To inspire us all to start cooking more with cheese, Andres Gonzalez the Corporate Chef of Academy Patron L’École du Fromage Savencia Chile share some fabulous recipes using some classic cheeses.
Besides being a delight by itself, cheese is versatile food and when used in cooking can help you highlight flavours and create some unusual and very tasty dishes. Categorising cheese into different families such as: fresh, soft, hard and hard cooked, is a useful way of choosing what cheese to use for each recipe. Most of the cheeses featured can be vegetarian and the same recipes will apply.
Cheese as a ready ingredient
Cheese is a great ingredient as it is. Ideal to mix with salad, some cubes of pear sprinkled with a drop of lemon and some walnuts. You could use almost any kind of cheese, from fresh goats cheese to feta, brie or even hard cheese such as Gouda. It’s simple to prepare as you just need to cut or grate the cheese, which will also enhance the dish giving texture and aromatic notes. It is also the perfect way to use up any left-over cheese to avoid wastage.
As well as salads, you can also create many other types of dishes with cheese such as mini sandwiches, skewers, tartar or bruschetta.
Olive Octopus Bruschetta
Recipe:
Octopus carpaccio, crispy parsley, garlic flakes, black olives.
Chavroux cheese with capers, lemon, pepper, salt and Dijon mustard,
Serve on crispy olive toast.
Olive Octopus Bruschetta 
Chavroux Goats Cheese
Cold dishes with cheese
Cheese can be incorporated into cream or mousse recipes because the texture allows it to easily mix in. A mousse de brie with cream, avocado and nutmeg is perfect for a verrine or as a dip.
Another cold recipe idea is ice cream with fresh goat cheese such as Chavroux that you can then freeze and keep many times in your freezer. Just mix Chavroux, whole milk, sugar, cream, powder milk, dextrose, and stabilization for ice cream.
Grilled scallops with Parmigiano “acevichada” sauce
Servings: 20 people
Preparation time: 10 minutes
Ingredients:
-Dashi 150ml (Shiitake mushroom, bonito fish and dehydrated kombu seaweed)
-Parmigiano Reggiano 50g
-Vegetable oil 500ml
-Celery 20g
-Garlic 1/2 clove
-Peeled ginger 10g
-White onion 50g
-Shiitake mushrooms 2 units
-Lemon juice 50ml
-Ponzu 20ml (soy sauce + lemon + vinegar)
-Salt 5g
-Scallops
Sauce preparation:
-For the Dashi; hydrate and cook the shiitake mushroom, dehydrated bonito fish and kombu seaweed in a pan until boiling, reserve.
-In a juicer at medium high speed, mix all the ingredients except the oil.
-When all the ingredients are crushed, add the oil in the form of a thread to form the emulsion.
-Already the mixture is emulsified, keep cold.
plating:
On the grilled scallops, arrange the sauce and decorate.
Cheese Sauces & Pastas
The famous 4 cheese sauce can be made with Roquefort, Edam, Cabra and Manchego. When melting the cheese the firmer textured cheeses will be added at the beginning and the creamier cheese such as the Roquefort at the end. This sauce can be served with delicious fresh Tagliatelle.
A risotto made with butter could instead be a made with reduction of a Pecorino Romano or Parmigiana Reggiano cheese.
Cream cheese is a perfect cheese to fill a ravioli with spinach and onion for example.
Frying Cheese
We all have had the popular breaded mozzarella as a starter, did you know this works equally well using brie? Recipes will start by covering the brie in flour and a mix of eggs so it can stick to the bread crumbs then fried.
Breaded Saint Agur blue Cheese is another delicious option. The cheese is first mixed with peas to give it a firmer texture before being left in the fridge for one hour to firm up and finally tossed into a bread crumbs to be the fried (Saint Agur recipe).
Creamy apple and crispy mini brie
Baked Cheese
Different types of cheese react differently when cooked in the oven, offering a wide variety of both texture and flavour.
If you take a very hard cheese such as Grana Padano, grate it and the put it in the oven for 5 min a 180 degrees, you will end up with a tile or “tuile” that can almost be used as a cracker or to add crunchiness in any dish.
If you use hard but mild cheese such as Edam or Cheddar, you will get a nice melting texture very classically used in the macaroni Cheese or cauliflower cheese. Quiche is another dish where the hard and mild cheese will give a nice melting texture to the paste.
To impress your guests, trying using puff pastry and fill it with Manchego or Gouda cheese and an almond and butter paste before heating it for 15 min in the oven at 180 degrees Celsius
The best cheese for those who love a good melting texture is brie with a ripe creamy centre high in moisture so that after 30 minutes in the oven will become an explosion of meltiness that you can eat with a spoon.
For cottage cheese, feta, fresh goats or even blue cheese it’s best to only leave in the oven for a short time to warm and brown on top before serving with crunchy bread.
Creme brulee with Manchego cheese and Camembert
Recipes provided by Andres Gonzalez Coprorate Chef of L’École du Fromage Savencia Chile
