Cheese « More Cheese More Chocolate

Apr 14 2011

Cheese, Pork

Blue Cheese Stuffed Pork Chops

Yesterday afternoon Matt and I were standing in the middle of the bulk foods aisle at Whole Foods trying to figure out what to do with the pork chops that we’d just picked up, so I opened the Epicurious app on my phone and did a quick search for “pork chop.” We are so 2011! The first few recipes that popped up sounded good but required buying too many extra ingredients (although one of these days I will be stuffing a pork chop with chorizo). Then came the Roquefort-Stuffed Pork Chops recipe. Blue cheese and pork? Yes, please!

The only problem was that along with the Roquefort, bread cubes, and rosemary, you’re supposed to add chopped mushrooms to the filling. With a few minor exceptions, I don’t do mushrooms. Mushroom devotees would probably hate me because I grew up surrounded by woods that were a fertile breeding ground for morels, and although I enjoyed wandering through the woods in search of them, I can only remember eating them on one occasion when our neighbor was pan frying them and my best friend and I each smothered a half in ketchup, stuffed them in our mouths, chewed for a few seconds and then ran out to the garage and spit them in the trash. We were really mature.

I dislike being a picky eater almost as much as I dislike mushrooms, and I knew that I would eventually come around to trying to appreciate mushrooms. I’ve learned to love almost all of the short list of things that I didn’t like as a kid (avocado, salmon, wine – kidding!), and mushrooms are the one thing that I’ve been holding out on (although I learned to enjoy raw, button mushrooms on salads a few years ago). So there we were in the middle of Whole Foods, Matt really excited about stuffing those pork chops with blue cheese and mushrooms and me being the only thing standing in his way. Without really thinking about what I was getting myself into, I decided that it was time for me to try to enjoy cooked mushrooms, and we were off to gather the ingredients. I panicked a little as we were driving out of the parking lot and again as I watched Matt sauté the mushrooms, but when the pork chops were done, I happily dove right in. The verdict: melted blue cheese makes anything taste good.

Blue Cheese Stuffed Pork Chops

From Bon Appetit via Epicurious

*recipe adjusted to serve 2*

2 thick, bone-in pork chops
3 tbsp butter
3/4 cup small cubes of French bread
1/2 cup chopped mushrooms
1 tbsp minced onion (we used a shallot)
1/4 tsp dried rosemary, finely crumbled
1/4 cup crumbled Roquefort or blue cheese

Preheat oven to 350.
Melt 1 tbsp butter in a heavy, oven-proof skillet over medium heat. Add bread cubes, and sauté until golden, about 10 minutes. Transfer bread to a medium bowl.
Return skillet to heat and melt 1 tbsp butter. Add mushrooms, onion/shallot, and rosemary. Sauté until the onion is soft, about 5 minutes. Add to the bowl with the bread, and refrigerate for about 15 minutes, until cool.

Slice each pork chop in half horizontally to the bone.
Add the blue cheese to the cooled bread mixture, stir to combine and season with salt and pepper.

Divide the mixture between the pork chops, and use toothpicks to hold them closed, if necessary.

Melt the last 1 tbsp butter in the skillet over high heat. Add the pork chops, and sauté until browned on each side, about 2 minutes per side.

Transfer skillet to the oven.

Cook for 15-20 minutes, until cooked through.

If you have any leftover stuffing, spoon it over the pork chops before transferring them to the oven.

Blue cheese stuffed pork chop with roasted asparagus and oven fries

Mar 31 2011

Cheese Pizza with Chimichurri Dipping Sauce

Yesterday I was in the mood for pizza. I wasn’t sure what kind of pizza I was in the mood for, but I was set on having some combination of dough and cheese for dinner. I usually pick pizza toppings by looking in my fridge for items that need to be used up, but nothing was really jumping out at me. Plus, I was all out of banana peppers, and pizza night without banana peppers is like Christmas without presents. Or Easter without candy. Or movie night without popcorn and Junior Mints if you have a differing view of Christmas and Easter than I do.

I turned to the interwebs for inspiration, and I found it in the form of an Ina Garten recipe for Baked Fontina that I’d recently bookmarked. One day I will work up the nerve to eat a crock of molten, herby fontina for dinner, but until that day arrives, I will stick to eating my slightly less gluttonous pizza version. For my interpretation I kept the fontina, added a few other kinds of cheese and a very thin layer of red sauce, and, in lieu of the herb combination in Ina’s recipe, I made a chimichurri sauce for either dipping or smothering on the baked pizza. I really wasn’t sure how this would turn out, but judging by the fact that my boyfriend went from “not that hungry” to eating 2/3 of this pizza in addition to a couple of slices of another pizza (one with banana peppers!), I think it was a success. The cheese pizza on its own was really good, and the chimichurri sauce added a nice, bright dimension to it. Mmm…chimichurri…

Cheese Pizza with Chimichurri Dipping Sauce

For the pizza:

Pizza dough
1/3 cup pizza sauce
2-3 cups grated cheese (I used mostly fontina and farmer cheese with a little mozzarella and parmesan)

For the chimichurri sauce:

2 cups flat-leaf parsley, leaves and thin stems only
3 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
1 tsp red pepper flakes
2-3 tbsp fresh lemon juice
1 tbsp vinegar (optional)
Olive oil
Salt

Notes:

All measurements are approximate and should be adjusted to taste.
Leftover chimichurri is great on eggs, meat, potatoes, sandwiches, and many other things.

