cheese

Broccoli-Herrgård pie

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I had broccoli, Herrgård cheese and pretty much nothing else. I decided to make a savory pie from it – hoping the coconut milk wouldn’t add too much “sweetness” to the flavor. I also did not want to make a pastry crust that required being rolled out, so here’s what we ended up with.

The pics don’t make it look too appetizing (photography isn’t my thing) but it’s bloody well yummy.

Broccoli-Herrgård pie

Preheat oven to 200C

1 head fresh broccoli, steamed and chopped

Steam your broccoli for about five minutes (until tender), chop it up and set it aside.

Crust
½ cup grated cheese (I used Herrgård because it’s what I had but cheddar would be great)
¾ cup flour
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon dry mustard
¼ cup melted butter

Mix cheese, flour, salt and mustard and add the melted butter in until just combined. Press into a pie tin. Set aside while you prepare the filling.

Filling
1 tablespoon butter
1 chopped onion
2 tablespoons flour
1 cup cream, half-and-half or coconut milk (that’s all I had on hand)
½ cup cheese, grated
1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
3 eggs, slightly beaten

Melt the butter in a skillet, sauté the onion for about five minutes. Whisk in the flour, cream/coconut milk, salt, nutmeg and cheese until you have a kind of roux/sauce. Cook about one minute. Mix in the broccoli. Remove from heat and gradually stir in the beaten eggs. Pour into the prepared crust.

Bake for 15 minutes at 200C.

Remove from oven and reduce heat to 190C while you sprinkle a bit of extra cheese on top. Bake for an additional 20 minutes.

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Cheese, glorious cheese: “A nice amount of cheese”

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Check out this hideous 80s commercial about cheese – glorious cheese. The song came to mind, but the commercial eluded me. Dear heavens… the discussion of “real cheese” (versus what? Cheez Whiz and other non-real cheese alternatives?) makes me laugh. Painful.

Recently I came into a lot of cheese. I found some extra mature cheddar, found some stuff like Swiss Emmental and French Comté, made some homemade paneer… and then my friend came to visit (an Italian woman who lives in Iceland) and brought Italian stuff – Grana Padano, Asiago and some others. My goodness the Asiago was amazing. I do not normally have such an insane abundance of cheese at home.

Never enough, never too much. Always a “nice amount of cheese”.

Smoked Mozzarella, Experientialism, Psychic Nature and Magic

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Am I psychic or was it just coincidental? Did I manifest smoked mozzarella out of thin air? Two days ago I was thinking hard about the absence of smoked mozzarella – not really a favorite food or anything, but suddenly I felt I really wanted and needed smoked mozzarella but I knew I had never seen it here.

But then tonight I went to the store and had no intention of looking for smoked mozzarella – but there it was – on sale no less!

Who knew it would be so exciting to find?

On the way back from the store I was thinking about how it is so easy to get caught in the trap of thinking one is becoming happier and more fulfilled because they have more stuff. I have been alone and worked to buy more things – but I have not been any more fulfilled by having. I began to think about how experience can be so much more enriching – and then found an article on that very subject.

It really is all about the experience – “experientialism”, as the article puts it. Learning to breathe after the “stuffocation” modern society engenders.

And sometimes experience is magic.

Overdosing on Banshee on TV and enjoying the latest from Neneh Cherry and Robyn.