Tag Archives: cheese

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Bees & Cheer

Cheese N Beer - Belgian Beer

I recently had the pleasure of attending the “Beer School for Cheese Fans – Best of Belgium”, with brewmaster Sam Corbeil. This tasting event took place at the Leslieville Cheese Market West Market (541 Queen St. West, Toronto).

I’ve been a bit of a cheese dork for a while now, very slowly trying new fun cheeses and resisting the urge to become a total cheese “snob”. It’s only been the last few years that I’ve even been open to drinking beer, however.

J has always enjoyed trying new beers, and back in 2007 we were in Boston when he had me try a locally brewed, unfiltered wheat beer with fennel and cardamom. My opinion took such a sharp change in direction that we spent the rest of our trip trying new beers… and enjoying them! Since then, I’ve been trying to figure out what kinds of beers I like (and almost more importantly, which ones I don’t like).

Beer and cheese are now two of my favourite things. So it makes sense that someone would see “Beer School for Cheese Fans” and instantly think of me 🙂 Yes, this tour of deliciousness was a gift from a good friend (thanks!).

Cheese N Beer - Blue Haze

Blue Haze, a smoked blue cheese

Tonight’s tour paired 5 Belgian style beers with 5 different cheeses. The beers were all very different, and very tasty. I think that I had only had the Mill St. Wit before. Sam, who was doing the presentation, said something that I hadn’t thought of before – beer naturally pairs with cheese, because their flavours are more similar. I thought about this, and realized there’s at least some truth to it. It always seems like you choose foods that compete (favourably) with some flavours in wine, whereas there really isn’t that battle with beer. We ended up buying some crazy smoky blue cheese, and some cave-aged gruyere. We tried to buy some of the salty sheep’s milk cheese, but it was sold out by the time we made up our minds.

  • Mill St. Belgian Wit / Mouton Rouge (a salty sheep’s milk cheese)
  • Duvel / Morbier (creamy cheese with an ash vein)
  • Chimay “White Cap” Triple / cave aged Gruyere
  • Goulden Carlous “Classic” / Sauvagine, a creamy soft cheese,  on sausage
  • Trois Pistoles  / Blue Haze, a smokey blue cheese,  on rye crackers

In the end, I have to say that the Blue Haze was a great choice. A little bit of blue plus a little bit of smoke make a really good pair – and it tastes AMAZING on fresh Ciabatta bread (thanks, J-dog!).

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Recipe Mashup: Baked Sweet Potato Pasta

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This is my usual way of dealing with recipes – I steal from them and I smash them together.

Until I started my blog, I didn’t really follow recipes closely. I usually just use them for inspiration. I figure out what ingredients I have on hand, and I Google my way to a few recipes that sound neat. I take a little bit from one and a little bit from another, and there we go!

Tonight’s dinner was fueled by my wish to bake a pasta dish, and the sweet potatoes that were waiting to fulfill their delicious destiny.

I took most of my inspiration from Martha Stewart: Baked Mushroom Linguine and Butternut Squash and Sage Lasagna. Some people like to mock Martha, but honestly I’ve had great success with recipes from her website. I’m not embarrassed to say that I enjoy her show (on the rare occasion I’m able to watch it) and it’s now one of my go-to sites when I can’t think of what to make for dinner.

On that note, I think I need to add her link to my blogroll. Done!

Pasta Mashup - Oven Dish

Mashup Pasta & Sweet Potato Casserole

Soo… here’s what I did: I cooked up some rotini (ok, not either of the recommended types of noodle); baked my sweet potatoes as suggested in the squash recipe; loaded up a cheese sauce with some cream cheese, some Fizzy cheese from Quebec, herbes de provence, thyme, rosemary, nutmeg, cayenne and tangy mustard powder; sauteed some mushrooms and onions with mushroom broth; tossed it all together and threw it back in the oven topped with breadcrumbs. Whew!!

Pasta Mashup - Plate

Pretty yummy!

So, how did it turn out? Not bad! The cheese sauce is a little different from my usual (shock! I didn’t put any anise in it!) and I’m usually too lazy to make a meal and THEN put it in the oven to bake. I ended up putting in too many noodles, which meant the sauce wasn’t as vibrant and saucey as it should have been. Blerg! I didn’t think the breadcrumb thing through – it ended up being a little too dry, because the sauce was mostly absorbed into the pasta. So I had to add a little more liquid and stick it back in the oven. Live and learn.