Fun with Cheese

Sometimes when I don’t feel like eating a big meal, my go to food is cheese. I L-O-V-E the stuff. Tonight is one of those night when I get creative with cheese. Here we have Chavrie which is very soft goat milk with chopped basil and roasted garlic. This is so good smeared on crackers. One of my favorite cheeses to munch on while I drink wine is Manchego. I don’t remember when I was first introduced to it, but this is a semi-hard Spanish cheese made from sheeps milk that has a distinctive, slightly salty but not too strong flavor. On the bottom left we have a soft brie that I could literally eat with a spoon. In my opinion this is best served baked in a flaky crust. Tonight I’m putting a new spin on it. Also, for munching I have spanish marcona almonds in the green bowl. These are lightly salted and have a richer more intense flavor than ordinary almonds. I really like these when I drink wine and eat cheese for dinner.

I had some work to finish up on my computer when I first got home, so I poured myself a glass of this Tablas Creek 2004 Esprit de Beaucastel. From Paso Robles in California, this wine is dark red in color with a smell of chocolate, plums and crushed rock (or so it says on the side of the bottle, ha). It’s a heavier more full bodied wine than I usually drink, but it’s very juicy and delicious.

I could eat brie by itself, but I most enjoy it slathered with apricot preserved, sprinkled with slivered almonds, covered with croissant dough and baked. Mmm… it’s sooo good. Tonight I wanted something savory as opposed to a sweet brie. I topped the brie with garlic and basil pesto, then topped with two triangles from the croissant dough in a can.

For the very top I chopped up some sun dried tomatoes and drizzled with olive oil. Next, I baked at the time and temperature on the dough can, then I added another 8 minutes to make sure the dough was cooked through and crispy on top.

This turned out SO well, it was yummy.

Here is another adventure in cheese! Mozzarella wrapped in prosciutto.

I wrapped the mozzarella and prosciutto in the croissant dough and sprinkled with a healthy pinch of italian seasoning.

I also baked this for the time and temperature on the croissant tube, but ended up extending the bake time for another 8-10 minutes.

I had two triangles of croissants left over and wrapped up a cut a manchego cheese in them. I'm also posting this picture because I love this silicone liner for my baking sheet. I love this thing!


In all honestly, the mozzarella oozing out of the flaky crust was great...but I guess I'm not a fan of prosciutto because this didn't turn out as well as I imagined. Jim finished it...in about four bites.