Who is curious to find out the winning contestant from yesterday's Marriage Mondays?!? Can you guess who it might be and why? Well....should you not be able to, I can fill you in!
So, lets get going...
Contestant Number #1: Unfortunately Red Hawk simply overpowered our lovely Orzo this week. Pairing these two together becomes a completely one sided relationship, it becomes all about the Red Hawk. This pairing actually teaches us something very important about washed rind cheeses, it is really tough to utilize washed rind cheeses in cooked dishes or really to pair them with anything besides a simple baguette, a nice wine or more rather beer, and maybe one other ingredient. Washed rind cheeses have such a presence that when combined with another ingredient or utilized in a dish, they are not able to take a supporting or back seat role. But please feel free to enjoy our beloved Red Hawk with a nice beverage and some crusty bread, I guarantee you won't be disappointed with the party in your mouth.
Contestant Number # 2: Manchester also falls short of winning, for some of the same but also different reasons as Red Hawk. Manchester is a show stopping cheese if you ask me and is a cheese that should be eaten on its own so its nuances are able to be revealed. If you were to combine Manchester with Orzo you would be taking the brilliance of Manchester and dulling it a little bit, it is just not a fair match-up. Now, that is not to say Orzo isn't delish, it just doesn't have the world's best leg to stand on in comparison to Manchester. So the moral of this contestant is that sometimes the fantastically artisanal cheeses are meant to be eaten on their own so their true colors can shine, they can be combined into other dishes, but it will diminish their excellence, yes they will meld very well with the flavor profile of most dishes, but they fall short of their potential. Manchester and other artisanal cheeses are meant to be enjoy as themselves...not intertwined with other elements.
Contestant Number #3: So that means by process of elimation, Manouri wins this week's Marriage Mondays. Does that mean that Manouri is the best cheese by far? No, not at all, it just means that Manouri and Orzo form an excellent relationship, they balance each other out for all the right reasons and neither of the two steals the spotlight from the other... The inherently nice thing about this pairing and in turn relationship is the creaminess of the cheese is able to boost the flavor profile of the Orzo without overpowering it and turning the Orzo into something it is not. I truly think that with such a simple carb as Orzo, you need think simple like this cheese. To give you an example of how they work together, let me give you my summer Orzo salad recipe:
1 lb of cooked orzo - If you've never cooked orzo, imagine you are cooking rice or pasta, it is pretty much the same.
2 teaspoons of diced dill
2 teaspoons of diced chives
1 cup of corn
1/2 cup of fresh cooked peas
1/2 cup of thinly diced sugar snaps
1/2 lb of olive oil, herb, and garlic roasted salmon
1/3 - 1/2 lb of diced Manouri
Homemade Vinaigrette - sauteed shallots, eight year aged balsamic vinegar, extra virgin olive oil, Maille mustard.
Combine all of these ingredients together and serve this fantastic summer salad cold with a nice glass of Pinot Blanc, say for example Lieb Reserve Pinot Blanc from the North Fork of Long Island.
Enjoy!
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