CHEESE, CONTINUED

 

Cheese board with Cabrales, a blue-veined cheese from Asturias. With bubbly cider, white wine and dry Sherry.

I wrote last week about an unusual cheese, Torta del Casar from Extremadura. I’ve got another cheese up my sleeve, so to speak, also purchased at the Feria Nacional de Queso in Trujillo. This one, Cabrales, comes from northern, green Spain, the Principado de Asturias.

Cabrales is the name of the region where the cheese is made, specified on the label as a protected denomination of origin. It can officially be made with cow’s milk or with a mixture of cow, goat and sheep milk. The cheese is matured in mountain caves where the Penicillium mold causes it to form blue-green veins throughout. Its aroma is intense, the texture is creamy, buttery. The flavor of Cabrales is salty, mildly acidic, somewhat piquant. 

Cabrales cheese can be served as an appetizer or dessert cheese accompanied by bread, crackers or toasts and fresh or dried fruits. It also lends itself well to combining with other ingredients for sauces or for embellishing variations on pizza or quiche. 

Creamy Cabrales sauce tops a burger with grilled mushrooms and sautéed piquillo peppers.

Cabrales sauce makes an interesting change for pasta with broccoli.

Cabrales whipped with yogurt for a tasty dip or dressing.

Slivers of Cabrales top a salad with pears, endive, and almonds. Serve the dressing separatley.

Burgers with Cabrales Blue Cheese Sauce

Burguer con Salsa Cabrales

Vegetarians can forgo the meat burger and pile the grilled mushrooms on buns with the piquillos and Cabrales sauce. 

Toasted buns

Grilled burgers

Oyster mushrooms grilled with garlic

Sautéd piquillo peppers and onions with red pepper flakes

Cabrales blue cheese sauce (recipe below)

Place mushrooms on buns and top with the sautéd piquillo peppers. Place a burger on the stack and spoon warm Cabrales sauce on the meat. (The burgers pictured are made with ground chicken thighs.)

Fettuccine with Broccoli and Cabrales Blue Cheese Sauce 

Pasta con Brócoli y Salsa Cabrales

Make this vegetarian by omitting the bacon.

Serves 4. 

8 ounces fettuccine noodles

Salt

2 cups broccoli florets

3 tablespoons olive oil

½ cup diced bacon

2 cloves sliced garlic

1 cup Cabrales blue cheese sauce (recipe follows)

Grating of fresh nutmeg

Freshly ground black pepper

Chopped chives

Cook the noodles in boiling salted water according to package directions. Reserve 1 cup of the pasta cooking water. Drain the pasta.

Blanch the broccoli florets in boiling water 1 minute. Drain and reserve.

Heat the oil in a large skillet with the bacon and garlic. When garlic starts to turn golden, add the broccoli and fry a few minutes. Stir in the Cabrales sauce. Season with nutmeg and pepper. Add salt to taste. Add the reserved pasta cooking water and heat. Add the cooked noodles and mix them well with the sauce. Serve garnished with chopped chives. 

Cabrales Blue Cheese Sauce 

Salsa de Queso Cabrales

Cabrales sauce is classic with entrecôte steak, but it’s also good with hamburgers, baked potato, or pasta. The cheese cooks with cream, making it quite rich and also tempering the greenish color of the mashed cheese. Season the sauce with any favorite herbs. Salt may not be needed at all. For a very thick sauce, let it cook slowly until reduced by half. 

2 tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons finely chopped shallots

6 ounces Cabrales blue cheese (about 1 cup)

½ cup cider, white wine or Sherry

Pinch of rosemary or thyme

Freshly ground black pepper

1 cup cream

Heat the oil on medium and poach the shallots until softened, 5 minutes. Do not let them brown. Break up the cheese and mash it in the pan with the shallots. Add the cider and cook, stirring, until the cheese is melted. Add the rosemary, pepper, and cream and cook on medium until the sauce is reduced by almost half, 15 to 20 minutes. 

Serve the sauce hot, warm, or room temperature. Store it covered and chilled.

Salad with Pears, Endive, and Cabrales Blue Cheese

Ensalada de Pera con Endibia y Cabrales

Serves 4

2 ounces Cabrales cheese

2 ripe, firm pears

3-4 Belgian endives

1 tablespoon Sherry vinegar

4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

½ cup slivered red bell pepper

4 tablespoons toasted hazelnuts or almonds

Chopped chives to garnish

Cabrales Blue Cheese Dressing to accompany (recipe follows)

While cheese is still cold and firm, cut it into shards and let them come to room temperature.

Peel the pears, cut them in half, and remove cores. Slice them lengthwise. Chop or shred the endive leaves and divide them between 4 salad plates. Arrange the sliced pears on top. Scatter the red pepper and hazelnuts over the salads.

