March's Grilled Cheese of the Month - Locavore Pesto Mozarella on Ciabatta

This month, the grilled cheese is a mozarella with pesto.  But it's not your usual basil pesto, it's my locavore pesto.  Rebecca turned me on to alternate pestos.  Rebecca has sworn by her arugula pestos and I've been intrigued.  Once my arugula (12 plants!) takes off, I will try that.  In the meantime, I'll make my locavore pesto.

While my arugula is still in its infancy, my parsley is growing like a weed.  Additionally, I picked up a batch of sorrel from the farmers market.  For those of you unfmailiar with sorrel, it's a leafy green that tastes amazingly like lemon. The down side it that it wilts quickly and turns an unattractive khaki color when cooked.  This makes it a prime candidate for pesto.  Everything except for the parmigiano reggiano comes from a local source and in two cases, my yard.

Locavore pesto:

1 cup of parsley
1 cup of sorrel
2 cloves of garlic
1/4 cup of walnuts
Juice and zest of 1 lemon
1/4 cup (at least) of parmigiano reggiano or any hard cheese - pecorino would work well
1/4 cup of olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

Put the first four ingredients in the food processor and blend until paste like.  Add the lemon, olive oil and parmesan and blend some more. 

This is just a Bay area spring on a spoon.  The flavors are just fresh and lemony.  Therefore, it needs a fairly neutral base for any dish it gets served with.  It was divine with ricotta gnocchi.  And its makes a great spread for a grilled cheese on ciabatta with mozarella.

A Chaource is a Chaource

Let's get down to some individual cheeses.  A few weeks ago, we found the Queen of Ooze, a creamy, luscious French cheese called Cahource (shah-OORSE).   The cheese shop had 1/2 a cylinder of this left and offered us a deal because once it's cut, it needs to be eaten. 

 

Chaource is a soft-ripened, white rind, cow's milk cheese that has been made since the Middle Ages.  The Lincet family has made this cheese, named after the town it comes from in the Champagne region of France, since 1892. They are reportedly the only importers to the US, but there are other producers in Chaource.

Tasting Notes: Chaource was a creamy mushroom bomb with a touch of salt.  A slippery, savory butter friend that had just enough tartness to notice. Earthy, but nothing overwhelms the luscious, indulgent, goo.  Our had a very slight ammonia note, but I think this was from keeping it a bit too long after it had been cut.  Get it, bring it well into room temperature, and then spread it on crostini or a table water cracker.  Delicious with sliced pears.

Compare To: Similar to a camembert or brie. 

Buy Me: We found ours at The Cheese Board in Berkeley, but I have heard reports that some Costcos carry it.  Culture Magazine has a cheese shop finder on their site to find something close to you.

Overall: A sexy addition to a cheese plate and a perfect, spoonable cheese to serve with some bubbly.  Also a nice cheese for a breakfast bowl of fruit.

Quark

I tend to separate cheeses into two categories - eating cheeses and ingredient cheeses.  It's self explanatory, but my eating cheeses are cheeses with complexity. They usually combine the sharp, salty, sweet and bitter with tones with butter or caramel.  My ingredient cheeses can be either completely bland but with good texture (ricotta. mozarella, fromage blanc) or incredibly powerful and needing another ingredient to mellow out the flavor (Point Reyes for blue cheese dressing or parmigianno reggiano). 

In the past few months, we've been buying an excellent ingredient cheese called quark. Quark is an interesting hybrid of ricotta and fromage blanc.  It has a nice tang but a great texture that melts into soups.  I love a dollop of it in a pureed tomato soup.  For those of you watching fat, it's lowfat, so you can use it as a substitute for cream in soups or sauces.    We have also tasted it sweet, with sugar and vanilla bean (easy to substitute Splenda). 

I will say it can be hard to find.  We get ours at the Spring Hill Jersey cheese stand at the Berkeley Farmers Market.  I haven't seen it at Trader Joe's or Safeway but have found it at Berkley Bowl and several other farmer's markets. 

If you do find a supplier, I highly recommend getting some.