Blue cheese and rosemary, what a combination.
Délicieux!
We had some wonderful blue cheeses while in France so I decided this would be a nice little cracker to make upon coming home.
A friend made these from Ina Garten’s Paris cookbook and I loved them at first bite. Ina used Stilton in her recipe and I had thought about using a Roquefort cheese since that is from France. BUT, at our store they only carried one brand of Roquefort at $32.00 a pound. Yikes, I was not about to spend that much on a recipe I was trying out for the camera guy coming to my house that day.
So I bought another French blue cheese, D’Auvergne, which was around $16/lb and I only needed 8 ounces. This cheese is made in France and from cow’s milk which has a creamier taste than Roquefort which is made with ewe’s milk. I found this interesting — Blue d’Auvergne was created in 1854 by a producer of Roquefort. After noticing fungus on his bread, he tried to mix the same fungus with the cheese. A littler later, the farmer pierced the cheese so that the air could enter into it and help to develop the blue mould. These days the cheese is inoculated with Penicillin Roquefort. This cheese is best served at room temperature and is a perfect blue for salad dressings.
For anyone who does not know the different types of blue cheese, here’s a quick run down and I may have forgotten a few.
Roquefort is blue cheese from France
Stilton is blue cheese from England
Gorgonzola is from Italy
Cabrales comes from Spain and is a very pungent blue cheese.
Cambozola is one of my favorites. this cheese is German and they combine camembert with blue gorgonzola.
Bavarian is a mild and creamy German blue cheese.
Then you have the Irish bleu, the Danish blue, the Maytag blue which is American, and the list goes on and on.
So, when it comes to blue cheese, just choose what your pocketbook will allow.
I decided to add some rosemary to the recipe because I love the flavor with the blue cheese.