Bread and Cheese Make Me Happy

We had cheese fondue the other evening for dinner.  It’s a fun, cheap, kid-friendly, and mostly healthy meal. 

I have fond memories of eating fondue with my family as a child. (Yes, I grew up in the 70s!) I modified a recipe for a cheddar cheese fondue that I ran across years ago in a fondue recipe book.

Because my children prefer it, I use a milder cheddar and sometimes combine a little Colby cheese so the taste isn’t as sharp. We dip French bread because I usually have some in the freezer, but just about any kind of bread would work.  (I’ve been known to dig at the leftovers with saltine crackers when we ran out of french bread, but I get a little insane about cheese.) I cut the bread into chunks and toast it lightly in the oven. When I’m feeling reckless or if the bread is particularly stale, I butter it before toasting it. 

I use any vegetables I have on hand, like carrots, celery, broccoli, or cauliflower, cut into bite-size pieces. Apple slices are also good. I usually very lightly steam the broccoli or cauliflower, so it's still crispy but not raw. 

The base liquid for the recipe is beer, but you could use white wine or maybe even a broth.  Dark beer adds a nice, rich flavor to the fondue, but we usually have light beer so that’s what I use most often.

While I do actually own a cheese fondue pot, I rarely use it. I haven’t figured out a way to control the flame so it doesn’t scorch the cheese. Instead we use a ceramic bowl that fits into a saucepan with a low level of hot water to keep the cheese warm. You could also use a small Crock-pot or just transfer the saucepan used to cook the fondue directly to the table. It doesn’t usually last long enough to cool and congeal. 

The long color-coded fondue forks are fun but very sharp. We use them more now that my children are older but fingers or regular forks work just as well.

Cheddar Cheese Fondue

1 cup beer

12 ounces cheddar cheese, shredded

1½ tablespoons flour

2 teaspoons dry mustard

1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

Toss the cheese with the flour. In a small bowl, dissolve the mustard in the Worcestershire sauce. Bring beer to simmer in saucepan over medium heat. Gradually stir the cheese into the beer, a small handful at a time allowing each addition to melt before adding more. Stir in the Worcestershire and mustard mix. Serve immediately.

A Bushel or Just a Peck?

These are just some of the jalapenos that only two plants in our garden produced this year.  The rest have been shared with friends and family, frozen for winter’s use in chili, chopped in salsas this summer, or stuffed with sausage or pimento cheese and gingerly devoured.

These suckers were hot!

Was it the very hot summer we had that made these peppers so much spicier than last year? The variety of plant?  Something different in the garden soil?  I really don’t know, but the ones we’ve picked since the nights have cooled off have been much more tolerable than the ones produced in August.  I also noticed that production dwindled during the hot months and picked back up noticeably when the heat broke.

To freeze jalapenos, I usually cut off the stem, slice them in half, scrape the seeds and membranes, and freeze them in freezer bags.  Later I can pull them from the freezer ready to use for stuffing and baking or chopping for chili and salsa.

I tried this method several times throughout the summer which resulted in coughing and choking and eyes tearing like day-long crying jag.  I left several of the latter crop ripening on the vine because - I’ll admit it! - I was scared.  This last batch I just washed and bagged whole.  We’ll see how that turns out.

Simple Vinaigrette

Balsamic Vinaigrette

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

1/3 cup balsamic vinegar

1 Tbsp. Dijon mustard

1 Tbsp. honey

Whisk together in a small bowl, cover, and chill.

This is a dressing that I keep in the fridge most of the time, because it’s good on all types of salads.  When I use the dark-colored balsamic vinegar, it has a deeper, richer taste that works well on Greek salads or an Italian-type mixed green salad.  

If I use white balsamic vinegar instead, the mustard flavor is more apparent and it's more like a honey-mustard vinaigrette. This version is great on a spinach and mushroom salad .  Sometimes I substitute sliced pears, goat cheese, and walnuts for the mushrooms, parmesan, and pecans just to make life interesting.