Blue Cheese and Plum for Dessert? TGRWT #18

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When hunting for info on how to make the Blackberry pearls in this mornings post I stumbled across something that took my interest. An initiative called They Go Really Well Together, it was started by Martin (a Norwegian blogger) to get people creating dishes that combine ingredients that share common odorants but might not strike you as having the potential to work together on face value. This months task is to combine the flavours of Blue Cheese and Plum. I happened to have some blue cheese already in the house and while plums are out of season I did have a tin of preserved plums in the cupboard. To make things even easier the first thing that sprung to mind to do with the blue cheese was to create a parfait or soufflé with it, chance also smiled at me when Claire put together some blue cheese parfaits saving me a little effort.




The parfait was a simple mix of Blue Cheese, Milk, Cream and Gelatine if I were to make this specifically for this dessert I would more than likely change this part of the dish significantly by either reducing the quantity of blue cheese in the parfait or adding some sweetness to it. To bring the plum into the dish I decided that a jelly would be the most simple and effective contrast in shape. First I stewed the plums with a little sugar, puréed them and added in a little tamarind to sharpen the flavour and enhance the bitterness lost by using canned plums. Some gelatine to set it and then sliced once set.

To finish off the dessert I used some crushed Macadamia/Pistachio and drizzled over some honey mixed with white balsamic crème.

The combination was not offensive but I think that the palate was overwhelmed by the strength of the blue cheese, if you took a small piece of the parfait with an ample amount of the jelly it would go as far as saying the combination was actually good. The saltiness of the nuts and sweetness of the honey helped blend the two together. Make the presentation a little cleaner with a little more punch in the jelly and a little less kick in the parfait and you would have a very presentable dessert.



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