Cheese Stuffed Tomatoes

I was visiting with a friend in New York a few years ago when the subject of dinner came up. We discussed going to a nearby fondue restaurant and, as much as I love cheese, I pointed out that maybe we should opt for something a little healthier with vegetables and protein, etc. My friend, who is a dietitian replied, “Cheese is a protein.”

Case closed. That is why it’s great to be friends with a dietitian. It’s like the lady said, cheese is protein. Not the leanest, admittedly, but a protein nonetheless.

Stuffed tomatoes are great for side dish or a light meal. This dish is like a lighter, fresher tasting version of pizza. Use any type of cheddar. In this case I used Grafton Village Cheese Company’s Sage Cheddar, which is why you see little green specs on the cheese in the pictures.

Cheese Stuffed Tomatoes - serves 2 – 4

1/2 C cooked white long grain rice
1 egg
1/2 C cubed cheddar cheese
4 thin 1″x1″ slices of cheddar cheese
4 medium tomatoes

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Beat egg and add to rice. Mix in cubed cheddar.

To hollow out the tomatoes – cut off the top. Cut out the stem out of the top piece and discard, reserving the rest. Using a knife, free the inside structure from the tomato’s walls. Scoop out the flesh with a spoon. Remove any seed membranes and white parts and discard. Dice the remaining internal structure along with the tops. Scoop any remaining seeds from the tomato shells.

Add diced tomato bits to the rice mixture. Scoop the rice mixture into the tomatoes. It’s ok if it there is enough to create a small mound.

Carefully place on a rack on a bakling sheet. Bake 25 minutes. Place cheese slices on top and bake an additional 5 minutes. Remove from oven and allowto rest 5 minutes before serving.

Ingredient origins: Rice – California; Egg – New Hampshire; Cheddar – Vermont; Tomatoes – Maine

Broccoli Feta pie

There’s something wonderful about the way broccoli and feta go together. Feta’s brininess brings out a sweetness in the broccoli that otherwise might go undetected, and the textures work well together too.

This dish is really easy to make, but seems decadent and complicated because of the filo. It’s also a good dish to make if you’ve opened a package of filo dough and have a few sheets left over…

Broccoli Feta Pie – serves 2 – 4

6 sheets of filo dough
1/3 C olive oil
2 1/2 C chopped broccoli, steamed
4 oz feta cheese, diced
10 kalmata olives

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Brush a medium sized baking dish with olive oil. Place a sheet of filo dough on the dish and brush with olive oil. Repeat with three more sheets, arranging to fit the baking dish, covering the sides, folding where necessary and overlapping to create a base consisting of at least three layers of filo in any given spot.

Crumple and chop the two additional sheets of filo. Toss with remaining olive oil.

Arrange broccoli in the dish, then feta and olives. Top with the crumpled filo dough.

Bake 45 minutes until the top is golden brown. Serve hot.

Ingredient origins: Filo dough – ; Olive oil – Italy; Organic broccoli – California; Feta cheese – Maine; Kalamata olives –

Cheese Platter Cheese and Chicken Casserole

Cheese platters are like the theater and you my friend, are the director. Your job is to entertain and indulge your audience. Who doesn’t love discovering a new cheese? This is your opportunity to share your discoveries with guests. I always go for variety in taste and texture. At least one mild, one medium and one strong. At least one soft-ripened (brie, camembert, triple crème, fromage d’affinois) or surface-ripened (these are the delicate, sometimes tiny ones with the soft skin, like cabécou). At least two semi-soft (i.e., havarti), semi-hard (cheddar) or washed rind (morbiere) and maybe a fresh (chévre) or a blue (roquefort). Anyway. I digress and believe me chickadee, I could go on about cheese!

If you put out a holiday cheese platter and are now left with a whole slew of cheeses and you’re all cheese-and-crackered out, this is a good way to use them up. The cheese sauce is made with a light roux to smooth out the melting, so it should work with most of the common cheese platter players. I chose a smoked Vermont cheddar, a semi-soft aged chèvre from Holland and a soft-ripened triple crème from France.

