Head Cheese

I tried out a new recipe yesterday for a focaccia bread with Concord grapes, walnuts and gorgonzola cheese. The link I've included goes to the recipe and a lovely photo of the end result. I was going to post my own photo but my camera just died.

This bread was an all day kind of project but I was excited to try a recipe with Concord grapes. Michael introduced them to me this year and now I completely understand Welch's Concord grape juice and jelly. I had no previous experience with gorgonzola and only limited tasting experience with blue cheese. Cheese, bread, fruit, nuts, how bad could it be?

You sprinkle the grapes and cheese over the bread near the end, just before it goes in the oven. No wait, the recipe says scatter the grapes, crumble the cheese. Has anyone ever tried to crumble gorgonzola? Feta crumbles, goronzola certainly does not. Gorgonzola is like brie but with veins of mold running through it. I know, why ruin a perfectly good wheel of brie? I had to laugh when I noticed that my cheese had a best before date on it. Like really, what else was going to happen to it? More mold? Perhaps the creamy part would go sour? I imagine this would only make it more of a delicacy. They would probably call it Gorgonzola Acida (that's Italian for sour, I think) and sell it for even more!

Oh, special note: I just Googled Gorgonzola and apparently it is supposed to be crumbly like Feta. Damn you Sobeys and your fancy pants cooler of cheeses! You know nothing but charged me over seven dollars for 140 grams of moldy brie!

Anywho, so I baked this flippin thing. I waited the suggested 10 minutes before cutting a piece to sample. I didn't really like it. The grapes were awesome but the gorgonzola was not.

I consulted OAF on the cheese:

me: What are your thoughts on blue cheese, specifically Gorgonzola, if you have experience with it.

5:48 PM OAF: Pure adoration.

A little bit goes a long way, and it can mix with other cheeses.

Delectable.

mmmmmmmm

What are your thoughts?

5:49 PM me: really? Hm. Too bad I can't fedex you my latest cooking experiment. I tried a recipe today for a focaccia bread topped with concord grapes and gorgonzola. I love the grapes but don't really like the gorgonzola.

OAF: You are wrong.

That is the best idea in the world.

5:50 PM me: well really, it is simply heartbreaking that I am here with an entire pan of bread that I only half enjoy and you are there without it.

OAF: (and very hungry)

Figures that the French-Canadian guy would be turned on by cheese. Or would that be cheesed on?

I took a container of the stuff to work today to share. It seemed to taste better today some how. The reviews were fairly positive. Nobody vomited or even made a displeased face.

EEEK! I just heard a helicopter fly over and it gave me scary flashbacks to my dream. Which reminds me, I must go do my regular hour of writing. Ugh. I don't like my writing. I mean, I like it here, but somehow my voice doesn't follow me into my work in creative fiction. It's clunky sounding and cheesy. Actually, if my fiction writing were cheese I think it would be Gorgonzola--crumbly, cheesy and stinky blue veins of characters running through it.