Grilled Ricotta and Shrimp with Cilantro Pesto

You know what's gross?  Eating soap.

You know what's even more gross?  Eating an herb that tastes like soap.

Yes, to me, cilantro tastes like soap.  And if you're at all like me (and thousands/millions of others) you would agree that cilantro is certainly not an enjoyable taste.  In fact, I remember finding a video a few months back explaining why it is that some people just hate cilantro.  Unfortunately I wasn't able to locate it again, but I did find this much more in-depth article.  I'll admit that I was too lazy to actually read the whole thing... oopse.  Much easier to read was http://www.ihatecilantro.com/, a website featuring various odes to the hatred of cilantro.  One of my favorites is a haiku that goes a little something like this:

"Here, have some salad."
Alas! Cilantro within
Taste the soapiness.

But I digress.  The beauty of me working my way through GGC is that I can modify any recipe any way I want!  And I'm nothing if not a rebel ;-P  So during my shopping trip I decided cilantro was out and basil was in.  I was making pesto, and I've traditionally heard of pesto as being made with basil, so I figured this was an acceptable (and more palatable) substitute.  I had some shrimp in my freezer at home as well as the leftover ricotta, so all that was left to buy was sourdough bread, pecans and Parmesan cheese!  GGC actually recommends using dry jack cheese, but notes that if you can't find it then Parmesan is an adequate substitute.  As for the bread, the recipe calls for pain au levain or hearty white or sourdough, so sourdough it was (a totally arbitrary decision on my end).

Step one was making the pesto.  I was a little intimidated by this step since it involved putting the pesto ingredients in a food processor and processing them until they formed a "paste."  Wellll I don't own a food processor, so I decided a (hopefully adequate) substitute would be my roomie's smoothie maker-- she wasn't home to give me official permission to use it, but again, I'm a rebel.

The smoothie maker wasn't that big (it is, after all, intended to make one smoothie), so I opted to chop the ingredients in steps.  First up were the pecans-- about 1/2 cup to be exact.  Cowering ever so slightly as I pressed the power button on the smoothie maker, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the blades chopped the nuts quite easily!  Unfortunately they only chopped the nuts in the very immediate vicinity of the blades, forcing me to wedge a fork around (without the power off, of course) to mix up the nuts so that everyone got a turn near the blades.

Next up was the basil-- the recipe called for a "bunch of cilantro with big stems removed," so I estimated about 6 big stems worth of basil leaves, but this quantity is easily adjusted based on one's affinity for basil.  The basil also chopped up surprisingly easily/evenly.

Admittedly the results were more "chunky" than paste-like, but I was fine with that.  A little chunky pesto never hurt anyone (well, anyone without a nut allergy that is).  The nuts/basil were supposed to be food processed with some of the grated Parmesan cheese, but there was no way all of that was fitting into the smoothie blender.  Instead, I just put the Parmesan right in the bowl with the basil and nuts.  The recipe called for 1/4 cup of finely grated Parmesan, but with a rebel yell I cried "More, more, MORE!" and went with a very heaping/bordering on 1/2 cup serving of cheese.

Looked pretty good to me!  Next came 6 tablespoons of olive oil to give this a smoother and more spreadable texture.

Even better!  It tasted pretty good too, although my olive oil isn't the highest quality out there, so I think that may have put a little damper on the overall taste.  Anyway, on to the sandwiches!

The shrimp I had removed from the freezer hadn't quite thawed all the way, so I gave them a quick turn in the frying pan to melt any remaining ice.  Probably not a great idea, but as we all know I'm a what?  I'm sure you've got it by now ;-)

Now it was time to assemble the sandwiches, but due to a shoddy cutting job by the bread machine at Safeway, all the slices of bread had gaping holes in them (sadly I wasn't able to hit my tried and true Wegmans this week due to some time constraints-- a decision I'm regretting now).  Oh well, I'll persevere. 

Step 1 was spreading 8 ounces of ricotta evenly over four slices of bread that had been olive oiled on one side.  Spreadable cheese + holes = mess, but I chose to ignore this fact.

Next came the pesto, again spread evenly.

Looking good :-)  Then came the shrimp, you guessed it, spread evenly. 

My penultimate act of rebellion was proceeding to add EVEN MORE Parmesan cheese.  I had been snacking on it during preparations and decided it was good enough to earn a more prominent place in the sandwich.

