I assumed she was talking about me.
Pasta with Salmon and Gorgonzola: So easy. Such a great way to stretch a bit of leftover cooked salmon. If this recipe doesn't become a regular on your menu, I'll refund every cent of your purchase price!
Blue Cheeses from Australia, South America and Spain: Here's a hot tip. That San Ignacio is a best buy! A third the price of Roquefort and almost as good.
Red Wine Poached Pears with Blue Cheese: Your dinner guests will call you a gourmet, but don't demure. Blush if you must, but then just say thank you. No need to confess how easy this recipe is. Serving these pears topped with crumbles of a really good blue cheese elevates the great dessert to five-star quality.

Featured Recipe for Finger Food

Lick Your Fingers Good

Bruschetta with Irish Whiskey & Cashel Blue Cheese

The Italians will forgive us if we appropriate one of their stellar contibutions to the world of food at our fingertips: bruschetta. They will want to use Gorgonzola, and of course your could too, but Cashel Blue seemed more in tune with the Irish Whiskey.

Spread Ingredients:
2 cups cherry tomatoes, coarsely chopped
1/4 cup sweet onion, finely chopped
1/4 cup Irish Whiskey
2 Tbsp fresh parsley and 1 Tbsp each fresh oregano and basil, al finely chopped

1 loaf of Italian bread, cut in 1/4 inch slices
1 clove garlic, halved
extra virgin olive oil

1/4 cup Cashel Blue Cheese, crumbled

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F
2. In a medium-sized bowl, mix the spread ingredients. Set aside.
3. Lightly oil the baking sheet. Scrape the cut edge of the garlic acoss both sides of the bread slices and place them on a baking sheet.
4. Spread the tomato mixture over each bread slice and sprinkle with the cheese crumbles.
5. Bake until the cheese melts and the exposed edges of the bread start to brown.
Le them cool before serving, about five minutes.
Yield: 10-12 finger food servings

Featured Recipe for Small Plates and Starters

Today's Tasty Tidbits

Asparagus Flan with Cheese Sauce
Yield: 8 servings

This savory flan has an intense asparagus flavor. Its texture is unusually tender for a flan, without a trace of egginess. Gorgonzola is featured, but you can use any full-flavored blue cheese.

You Will Need:
8" flan pan -or- round cake pan; larger baking pan with 2" sides; food processor; double boiler -or- metal bowl that fits over a saucepan.

Flan Ingredients:
2 lb asparagus, trimmed, cut in 2" sections & steamed until tender
4 large eggs
1%u2153 cups whole milk
2 Tbsp Parmigiano-Reggiano,
freshly grated
1 teaspoons salt
½ tsp freshly ground black pepper
%u215B tsp freshly grated nutmeg, or to taste

Process steps:
Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 325°F.
Butter the flan or cake pan and line bottom with a round of wax paper or parchment. Butter the paper. Start water boiling in your teakettle.
Purée asparagus in a food processor until smooth, 1 to 2 minutes. You should have about 2 cups purée.
In a medium bowl, whisk together the custard ingredients. Then whisk in the asparagus purée.
Pour custard mixture into the buttered flan or cake pan. Set it inside the larger pan.
Set the pan on the middle rack of the preheated oven. Add enough boiling-hot water to reach halfway up the side of the smaller pan.
Bake until flan is set and a wooden toothpick or skewer inserted in center comes out clean, 50 minutes to 1 hour.
Transfer pan to a rack to cool slightly, 10 to 15 minutes.

Sauce Ingredients:
2 oz Italian Fontina, rind discarded and cheese coarsely grated or diced
2 oz Gorgonzola, crumbled
½ cup whole milk
2 large eggs yolks
1 Tbsp butter

To Make the Sauce:
immer water in the bottom of the double boiler or saucepan. The top or bowl should not be touching the water.
Put all sauce ingredients in the top of the double boiler or metal bowl. Heat sauce over the simmering water, whisking until cheese and butter are melted, and then stirring with a wooden spoon, until sauce is slightly thickened and registers 165°F on an instant-read thermometer, 5 to 8 minutes.
Remove top or bowl from the heat.

To Serve:
When you're ready to serve, run a thin knife around edge of flan to loosen, then invert a serving plate over pan and invert flan onto plate.
Cut flan into wedges and serve immediately with sauce.

Featured Recipe for Salads

Green Bean Salad with Red Onion and Apricot Vinaigrette

Green Bean Salad with Red Onion and Apricot Vinaigrette
Yield: 4 servings

Tasting is the key to perfection in this great dressing (as it is to most cooking). Vinegars vary in sharpness, so tasting is the only way to strike the right balance with the sweetness.
This recipe makes more dressing than you'll use, and you'll be glad. It keeps for 2-3 weeks refrigerated and next time you can just put some spinach or mixed salad greens in a bowl and add this scrummy dressing!

