First Anniversary; Cheese Napoleon

One year ago today, I published my first blog post. It turned out to be a life changing event.

I remember starting all of this as sort of an escape. A way for me to kind of geek-out on all things food related. Now, it's become more than that. I don't live and breathe only for my blog, but it's something that I've grown to look forward to. It's become something not just for me, but something I can share with friends and family. I can go to work and discuss ideas for posting with my coworkers, who are always there for suggestions and willingness to be guinea pigs for whatever I create.

During this journey, I've discovered new foods which will forever be part of my personal menu. I've found inspirations in some of the most unlikely of places. Hell, I think I've even managed to inspire a few people myself.

What I really want to say, to let you know from the bottom of my heart, is this: Thank You. Thank you for taking the time out of your day to see what I'm doing here. Thank you for reading through all my weird rants and totally necessary use of foul language. Thank you for all the criticism, because it's difficult to move forward without knowing how you're doing.

I want to give a very special thanks to all my friends and family for that extra support in this little venture. Your kind words keep this fire on high!

While this blog won't last forever, it's not going anywhere anytime soon. I hope that you will stick around, because I can tell you right now, it's only getting better from here.

Without further ado, it's time for the food.

What you see above is something I'm calling a Cheese Napoleon. The cracker layers are baked parmesan cheese and smoked cheddar cheese. In between that is a basil infused ricotta with sauteed shallots and garlic. On top is a black olive and caper tapenade. Yeah, that's quite a mouthful(That's what she said!). So, were just going to stick with cheese napoleon.

I'm not sure what made me want to make this. Maybe it was all the assholes on the show chopped that resort to a napoleon or french toast for a dessert. Maybe I saw some cheese and wanted to do something with it. In any case, here we are.

And for the record, I really like how these first two pictures came out. :)

So, there's not much in the way of recipes for this. I made the ricotta myself, but you can just as easily buy some from the store, I recommend making it.

These are the cheeses I used for this:

I chopped up one large shallot and one large garlic clove.

I then chopped up some black olives and capers to make the tapenade. I added some olive oil to hold it together. I didn't measure, so just eyeball it and taste.

I started by grading the cheeses and placing them on a silpat. If you bake more than once a month, do yourself a favor and buy a silpat. They are non-stick and work great.

I put the tray in the oven, with the temperature at 350 degrees fahrenheit. I took the tray out the oven at about 8 to 10 minutes. I really wasn't looking too closely at the clock. You are gonna be better off using your eyes and your nose.

This is what it looked like coming out the oven:

The parmesan is on the left, the cheddar is on the right. At this point, the parmesan was ready, but the cheddar needed a few more minutes.

Here is where it can get a little tricky. My plan was to lift the cheese off the mat while still warm and pliable, but cool enough to not fall apart. To do this, test it first at the edges. Lift a little, and see if it just stretches or holds it shape.

When you can lift it, transfer it to a cutting board. DO NOT CUT ON YOUR SILPAT!!! You will tear it and completely FUCK IT UP!!! Don't cut on it!!!

Once on the cutting board, slice the cheese into strips. I used a pizza cutter for this job.

You can't move too slow during this last step. Once it sets, it will get brittle.

Once the cheddar had finished, I did the same thing to that.

I sauteed the shallots and garlic next. Once done, I folded that into roughly 1 1/4 cups ricotta.

With that done, it was time for the plate up.

I started by laying down a piece of parmesan first. I piped out a small dollop of ricotta on top of that.

From there, I placed a piece of cheddar on the ricotta. More ricotta on top of that. I placed another piece of parmesan on top of the ricotta, and finished with the tapenade.

And here you have it.

I really liked the presentation on this one. I wanted to get some green or red in there somewhere to liven things up a bit, but I was kind of pressed on time.

So, how did it taste? To be honest, it was almost too much. OK, to start off, it's cheese, on cheese, on cheese, on cheese! Lots of cheese! I knew that going in. But, the strength of the baked cheese really came on strong. The ricotta got kind of lost, and the tapenade was pretty mild with the black olives. The cheese crackers did taste good. They weren't completely crispy, so they did have some chew to it. But the crackers were pretty much the standout flavors. Not much teamwork going on in the flavor department here.

But, it was not a complete bust. As my mom and I were standing in the kitchen chowing down on these, I started to get low on the crackers. At that point, I just put a dollop of ricotta on a cracker and put the tapenade directly on the ricotta. NOW it tasted right! I still got that pop from the cracker, but I was able to get all the flavor from the ricotta and tapenade. It really came together! Too bad I didn't get any pics from that.:(

While my original idea didn't quite pan out, I found what I needed to do next time around. Maybe next time I have some friends over, I can break this out and blow their minds.

That's it for this one. I hope you enjoyed it. Stay tuned because 2013 is gonna be bangin' for Food And Such Things!

I'm Out!

J. Miller