New Blue Cheese Redux

Back in March, I got a sample wedge of blue cheese as part of a tasting panel organized by Culture Cheese Magazine. The cheese was made by Point Reyes cheese.

Based on the input from all the tasters, Point Reyes started working on a new batch of cheese. And now, the new cheese - newer new blue cheese is ready. And I got my lovely wedge. Can I admit that we ate a whole lot of this cheese when it first arrived? A whole lot. I won't say half, but it was major carnage.

The last cheese was fairly mild and creamy with an ammonia-sharpness near the rind. This one is also mild, and the ammonia is gone. Texture-wise, it's slightly more crumbly. You can slice it when it's properly at room temperature, but it's crumbly when cold. Taste-wise, around the blue flavor, it's even more creamy than the first cheese.

I thought the previous cheese would have been a good choice to introduce people to blue cheeses. This one, even more so. On the other hand, if you like blue cheeses, I'm sure you'd like this one, too.

We were asked to come up with a name for the cheese. Last time, I thought Denim Blue would be a good name. I still like it.

Here's the link to my post about it on Culture Cheese.

These aren't your mother's potato pancakes

The lure of Mrs. Butterworth's pancake syrup notwithstanding, I might have been the only kid in America who didn't like pancakes.

Or more accurately, I didn't like breakfast pancakes. Show me a plate of potato pancakes at dinner time, and you'd better get out of my way. I could put those things away faster than my mother could make them.

Mom's recipe never varied much. She'd grate the potatoes and onions by hand. If you were prone to such things, you could bet that she'd scrape her knuckles on the grater, and that would be followed by a burst of some colorful language. She'd grumble about having to grate the onions while she got all teary. But back then, there really was no other choice for grating.

Her pancakes were pretty simple - potatoes, onions, salt, eggs, flour - and she made them exactly the same way every time. It wasn't until I grew up and moved out of the house that I discovered exotic pancakes, like zucchini pancakes.

This time, I decided to go really far from the original. Potato pancakes are often served with applesauce, so I thought that putting apples in the pancakes themselves would be pretty good. And then some cheese. And instead of grating onions, I sliced some scallions instead. So much easier, and the bits of green add a pop of color to the pancakes.

Mom often served her pancakes with sour cream. I chose to use Greek-style yogurt instead. I always have that on hand, and it's a little lighter than sour cream.


Potato-Apple-Cheddar Pancakes
makes about 12 pancakes

1 potato
1 apple
2 scallions, thinly sliced
1/2 cup grated cheddar cheese
2 eggs
2 tablespoons flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon white pepper
Fruit Fresh or lemon juice
Vegetable or olive oil for frying

Have a bowl standing ready with cold water with the juice of 1/2 lemon or a teaspoon of Fruit Fresh - this will keep your apple and your potato from turning brown.

Peel the potato and grate it into the water (I grated by hand - you can use a food processor to do the grating, if you prefer, but get it into the water as quickly as possible). Peel the apple and grate it into the water as well. You can peel the apple, core it, and grate the pieces, or peel the whole thing and grate it down to the core.

Drain the potato-apple mixture and press out as much liquid as possible Add the onion, cheese, eggs, flour salt, and pepper. Stir to combine.

Heat about a tablespoon of oil in a skillet. Portion dollops of the pancake mixture into the pan, a large spoon full at a time, flattening the pancakes as you go, and leaving room between them to make it easy for you to flip them. Cook one one side until nicely browned, then flip and fry on the second side. Continue cooking in batches, until all the pancake mixture is used up, adding oil to the pan between batches, if needed.

If the finished pancakes seem a bit greasy, let them rest for a moment on a paper towel before moving them to a serving plate.

Serve with Greek-style yogurt or sour cream, if desired.

Herbed Batter Bread

I've tried what some people call "batter bread" a few times, but I wasn't all that impressed with either the technique or the results. And I argued with myself about whether it was a batter or not. In the beginning, it's a batter, but at the end, it's a loose, goopy dough.

I set the concept aside for a while, but recently I revisited it.

This type of recipe makes sense. Beating a wet dough develops the gluten quickly. When the rest of the flour gets mixed in, that gluten doesn't get much of a chance to develop, but it doesn't matter - there's enough already.

Because this dough doesn't have the flavor-enhancement of a long, slow rise, it benefits from other flavor enhancements - in this case, herbs. The ones I chose are perhaps not all that typical, but the flavors worked well together. Of course, you could substitute any herbs and spices you like. Or cheese. Cheese is always good, right?

The instructions here are for using a hand mixer, but you could also beat the dough with the paddle attachment of your stand mixer. You could also beat the mixture by hand with a wooden spoon, but I'm too lazy for that.

Herbed Batter Bread

3 cups (13 1/2 ounces) all purpose flour, divided
2 1/4 teaspoons instant yeast
1 1/4 cups lukewarm water
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon dried dill
1 teaspoon celery seeds
1 teaspoon dried savory
2 tablespoons olive oil
baking spray

Spray a loaf pan with baking spray.

Combine 2 cups of the flour with the yeast, water, sugar, salt, dill, celery seeds, savory, and olive oil in a medium bowl. Beat on low with a hand mixer until all the ingredients are combined. Increase the speed to high and continue beating until the gluten is well developed - the batter will hold together in sheets if you try to lift it with a spoon.

Add the remaining flour and mix with a wooden spoon until the flour is evenly incorporated into the dough. Transfer the dough to the baking pan.

Wet your hands and smooth the top of the dough and even it out in the pan.

Spray the top of the dough with baking spray or cooking spray and cover the pan with plastic wrap. Set aside until the dough has doubled in size - about 40 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

When the dough has doubled, remove the plastic wrap and bake at 375 degrees until the bread is nicely browned an cooked through - about 45 minutes.

Remove the bread from the pan and let it cool completely on a rack before slicing.

This has been submitted to Yeastspotting.