Salad Ingredient:
1 lb fresh green beans, ends trimmed

Salad Steps:
1. Boil salted water in a large pot. Fill a large bowl with ice water.
2. Drop beans into boiling water and cook for a scant 2 minutes.
3. Immediate plunge the beans into ice water. This stops the cooking and sets the wonderful bright green color.

Dressing Ingredients:
1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1/2 medium-sized red onion, diced

1/3 cup Champagne vinegar
6 Tbsp dried apricots, diced
1/4 cup sugar
1 cup extra virgin olive oil
Sea salt & freshly ground black pepper

Dressing Steps:
1. In a medium saucepan,sautee the onion in a litle olive oil until translucent, 3-4 minutes.
2. Stir in the vinegar, apricots and sugar. Bring just to a boil and remove from the heat and let it cool 15 minutes.
3. Whisk in the oil and seasoning.
4. Taste and adjust both the seasoning and the sweetness. Add more sugar if the dressing is too sharp, more vinegar if it's too sweet.

Salad Topping Ingredients:
4 oz Mountain Gorgonzola, crumbled
1/3 cup toasted pecans, chopped

Serving Steps:
When you're ready to serve, toss the beans with 1/2 cup of the dressing and divide it between the serving plates.
Sprinkle cheese and nuts over each salad.

Variations:
Any full-flavored blue cheese can be substituted for the Gorgonzola. As could other cheeses, other nuts.
If you want a little glimmer of color, try adding some matchstick cut carrots. Red sweet pepper? You bet. Mix in some yellow wax beans? Kidney beans? Garbanzo? All possible. Get creative.

Featured Recipe for Fish and Seafood

Todays Tasty Tidbits

Pasta with Salmon and Gorgonzola Sauce
Yield: 6 Servings

Here's another really flexible recipe. I like to use it for leftover salmon. You can use whatever pasta you like. The recipe I adapted called for "tirali" which I haven't seen. Bowtie or shells work just fine.

Ingredients:
¾# tirali or bowtie pasta

4 T olive oil
4 garlic cloves minced
2 salmon fillets

½ cup white wine
2 T green peppercorns
(or capers)
1 pinch salt
1 cup gorgonzola

¼ cup fresh minced parsley
Freshly ground pepper

Method:
1. Cook pasta according to package instructions.
2. Meanwhile, heat olive oil in a large skillet on medium heat. Add garlic and cook for 2 minutes. Add salmon fillets and cook 4-5 minutes on each side.
3. Remove salmon and break into bite-size pieces.
4. Add pieces back into pan with wine, peppercorns and salt. Cook for 5 minutes.

5. Add gorgonzola and stir until creamy.
6. Remove and add to pasta. Top with parsley and pepper.

Worth the Click

Other Foodie Sites I Like

Italian Foodies: Italian Cheeses, Cookbooks and other Fun Stuff
The Cheese Shop: Yes, there are cheeses besides blue. Maybe not as pretty, but pretty tasty nonetheless.
Pairing Wine with Cheese: I hope I'm not giving away the show by telling you the "Classy Gals" like a Petit Syrah with Gorgonzola. Sign me up!
Play Ball! Cheese Ball, That Is: That other great American pastime: Cheese Ball.
Grilled Cheese: It's the first thing my mother taught me to cook.
Cheesemonger's Guide to Gourmet Cheeses: And she should know!

Reading Matters -- Cookbooks for Blue Cheese Lovers

The Power of the Printed Page

In this web-savvy age, it's a wonder that cookbooks are still published, but they are, and I love them.
Here are a few that intrigue me. Feel free to vote on my list or add your favorite.

The Blue Cheese Lover's Cookbook -- Recipes and More!

Not Just for Salad Dressing

Contents at a Glance

Contents at a Glance

Can you say "Fromage"?

Some Tasty Bites from French Cuisine

Featured Recipe for Finger Food

Lick Your Fingers Good

Featured Recipe for Small Plates and Starters

Today's Tasty Tidbits

Featured Recipe for Salads

Green Bean Salad with Red Onion and Apricot Vinaigrette

Featured Recipe for Fish and Seafood

Todays Tasty Tidbits

Worth the Click

Other Foodie Sites I Like

Reading Matters -- Cookbooks for Blue Cheese Lovers

The Power of the Printed Page

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Films for Foodies

A Feast for the Eyes

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Great Stuff on CafePress

You know you love cheese. Admit it to the world!

Kitchen Stuff on eBay

If there's room on your kitchen counter and in your drawers, you're just not working at it hard enough!

Fly to Cheese!

Don't Just Eat and Run

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