[Sca-cooks] Savory Toasted Cheese

[Stefan li Rous]

Cailte asked:
  <<< i have only had cheese goo once... delicious with bacon
and asparagus in it.  however, volunteering for scullery
service was an eye opener.  it was incredibly greasy and
hard to clean off the cooking dishes.

is this standard or can i count that up to a careless
cook? >>>

I'm not sure that I would call this standard nor due to a careless  
cook. Since you are adding butter to the cheese(s), it is possible  
that in this case your cook chose a cheese that was fairly oily at  
least when it melted and didn't cut back on the butter. I have had  
trouble, as have others, with this cheese dish wanting to separate.  
If the cheese is allowed to overcook in something like a crock pot or  
left to sit at a table unheated, the cheese can congeal hard and be  
difficult to remove. I'd think the oiliness of the cheese though  
should actually make the hardened cheese somewhat easier to cleave  
off of the serving dish though.

This is a dish best served in something to keep it warm, such as a  
crock-pot for pot lucks, otherwise it thickens up fairly quickly and  
is difficult to dip bread into or pour it over something. At Gulf  
Wars, my wife and I usually just eat STC right out of the cooking  
pot. Yes, barbaric. But it means one less pot to clean.

Did someone put some water into the cooking dishes to soak after  
pouring the cheese into the serving dishes? Or since the remaining  
cheese should have been soft after pouring the cheese into the  
serving dishes, rinse them off in a sink? I think either of those two  
methods would have made clean-up much easier than letting the cheese  
dry on the cooking dishes.

Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas           
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****