You might have noticed I haven’t been posting for a while. My followers knew I had a business project, it’s actually going pretty well. And hardly leaves me much time to do anything else…

I’ll keep posting in the near future but maybe not as regularly as I would like to. But don’t worry, I keep cooking and shooting to share new recipes with you when I get a little more free time

So here come my Blue cheese, walnuts & bresaola roll-ups! You know I have a thing for cheese… I’ts a perfect ingredient for tasty finger food. You can use any type of blue cheese for these ones. If you go for a creamy one, like a good Gorgonzola, you won’t even need to mix it with cream cheese. I made mine with roquefort, it definitely needed it to be easily spreadable on the crepe.

I’m not sure if you can find Bresaola easily wherever you live. Here is a list of equivalent products you could substitute breasaola with.

Preparation time: 15 minutes – Refrigeration time : at least 4 hours

Ingredients (for 16 to 20 rolls)

5.3 oz (150 g) of blue cheese
3.5 oz (100 g) of cream cheese
2.1 oz (60 g) of walnut halves
8 Bresaola slices
2 buckwheat galettes (recipe here)

Instructions

1/ Pour walnut halves into a mortar (or food processor) and grind with a pesel for a few minutes until you get a mix of a fine consistency and small pieces that will add crunchiness to your rolls.

2/ In a bowl, mash blue cheese, cheese spread and ground walnuts.

3/ Line a plastic wrap on your work surface and place a galette on top of it. Spread a thick layer of your cheese mixture on the galette. Be careful no to break it! Top with breasaola slices like you would do on a pizza.

4/ Wrap into a firm roll. To do so, you need to tuck the end of your galette to start the roll. Then carefully bring the bottom part of your plastic wrap up and over the ingredients and roll tightly pulling back the plastic wrap as necessary so it doesn’t get rolled into your roll-ups. Wrap the plastic wrap around your roll and roll a few times on your work surface so it gets perfectly circular.

5/ Repeat operation with the second buckwheat galette.

6/ Refrigerate your rolls for at least 4 hours. If you don’t have enough time left, you can also place them in the freezer for an hour.

7/ Cut both extremities so you only get nice little rolls and cut your rolls into 8 to 10 pieces each.

Serve as an appetizer.

Soup season is here! One thing I love about making soup is that you can experiment all you want, you have very few chances to come out with something really bad . Well, my last experiment was this leek and potato soup flavored with blue cheese and I must say it did taste good! It’s a very easy to make recipe that doesn’t need much work on your part. You just heat the leek and potatoes with water and mix everything together… How simple is that?! If  blue cheese’s taste is too strong for you, replace it with cream cheese.

Preparation time: 10 mn – Cooking time: 40 mn

Ingredients (for 4 servings)

1 leek
2 large potatoes
1 onion
5 cups (120 cl) of water
0.7 oz (20g) of blue cheese (a little more if you want some left for decoration)
3 tablespoons of whipping cream
Salt

Instructions

1/ Peel and wash potatoes.

2/ Peel leek by taking off the outside leaves and cutting off both the spoiled end on the green side and the roots on the white side. Wash thoroughly to take off soil that can be left inside.

3/ Peel onion and take off roots on the bottom end.

4/ Heat water in a casserole over medium heat.

5/ Slice leek, cut potatoes into 4 pieces and pour into the water along with the entire onion. Add salt and leave covered for 40 minutes.

6/ Mix together whipping cream and blue cheese.

7/ Liquidize soup and combine it with blue cheese cream. You can add half first, try it and decide how much more blue cheese flavor you wish to add. Season with salt if needed.

I’ll finish this ‘appetizer spoons week’ by one recipe I discovered not long ago but I already know I’ll be making it quite often. Unlike the other recipes I posted along the week, you’ll need some cooking for that one . I caramelized shallots but you can also use onions as long as you slice them into thin pieces. They help sweeten blue cheese’s strong taste. The three flavors go just perfect together… I used raspberry vinegar when caramelizing shallots, it adds a delicious fruity taste; but you can replace it by red wine if you like.

Preparation time: 35 mn

Ingredients (for 10 spoons)

3 prosciutto slices
6 shallots (or 2 onions)
2 oz (55 g) of blue cheese
2 tablespoons of raspberry vinegar (or red wine)  (Click here to buy online)
1 1/2 tablespoons of butter
1 tablespoon of granulated sugar
Salt & pepper

Instructions

1/ Peel and chop shallots.

2/ Melt butter in a frying pan over low heat. (Be careful it doesn’t get brown, it’s very bad for health.)

3/ When butter has melt, add chopped shallots. Leave covered, stirring frequently, for about 10 mn or until translucent.

4/ Add sugar and stir. Let shallots caramelize for a couple of minutes, then add raspberry vinegar. At that time, you should probably go for medium heat. It’s important when adding alcohol to get it to a (smooth ) boil so the strong taste evaporates. When the strong smell is gone, you’re done. Take pan off heat.

5/ Cut prosciutto into small pieces.

6/ Dice blue cheese.

7/ Fill the bottom of your Chinese soup spoons with caramelized shallots. Add a dice of blue cheese and top with prosciutto pieces.

8/ Serve right away.