CurdyGirl Loves Smokey Blue!

Smokey Blue is one heck of an addictive cheese from the legendary Rogue Creamery from Oregon, USA. Originally starts out as Oregon Blue, and is then smoked over hazelnut shells for 16 hours to become this tasty treat. I enjoy it for snacking, burgers, and as a key ingredient in mac & cheese with cauliflower, with pancetta in the topping. Highly recommended.

I noticed that my on the fly explanation of how blue cheese becomes blue might be open to mis-interpretation. To clarify, in cheesemaking, the milk is inoculated with appropriate cultures, then once formed into a wheel of cheese, pierced to allow air to penetrate, and that is how the blue is activated if you will. This is not always the case, in some cases, then cheese is hand ladled, and the blue veining will come about with more time.

Mac & Cheese Confession

Wendy's first homemade mac & cheese

Surita's Mac and Cheese

Ok, I have a confession to make, I *just* made my first scratch mac & cheese. Ever. Kind of ridiculous given my interest in all things cheese, I like to cook and eat, so go figure.

I eat it dining out plenty; to date my best mac & cheese experience was at S’MAC (Surita’s Mac & Cheese) http://www.smacnyc.com/. One of those life changingly good meals. I had the alpine version which was Gruyere and slab bacon. So incredibly delicious!

So, both this site and my email had mysteriously been down for a few days, (back online now, clearly) and I was extremely stressed about that situation, so I decided it was time to recreate the mac & cheese love, as cheese is known to actually help you feel better in times of stress.

Cheese makes us feel good because it contains relatively high concentrations of tyrosine, a chemical building block of many important neurotransmitters, among them several of the brain’s “feel good” substances. Studies show that tyrosine is helpful during periods of stress, cold, fatigue, prolonged work and sleep deprivation. I am generally sleep deprived. It also appears to improve cognitive and physical performance. Neurologists have stated that cheese may be one of the most perfect foods to capture the nutritional-emotional duality. If your mood is neutral and you ingest tyrosine, you aren’t likely to experience a noticeable change, but if you are in a stressful period (as I was), it is possible that increasing tyrosine intake can improve your mood. During stressful times you lose chemicals that are necessary for feelings of comfort or well being, so by taking tyrosine, you build them back up. You may be wondering where I got that information – its all in my old Cheese Nutrition presentation from a few years ago.

I also had a significant amount of cheese in the fridge to use up, which is hardly new.

So, I found a fairly simple recipe online, ignored their cheese suggestion and selected some of my cheeses; Le Marechal, a modern alpine style Swiss cheese – sweet, nutty, hints of condensed cooked milk, altogether savoury and delicious. Then I grated up some Pleasant Ridge Reserve, on of my favourite American artisan cheeses made by the Uplands Cheese Company, it fruity, rich, nutty and grassy. The recipe for this cheese was originally modelled after Beaufort, and Uplands Cheese Company pays respectful homage to the classic while making it truly their own cheese of beauty. I also added Graviera Kritis, a Greek cheese made from primarily sheep milk but up to 20% goat. The milk for this cheese comes from animals that are allowed to graze freely on mountainous regions in Crete. Nutty, grassy notes are pronounced in this cheese. I also put a little bit of this lovely farmstead Gouda brought back to me by a colleague’s visit to Holland. She visited a farm, and brought it directly to the office for me, (thank you Tina!!) I’m quite grateful for her thoughtful gift, the flavour profile in this cheese is nutty, grassy, fruity, milky, toasty caramel. It is delicious. And finally, I shredded some 3 year old cheddar and added that to the mix, a nice balanced cheese, sweetness and salty in check. You can see where I’m going with this – nutty, grassy flavours reminiscent of alpine cheeses (think Gruyere, Emmental) but adapted to the contents of my fridge.

Ultimately, the dish turned out fine, but the recipe called for 2 cups of cheese – I added 3, but even then I found it insufficient, given that there were also 3 cups of milk. The base recipe was good for a base starting point, but left a lot of room for improvement, even with my (better) cheeses. I added vegetables to make it a little healthier, while still being decadent. I would certainly add more cheese, perhaps less milk, more seasoning, but another revision I will continue with is using crushed regular potato chips on top in lieu of breadcrumbs. That totally worked out well! Nice crunch, nice hit of salt, move over buttered bread crumbs, this was fantastic and dead easy!

Overall, my quest for perfect homemade mac & cheese love has inspired me to try again, take another stab at it, and mix it up. Until the results are on par with the memory of my S’MAC experience, the quest continues.