Use what you’d like for this recipe. The only guideline I’d recommend is to use two semi-soft or semi-hard cheeses and one soft-ripened cheese to get the right saucy consistency. I wouldn’t recommend using Jarlsberg because it tends to get stringy as it melts.

Cheese Platter Cheese and Chicken Casserole – serves 2 – 4

2 C dry short pasta or shells
2 C cooked chicken meat, loosely chopped
1 T butter
1 T flour
3/4 C milk
3 oz smoked cheddar or smoked gouda, finely diced
3 oz milder semi-soft or semi-hard cheese, (fontina, gruyère, emmentaler, havarti, etc.), finely diced
3 oz soft-ripened cheese (brie, camembert, etc) rind removed
Salt to taste
Freshly ground pepper

Cook the pasta as directed.

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

In a small saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. When it bubbles, add flour and stir with a whisk for about 2 minutes until light golden brown. Gradually add milk, stirring with whisk for about 3 – 4 minutes until the sauce is smooth and begins to thicken. Add cheeses and stir with a wooden spoon until melted. Season the sauce to taste.

Combine chicken and pasta in a small casserole dish. Pour sauce over the mixture and toss to coat. Top with a few turns of freshly ground pepper. Bake for 35- 45 minutes until the top is golden brown and the sauce is bubbling.

Ingredient Origins: Butter – Maine, Flour – Vermont, Milk – Vemont, Smoked Cheddar – Vermont, Chèvre – Holland, Triple crème brie – France

Favorite Brussels Sprout and Beet Dish

Beets and Brussels sprouts are so nutritious, but they each have a bad reputation, especially among those who don’t care for vegetables. My theory on folks who say they don’t like vegetables is that they were probably served plates of boiled, flavorless, or worse, canned veggies as a kid. For those who say nay to veggies, I recommend giving them one more try by adding a flavorful cheese or bacon and cooking in butter rather than steaming or boiling. So there’s a little fat. So what? The vitamins are still there and it makes for a more enjoyable experience.

This is the anti-bland veggie dish. The ingredients are so perfectly in season now too. I served it last night with a marinated top round steak, cooked on my trusty cast aluminum stovetop griddle.

Warm Salad of Brussels Sprout and Beet – serves 2 – 4

2 large or 4 small beets, peeled and diced
12 Brussels sprouts, trimmed, outer leaves removed and halved
2 T + 1 T +1 T of butter
1 sprig of fresh tarragon, chopped
2-3 ounces of blue cheese, crumbled (but not pre-packaged “crumbles”)

Melt the first 2 tablespoons of butter in a medium baking dish or gratin dish in the oven as it pre-heats to 375 degrees This saves a little energy.

Once the oven is heated, take the dish out and toss the chopped beets in the butter to coat. Put back in the oven to roast beets for 20-30 minutes, until a fork is easily removed.

Meanwhile, melt the second tablespoon of butter in a large skillet. Once it starts to foam, add the tarragon and infuse the butter for 1 minute. Place the Brussels sprouts in the butter, cut side down and cook on medium low heat for 10 minutes until browned and crisp, watching to be sure not to burn the butter or tarragon. Flip the sprouts and cook another 10 minutes. Swirl that last pat of butter in the pan, toss and turn off heat.

Combine sprouts, beets and blue cheese in either the baking dish or in a warmed serving dish.

Ingredient origins: Organic beets and Brussels sprouts – Massachusetts; Butter – Maine; Tarragon – Massachusetts; Blue cheese – Vermont.

The marinade turned out nicely too. I chose the ingredients from what I had on hand, for example, I’d opened a can of tomato paste the other day. Normally I prefer to buy it in a tube, like oil paints, because you can take what you need without having to use a whole can. The cans of tomato paste and the Worcestershire sauce were both regrettable Costco purchases. I didn’t realize until I got it home that Worcestershire sauce contains high fructose corn syrup. So, I thought a marinade would put it to good use, without actually having to consume much of it. I’ll be more careful next time I buy it.

