The New Cheese Melt

Move over Swiss cheese. Chefs are melting all kinds of wonderful cheeses, and drizzling, pooling, dipping with joyful abandon.

By Katie Ayoub

Think of cheese fries. Or nachos at a ballgame. Or crank up “Stayin’ Alive” in your head, and picture the classic ’70s fondue party. All of these say “melted cheese,” but none captures the imagination of the modern chef. Indeed, even the refined classics, such as Mornay sauce, are taking a back seat. Today, some chefs are reinventing cheese sauces, using more intriguing cheeses and giving them different foods to complement.

Internationally speaking

One of the more inventive takes on a cheese sauce can be found at the Plaza Café in South Hampton, N.Y. There, chef/owner Doug Gulija menus a pan-seared beef filet with parsnip purée, Brussels-sprouts leaves and Saga-blue foam.

He sautés an 8-ounce filet with a canola/olive-oil blend. He adds a red-wine sauce (classic beef stock reduced with a local merlot) right before the meat is cooked. In another sauté pan, he renders pancetta, and then adds black trumpet mushrooms and the tender leaves of Brussels sprouts. For the foam, Gulija starts with diced Saga blue cheese (a mellow Danish blue) and heavy cream. He melts the cheese with the cream, strains it and places it in an iSi canister. For service, parsnip purée is placed in the center of the plate with the filet and red-wine sauce atop. The plate is rimmed with Brussels sprouts leaves and mushrooms. The dish is garnished with parsnip chips. The cheese blend is foamed onto a delicate Japanese spoon, and, tableside, the server ladles the Saga-blue-cheese foam from the spoon.

“It cascades down the filet and blends in with the sauce. It would taste great if you did this part in the kitchen, but it wouldn’t have the same visual impact," says Gulija. Why a foam and not a sauce? “Foams concentrate flavor a great deal. The Saga blue became assertive without overpowering the dish. I was worried that between the Brussels sprouts and the foam, I’d scare diners away, but it didn’t intimidate. People found it approachable.”

At the Boston Harbor Hotel in Boston, executive chef Daniel Bruce menus both a sweet and a savory cheese sauce. On the sweet side are wood-grilled Turkish brown figs in a mascarpone/toasted-nutmeg sauce. (The figs are served as part of a cheese-tasting plate.) Bruce stirs toasted nutmeg into an Italian mascarpone, then drapes it over the warm figs. The figs are then sprinkled with the featured cheese, and finished with syrup. This composed cheese plate is served with toasted pecan bread.

“The charred flavors of the grill combined with the sweetness of the fresh fig, the rich creaminess of the mascarpone, the nuttiness of the pecan and the spice of the nutmeg create layers of flavor while retaining the natural integrity of each ingredient,” he says.

On the savory side, Bruce menus roasted root vegetables with Cashel blue (an Irish semisoft blue cheese) sauce. He roasts, separately, pars-nips, yellow carrots, Chantenay carrots, pearl onions and butternut squash in olive oil, salt and pepper. He also sautés black Tuscan kale in a bit of olive oil, then combines all of the vegetables and heats them through in the oven. For the cheese sauce, Bruce combines Cashel blue, cream, pepper and a bit of starch to tighten and stabilize the sauce. The vegetables are naped with the sauce if served plated with red meat. On a buffet, the Cashel-blue sauce is offered on the side of the vegetables.

“I like the smooth, delicate blue flavors found in this cheese, which I prefer slightly aged, as it becomes less chalky with time. It has a great balance that doesn’t overpower the vegetables,” Bruce says.

Let’s start at the very beginning

Cheese sauces also inspire chefs in their appetizer menus. Indeed, the most popular appetizer at Sibling Rivalry in Boston is a roasted-beet salad with a goat-cheese fondue. There, chef/co-owner David Kinkead prepares the dish by packing skin-on red beets in kosher salt, and roasting them for 90 minutes at 325°F. He then brushes the salt off, peels the blistered skin and cools them. The beets are sliced carpaccio-thin and laid out on a plate. A salad of arugula, haricot vert, walnuts and Chioggia beets is tossed in sherry vinaigrette and placed atop the roasted beets. A disc of baked Massachusetts goat cheese rolled in walnuts buddies up to the salad, and the dish is drizzled with the goat-cheese fondue—the Massachusetts goat cheese melted down with heavy cream, toasted cumin and salt and pepper.

“You’ve got the sharpness of the vinaigrette marrying beautifully with the creamy, warm goat cheese. The flavors work really well together,” says Kinkead. At Two Chefs in South Miami, Fla., executive chef/owner Jan Jorgensen’s appetizer of smoked Gruyère fondue with pommes frites and lobster takes cheese fries to a decadent new level. The sauce is a béchamel made with the French Gruyère de Comte. It’s served as a dipping sauce for grilled Maine lobster tails and pommes frites spiced with cayenne, paprika and salt.

“The nutty flavor of the Gruyère nicely complements the subtle sweetness of the cold-water Maine lobster,” says Jorgensen. “This dish is basically a dressed-up version of cheese fries. And who doesn’t enjoy cheese fries—especially when a couple of lobster tails accompany them.”

Lamb, say cheese

At Clio in Boston, executive chef/owner Ken Oringer menus a loin of Colorado lamb with Wisconsin Gorgonzola fondue and artichokes Barigoule. For the fon-due, he reduces heavy cream, white wine and diced shallots, then adds Gorgonzola and butter, mixes it with a hand blender and strains it. Plating begins with a pool of the fondue, then a sprinkling of chives, thyme and lemon zest. The artichokes Barigoule (braised artichoke bottoms) are placed on the fondue, followed by lamb, grilled medium rare, sliced and fanned atop the artichokes. The plate is finished with a drizzle of lamb glaze.

“I love strong cheeses with lamb,” says Oringer. “I think they go really well together. The sharpness and creaminess of the cheese are great, and it has enough intensity to hold up to the gaminess of the lamb.”

Katie Ayoub is based in Keswick, Ontario, Canada.