No cheesy vampires around me

[madbaker]

This week's Resolution Recipe: Allos Quesos (Garlic Cheese sauce)

If you want to make garlic cheese, take dry white cheese and grind it together with garlic. When it is well ground, put in a little oil or mix it with lukewarm water that has not boiled. If you put in four or five egg yolks, it will be even better, especially if it is served with meat. (Sent Sovi, late 14th century)

4 ounces aged pecorino cheese
Eight 4-6 medium cloves peeled garlic (about 3/4 ounce) (see what didn't work)
4 tsp olive oil
2 egg yolks

Grate the cheese finely and crush the garlic; mix the two together. Beat in oil and egg yolks if using. Serve as a side sauce with a roast.

I used an aged pecorino cheese because it is a dry sheep's milk cheese recipe that is relatively unchanged from the Middle Ages. Catalonia has many more sheep and goats than cows due to its rugged terrain, so this seemed a reasonable choice.

Other sauce recipes in this collection call for beating in uncooked egg yolks to thicken sauce recipes.

Santanach, Joan ed. Vogelzang, Robin trans. The Book of Sent Sovi: Medieval recipes from Catalonia. Barcelona: Boydell & Brewer, 2008. ISBN 978-1-85566-164-6.

What worked: Mmmm, garlic. It was a pretty lemony yellow from the cheese and went nicely with the broiled sirloin tip for dinner. Dead easy to make.

What didn't: I made a half recipe and used 1/2 ounce garlic, which was a bit too aggressive. I liked it, but realistically it needed to be cut down.

Will I make it again? Definitely. I want to try it with 3/4 the garlic and see if that's the right amount; then it will be a very easy sauce to bring to events for roasts.

Comments

[vittoriosa.livejournal.com]

That sounds delicious... and weirdly, I love anything that involves raw egg yolk. :-)

Oh, and hey! Boccalone got a shout-out in the NY Times food section this week: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/01/dining/01whole.html?ref=dining

[madbaker.livejournal.com]

I'd be more worried if I didn't know where my eggs came from. In our case, they come from the same place San Francisco has been getting eggs since the Gold Rush: Petaluma.

Sent Sovi is worth getting, but it's quite thin. There aren't very many recipes in it.

Scappi has been postponed yet again.