The Complete Book of Cheese Part 23

Cheese and Pea Salad

Cube 1/2 pound of American Cheddar and mix with a can of peas, 1 cup of diced celery, 1 cup of mayonnaise, 1/2 cup of sour cream, and 2 tablespoons each of minced pimientos and sweet pickles.

Serve in lettuce cups with a sprinkling of parsley and chopped radishes.

Apple and Cheese Salad

1/2 cup cream cheese 1 cup chopped pecans Salt and pepper Apples, sliced 1/2-inch thick Lettuce leaves Creamy salad dressing

Make tiny seasoned cheese b.a.l.l.s, center on the apple slices standing on lettuce leaves, and sluice with creamy salad dressing.

Roquefort Cheese Salad Dressing

No cheese sauce is easier to make than the American favorite of Roquefort cheese mashed with a fork and mixed with French dressing. It is often made in a pint Mason jar and kept in the refrigerator to shake up on occasion and toss over lettuce or other salads.

Unfortunately, even when the Roquefort is the French import, complete with the picture of the sheep in red, and _garanti veritable_, the dressing is often ruined by bad vinegar and cottonseed oil (of all things). When bottled to sell in stores, all sorts of extraneous spice, oils and mustard flour are used where nothing more is necessary than the manipulation of a fork, fine olive oil and good vinegar--white wine, tarragon or malt. Some ardent amateurs must have their splash of Worcestershire sauce or lemon juice with salt and pepper. This Roquefort dressing is good on all green salads, but on endive it's something special.

SAUCE MORNAY

Sauce Mornay has been hailed internationally as "the greatest culinary achievement in cheese."

Nothing is simpler to make. All you do is prepare a white sauce (the French Sauce Bechamel) and add grated Parmesan to your liking, stirring it in until melted and the sauce is creamy. This can be snapped up with cayenne or minced parsley, and when used with fish a little of the cooking broth is added.

PLAIN CHEESE SAUCE

1 part of any grated cheese to 4 parts of white sauce

This is a mild sauce that is nice with creamed or hard-cooked eggs. When the cheese content is doubled, 2 parts of cheese to 4 of white sauce, it is delicious on boiled cauliflower, baked potatoes, macaroni and crackers soaked in milk.

The sauce may be made richer by mixing melted b.u.t.ter with the flour in making the white sauce, or by beating egg yolk in with the cheese.

From thin to medium to thick it serves divers purposes:

_Thin_: it may be used instead of milk to make a tasty milk toast, sometimes spiced with curry.

_Medium_: for baking by pouring over crackers soaked in milk.

_Thick_: serves as a sort of Welsh Rabbit when poured generously over bread toasted on one side only, with the untoasted side up, to let the sauce sink in.

PARSLEYED CHEESE SAUCE

This makes a mild, pleasantly pungent sauce, to enliven the cabbage family--hot cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage and Brussels sprouts. Croutons help when sprinkled over.

CORNUCOPIA OF CHEESE RECIPES

Since this is the Complete Book of Cheese we will fill a bounteous cornucopia here with more or less essential, if not indispensable, recipes and dishes not so easy to cla.s.sify, or overlooked or crowded out of the main sections devoted to the cla.s.sic Fondues, Rabbits, Souffles, etc.

_Stuffed Celery, Endive, Anise and Other Suitable Stalks_

Use any soft cheese you like, or firm cheese softened by pressing through a sieve; at room temperature, of course, with any seasoning or relish.

SUGGESTIONS:

Cream cheese and chopped chives, pimientos, olives, or all three, with or without a touch of Worcestershire.

Cottage cheese and piccalilli or chili sauce.

Sharp Cheddar mixed with mayonnaise, mustard, cream, minced capers, pickles, or minced ham.

Roquefort and other Blues are excellent fillings for your favorite vegetable stalk, or scooped-out dill pickle. This last is specially nice when filled with snappy cheese creamed with sweet b.u.t.ter.

All canape b.u.t.ters are ideally suited to stuffing stalks.

Pineapple cheese, especially that part close to the pineapple-flavored rind, is perfect when creamed.

A masterpiece in the line of filled stalks: Cut the leafy tops off an entire head of celery, endive, anise or anything similarly suitable. Wash and separate stalks, but keep them in order, to rea.s.semble in the head after each is stuffed with a different mixture, using any of the above, or a tangy mix of your own concoction.

After all stalks are filled, beginning with the baby center ones, press them together in the form of the original head, tie tight, and chill. When ready, slice in rolls about 8-inch thick and arrange as a salad on a bed of water cress or lettuce, moistened with French dressing.

Cold Dunking

Besides hot dunking in Swiss Fondue, cold dunking may be had by moistening plenty of cream cheese with cream or lemon in a dunking bowl. When the cheese is sufficiently liquefied, it is liberally seasoned with chopped parsley, chives, onions, pimiento and/or other relish. Then a couple of tins of anchovies are macerated and stirred in, oil and all.

Cheese Charlotte

Line a baking dish from bottom to top with decrusted slices of bread dipped in milk. Cream 1 tablespoon of sweet b.u.t.ter with 2 eggs and season before stirring in 2 cups of grated cheese. Bake until golden brown in slow oven.

Straws

Roll pastry dough thin and cover with grated Cheddar, fold and roll at least twice more, sprinkling with cheese each time. Chill dough in refrigerator and cut in straw-size strips. Stiffly salt a beaten egg yolk and glaze with that to give a salty taste. Bake for several minutes until crisp.

Supa Shetgia[B]

[Footnote B: (from _Cheese Cookery_, by Helmut Ripperger)]

_This is the famous cheese soup of the Engadine and little known in this country. One of its seasonings is nutmeg and until one has used it in cheese dishes, it is hard to describe how perfectly it gives that extra something. The recipe, as given, is for each plate, but there is no reason why the old-fashioned tureen could not be used and the quant.i.ties simply increased_.