Worcestershire Marinade

1 C Worcestershire sauce
1/2 C canola oil
1 T tomato paste
1 t chili flakes
2 t black peppercorns

I let the top round sit in the marinade for a total of three hours, turning once.

Mac and Cheese

Mac and cheese is traditionally made using a combination of Cheddar and American Cheese, which, while I’m on that topic, I’d like to just put this out there, is not actually cheese.

I’m sure you already figured those little individually wrapped squares from the pre-sliced cold cut section of the supermarket were not lovingly stacked on shelves in a mountain cave and aged for 60 days. Nor was the big, glossy brick of Land O Something-or-other you see behind the deli counter. No no. The cheese labeled “American” is a cheese by-product. Like in the same way that particle board is a wood by-product.

According to the American Cheese Society, American Cheese is a “processed cheese”, which is defined as a cheese by-product made from a combination of natural cheese and added ingredients, such as stabilizers, emulsifiers, and flavor enhancers that are used to create a consistent and shelf-stable product aimed at mass market consumption.

Another interesting fact about cheese is that in the same way that all dogs share the same DNA, from Chihuahua to St. Bernard, all cheese is made from the same three ingredients: starter culture, rennet and milk. The only difference is the way those three ingredients are combined and aged. So Gorgonzola, Camembert, Romano, Cheddar, Gruyere, St. Marcellin, all cheese comes from exactly the same ingredients.

The only exception is processed cheese.

So why mess up such a perfect food with emulsifiers and other stuff your grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food (as Pollan would put it)? For many years, when the US had few to no artisan cheese producers, it may have made some sense to do this in order to facilitate national distribution. But that’s just not the case anymore. You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting an artisan cheese outfit and that’s a wonderful thing!

I really shouldn’t make it sound like artisan cheese producers are everywhere. Though there are pockets of production and grateful consumption of fantastically complex and delicious European-style cheeses nationwide, these producers are up against huge manufacturers and their millions in marketing campaigns. In order to insure the survival of artisanal producers, and our subsequent vast selection of such specialties, there needs to be a major paradigm shift in the way we as consumers shop, namely away from the mass-produced cheese found in every supermarket.

My point there, with the dead cat comment, is that artisan cheeses are around if you look for them. And you should look for them if you like quality cheese and would like to continue to see quality cheese.

It’s just a shame it took us so long and now “American Cheese” is defined as the SPAM of cheeses, and not something flowery like, “One of many regional varieties of complex cheeses produced in the United States.”

So that’s why I don’t use American Cheese in my mac and cheese.

Although, I will admit, I used to love American Cheese on white bread with mayo as a kid, but then I also used to like chewing on wax.

This recipe uses sharp Vermont Cheddar, a blue cheese from Iowa and Pecorino Romano from Italy. The pungent blue cheese and tangy Romano cut right through the sharp cheddar and add layers of flavor. Mustard emulsifies and cumin adds a little bite.

Yankee Cook’s Mac and Cheese – serves 2-4

Half a pound of short pasta, cooked
3 T butter
2 T flour
1 C milk
1 C, +1/2 C grated Cheddar
1/4 C Pecorino Romano
2 T blue cheese, crumbled (but not the “crumbles”)
1/4 t ground mustard
a few dashes of ground cumin
salt to taste

Pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees.

Melt the butter in a small saucepan. Once it foams, whisk in flour and blend over medium heat for 1-2 minutes. Pour in milk and whisk until smooth. Allow the roux to thicken. Stir in the cheeses, cumin, mustard and remove from heat. Stir until melted and smooth. Season to taste.

In a small to medium casserole, combine the pasta with the cheese sauce. Top with the additional cheddar.

Bake, uncovered for 20 minutes or until bubbly.