Combine the parsley, garlic, red pepper flakes, lemon juice, vinegar (if using), and about 1/2 tsp of salt in the bowl of a food processor. Process into a rough paste, then pour in olive oil while the motor runs until it thins out into a sauce. The consistency will be similar to pesto. Season with additional salt. Set the sauce aside, keeping it at room temperature, while you prepare the pizza.

While making chimichurri sauce, you should not let your giant thumb get in the way of your extremely sharp knife while chopping garlic. Because that’s what I did, and it led to the near loss of a considerable piece of my thumb, the utterance of several not nice words, a panicked series of phone calls to my dad, mom, and boyfriend, more panicking when nobody was answering their phones, the application of a lot of pressure and bloodying of several paper towels, and finally a returned phone call from my dad with his doctor’s orders of pressure, band-aids, and, eventually, super glue. The bleeding stopped, the panicking subsided, and the cooking continued (with cleaned surfaces and a new round of garlic cloves, of course). Whew.

Preheat your oven to 450. Stretch the pizza dough on an oiled baking sheet. Cover with a thin layer of pizza sauce (just like the one pictured above on the right).

Cover with cheese.

Bake for about 15 minutes, or until the crust is browned to your liking.

Serve with chimichurri sauce.

Delicious!

Tagged Chimichurri, Fontina, Pizza

Mar 05 2011

Egg, Prosciutto and Arugula Pizza

This pizza was equal parts experimentation and indecision, motivated by the need to use up leftovers (tomato sauce, ricotta, and prosciutto from last weekend’s ravioli). The experiment part involved adding ingredients at different points during the baking period and concentrating different flavors around the pizza. The indecision part stems from my inability to make really insignificant decisions, and I added half of the prosciutto before baking and half after.

What follows is not really a recipe as much as it is tips or ideas for your own experimentation. If there’s one thing you take from this post, I hope it’s the desire to crack a few eggs onto your next pizza. Or to cover it with fresh greens. Or to add prosciutto because it makes everything better. See what I mean about indecision?

Prosciutto + Red Sauce. I don’t really like the combination of prosciutto and red sauce, but I had several slices of prosciutto and a little bit of red sauce that I was intent on using. Instead of spreading the sauce over the entire crust and making a pizza that I didn’t want to eat, I just dolloped it in between pieces of prosciutto so that each bite would be of one or the other and not both. Not only did it work, but it’s a move that I plan on using in the future. Even if your goal isn’t to keep two ingredients from blending, it’s a good way to change up the standard sauce method.

Eggs on Pizza. I’ve added eggs to pizza once before and discovered that they end up rubbery and overdone if you add them at the beginning (at least in a 400+ oven), so this time I added them halfway through the 20-minute baking time. The eggs weren’t overdone, and the yolks were just barely runny, so it was a definite improvement from the last time. I prefer runnier yolks, though, so next time I’ll add the eggs with 5-8 minutes of cooking time remaining.

Post-Baking Toppings. I couldn’t decide between crispy prosciutto or raw prosciutto, so I added half at the beginning and half at the end. I also added fresh ricotta and some grated parmesan when the pizza came out of the oven.

Greens on Pizza. After a brief cooling period (maybe 5 minutes?), I topped the pizza with several handfuls of fresh arugula. The cooling period prevented the greens from wilting too much, and they added a little freshness that you don’t usually have with pizza.

It’s hard to go wrong with any homemade pizza, and this was no exception. Half the fun of home pizza making is trying out different ingredients that might not be standard pizza toppings and seeing what you can come up with. A few ideas stemming from this pizza experiment: bacon or sausage breakfast pizza, spinach and egg pizza, dollops of both red sauce and pesto…

Oct 04 2010

Pesto Veggie Pizza

To go with the beef and sauerkraut pizza from last week, we made a slightly lighter veggie pizza to balance things out. It started with a pesto base and was topped with fresh spinach, sun-dried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, feta, and a mozzarella/provolone mix. The sauerkraut ‘za stole the show that evening, but on any other night this pizza would have been the winner.

Pizza dough + pesto + spinach + artichoke hearts + sun-dried tomatoes + feta + mozzarella + provolone. Bake at 450 for 20-ish minutes or until the cheese melts and the crust is crispy.

And…photos from a busy, fun-filled weekend