Whisk together the vinegar and oil and drizzle them over the salads. Divide the shards of Cabrales on top. Garnish with chives. Serve the salads accompanied by the Cabrales Blue Cheese dressing.

Cabrales Blue Cheese Dressing

Aliño con Cabrales

This non-cooked sauce makes a great dip with chips or vegetable dippers. Use it as a salad dressing as well. 

¼ cup chopped scallions

½ cup Greek yogurt

4 ounces Cabrales cheese

1 tablespoon dry Sherry

1/8 teaspoon cumin seeds

1/8 pimentón picante de la Vera (smoked hot paprika) or cayenne

Combine all the ingredients in a mini-processor. Process until smooth. 

What to drink with Cabrales cheese? I asked Gerry Dawes, an expert on Spanish wines who knows his way around the cheeses of Asturia. 

"In Asturias, they drink cider, which goes very well with Cabrales.  White wines with good acidity to cut through the creaminess, richness and mold of Cabrales would be Albariño, but especially wines from Ribeiro.  Just like Sauternes with Roquefort, sweet wines are great.  Late-harvest Moscateles from Navarra, sweet Malvasias from the Canarias, Torres San Valentin semi-dulce from Penedès.   Also rosados from Navarra, which have good acidity and, of course, Cava, even the semi-dulce, though Brut Nature Cava will also be a good counterpoint.   The great sherries, from Manzanilla to Tio Pepe to the Palo Cortados and Olorosos.  I would also drink the excellent cream Sherries and Moscatel de Chipiona with Cabrales.” Thanks, Gerry, that’s a wide choice. And not a single red wine! 

(Photo:Gerry Dawes presenting Asturian cheeses at Alimentaria, Barcelona, 2010.) 

Gerry is the author of Sunset in a Glass, a collection of stories about life, food, wine and people in Spain.

Cabrales has its own cheese festival, the Certamen del Queso de Cabrales, in Arenas de Cabrales, Asturias, the last Sunday of August.

 More about Spanish cheeses:

Torta del Casar, Extremadura.

Málaga goat cheese.

Garrotxa cheese, Cataluña.

Manchego cheese.

How cheese is made.

MAY IN EXTREMADURA, STORKS. AND CHEESE

 

Storks' nest, Trujillo (Extremadura). (Photo by Charlie Gil.)

In the town of Trujillo in Extremadura, the month of May brings baby storks in the belfry and the Feria Nacional del Queso, the most important cheese expo in Spain. 

Cheese festival in Trujillo (Extremadura). (Photo by Ben Searl)

More than a hundred stands set up shop in the grand Plaza Mayor, around the sword-wielding statue of native son, conquistador Francisco Pizarro. Purveying more than 300 varieties of cheese from all over Spain, the fair attracts avid weekend crowds who throng the plaza, sampling bites, comparing notes, buying wedges. 

(Photo by Charlie Gil.)

The cheeses of Extremadura get special billing. Four of them have protected designation of origin (DOP): Torta del Casar and La Serena, both sheep's milk cheeses, and Ibores and Acehúche, goat milk cheeses. 

Lucky me, my son Ben went to the cheese fair with friends and returned with a Torta del Casar. 

The Torta is an unusual cheese. It is made with a curdling agent taken from a plant, Cynara Cardunculus, a wild thistle. (Most cheeses start with animal rennet.) The cheese when fully mature (60 to 90 days) has a semi-rigid rind inside of which the paste is soft and creamy, almost runny. The cheese has a powerful aroma, right on the edge of the proverbial “stinky cheese," and a distinctive flavor, lactate and herbal, with a subtle bitterness from the vegetable rennet. 

Cut the rind and lift the "lid" off the cheese.

How to serve Torta del Casar. Remove the cheese from the refrigerator at least four hours before serving so that it comes to room temperature. Unwrap the cheese. Use a knife with a sharp point to cut the rind all around the top of the cheese. Lift off the rind and save it for storing the cheese later. 

The paste can be spooned right out of the shell. Spread it on bread or toasts. Or, amongst friends, dip breadsticks right into the cheese. Try any or all of the usual  accompaniments for cheese—nuts, dried fruits, honey, jam, membrillo (quince paste), chutney, pickles, onions, apples, grapes, pears. 

Torta del Casar cheese with accompaniments.

Texture of cheese is soft, very stretchy.

Spread on crisp toasts. Top with quince paste (top) or chutney.

Dip breadsticks right into the cheese.

What's the best wine? I liked a fruity white with Torta del Casar.

What to drink with Torta del Casar. We tried fino Sherry, sweet PX, cava, white and red wines. I liked the fruity white wine best with this cheese. Beer and apple cider are also good.  

Once opened, remaining cheese should be stored in its own rind and covered with a damp cloth. (Place it in a tightly-lidded container so it doesn’t permeate everything else in the fridge!) Once broached, the cheese keeps 15 to 20 days, according to the Torta del Casar cheese consortium. The cheese can be frozen. Torta del Casar is produced in small enough pieces that one can be consumed amongst four to six people at a single gathering. 

The cheese can also be used in cooking. The cheese board has published its own cookbook, El Sabor de un Territorio, Recetas con Torta del Casar, featuring recipes created by four chefs. They include a “lasagne” of layered vegetables; a pisto (eggplant vegetable medley) heated in the hollowed shell of the cheese, and onion soup with Torta del Casar. The cookbook by José Andrés, Tapas, A Taste of Spain in America, has a recipe for Mashed Potatoes with Torta del Casar Cheese that calls for the potatoes to be mashed with the cheese, cream, and olive oil. 

Besides the cheeses mentioned, other gastronomic products with DOP from Extremadura: Ibérico ham Dehesa de Extremadura, Pimentón de la Vera (smoked paprika), Cereza del Jerte (cherries from the Jerte valley), olive oil, honey, lamb, beef, kid, and several wine denominations.

Chutney is especially good with Torta del Casar cheese. This chutney is made with loquats in place of the mango in this recipe. For more about loquats (nísperos). 

MY BEAUTIFUL SPRING BOUQUET

 

Just-picked red chard.

A gorgeous bunch of red chard landed in my kitchen this week. Picked in a friend’s garden, it was almost too beautiful to eat.

Cooking, of course, darkens the bright green of the leaves and leaches out the red of the stems. While the chard would look stunning in a salad, chard, unlike spinach, is—to my taste—a little too chewy raw.

I decided on a rice recipe from València for arroz con acelgas. But, instead of the snails called for in the recipe, I added some chicken and sausage. For a vegetarian version, just skip the meat. The red chard stems faded but some bits of (canned) piquillo peppers gave the rice some pop. 

This rice is meloso, or juicy, not “dry” like paella. But it shouldn’t get “creamy” like risotto, so don’t stir the rice because stirring releases the starch. Use a medium-short grain variety of rice, the same as for paella. Bomba is one of the best because it won’t get gummy.

Rice with red chard, chicken, sausage, and chickpeas. The chard stems have faded to pink, but piquillo peppers give a pop of bright red.

Rice with Chard and Chickpeas

Arroz con Acelgas y Garbanzos

¼ cup olive oil

12 ounces boneless chicken thighs, cut in pieces (optional)

4 ounces pork sausage, sliced (optional)

½ cup chopped onion

3 cloves garlic

1 bunch chard, stems and leaves (6-8 ounces)

1 teaspoon pimentón de la Vera (smoked paprika)

½ cup grated tomato pulp

4 ½ cups water or stock

2 teaspoons salt

Freshly ground black pepper

1 ½ cups medium-short grain rice

1 medium potato, cut in small pieces

1 tablespoon seedless raisins (optional)

1 cup cooked chickpeas

2 piquillo peppers, cut in strips

½ cup boiling water

Heat the oil in a cazuela or deep sauté pan. Brown the pieces of chicken and sausage. Skim them out and reserve. Add the onion to the oil in the pan. Lightly crush the garlics and add them whole to the pan.

Mix in rice and chard, then do not stir the rice again!

Separate chard stems from the leaves. Chop the stems and add to the pan. Sauté until the onion is softened. 

Stir in the pimentón. Add the tomato pulp. Return the chicken and sausage to the pan. Add the water or stock and bring to a boil. Season with salt and pepper. Stir in the rice. Add the potato, raisins, if using, and chickpeas. Roll and cut the chard leaves and add them to the pan. 

Stir briefly to combine the ingredients, but don’t stir the rice any more. Cook on medium-high heat 10 minutes.

Add the strips of pepper. Reduce the heat to medium-low and cook 5 minutes, shaking the pan occasionally. Do not stir the rice. Pour the boiling water over the rice, give the pan a shake and cook on low 3 minutes. Rice and potatoes should be cooked. Remove the pan from the heat, cover with foil and allow to rest 5 minutes.

Serve the rice from the cazuela. 

More recipes with chard:

Rice with Cod, Beans, and Chard (Empedrado).

Chard with Raisins and Pine Nuts.

Stuffed and Fried Chard Stems.

Chard Tortilla.

Chard and Cheese Pie.

Chard Sauté with Pistachios.

Rainbow Chard with Apricots.

Andalusian Stew with Chickpeas, Chorizo, and Chard (Berza).

Lamb Roll with Chard.