Next came the second slice of olive oiled bread and I was ready to grill... well, as ready to grill as one can be when their sandwiches all have huge holes in them.  My plan was to choose whichever side had the smaller hole and start there.  It worked well enough, but once some ingredients started to seep out they sort of charred themselves onto the pan, which combated the non-stick features.  I compensated by adding dashes of olive oil and cooking spray (not necessarily at the same time).

Taste Review:

Unlike most of our taste test sessions, we were both pretty quiet as soon as we started eating-- I wasn't really sure what flavors I was getting because the whole thing tasted pretty bland.  Upon further reflection it was clear that the pesto is the strongest taste.  It was good that we had the creamy ricotta to contrast the chunkiness of the pesto, but since ricotta is pretty bland it didn't actually create a well rounded flavorful foil to the pesto. 

Highlights were bites where we got a shrimp.  The recipe called for so few that they weren't actually spread evenly over the sandwich, so we didn't always get shrimp, but when we did they provided the flavor enhancement necessary to compliment the pesto.  So, obviously, an improvement to the sandwich would be covering it in shrimp as evenly as we covered it in ricotta and pesto.

Overall, the sandwich was just sort of bland.  I wanted more Parmesan to enhance the flavor (surprise, surprise), but Colin wanted more pesto.  The point here is that we needed something else.  I also got a funny aftertaste, which I attribute to either the sourdough or the olive oil.  It would be interesting to re-try this recipe with white bread and higher quality olive oil.  I didn't end up finishing my sandwich, and that's always a bad sign.  It was just too bland.  As usual, there's room for improvement, but this one just didn't do it for me.

FINAL RESULTS:

Sandwich:	Grilled Ricotta and Shrimp with Cilantro Basil Pesto
Gooey-ness:	2.5
Aroma:	2
Appearance:	Big hole, overly-charred with a nice Parmesan dusting.
Taste:	C+

Gooey Scale	Aroma Scale
1 = still cold/hard	1 = can’t smell a thing
2 = slightly melted but still firm	2 = tender waft
3 = melted evenly	3 = makes your stomach growl
4 = melted and slightly runny (starting to get those cheese strings between your sandwich and your mouth when you take a bite)	4 = strong scent
5 = runny	5 = overpoweringly pungent
6 = sloppy mess!

Next Week:  I'm travelling for the next two weeks, so I'll try to squeeze in at home sessions early on in both weeks, but at a minimum I promise field reports from my destinations!

Oaxaca Cheese, Chorizo and Shrimp Quesadilla

Buenos dias mis amigos!  As promised this week we'll be taking a trip south of the border with our first quesadilla.  Let me start by saying that prior to my reading GGC I would never have considered a quesadilla to be a grilled cheese.  However, when I started blogging I resolved to keep an open mind about what does and does not constitute a true grilled cheese and I intend to keep that promise (I'm sure people have done much harder things than been forced to eat delicious quesadillas).

We begin this week's tale with a confused me wandering about the Wegman's cheese section in search of the mysterious and elusive oaxaca cheese.  What kind of cheese is this?  What does it look like?  Unfortunately I didn't have the answers to either of these questions.  Luckily, my shopping resource did and obliged me by reading the Wikipedia excerpt on this cheese over the phone.  I shall include it here for your edification:

Queso Oaxaca or Quesillo Oaxaca is a white, semi-hard cheese from Mexico, similar to un-aged Monterey Jack but with a mozzarella-like string cheese texture. It is named after the state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico, where it was first made. It is available in several different shapes. It is also known as quesillo Oaxaca or thread cheese when shaped like a ball. Shaped in bricks for slicing, it is called asadero (meaning "roaster" or "broiler") or queso quesadilla.

Even with this useful information I was still having difficulty finding it.  Need I remind us all what the Wegman's cheese selection looks like?:

Again, this is just ONE SMALL SEGMENT of the cheese department.  There are at least three more refrigerator cases and a central cheese island with two cheese experts at it ready to distribute samples and answer any questions.  Surely I could just ask one of them!  "Excuse me, where is your ox-aca... ermm...ax-aca?... I mean...wa-hah-kuh cheese?"  Yeah, looks like asking was out of the question as I couldn't even close to pronounce the name and was too embarrassed to just point to my cook book and demand to know where said cheese could be found.

Luckily there were a few cheeses in the case that had Mexican flags on them and that looked like they might vaguely resemble mozzarella and/or monterey jack.  I had heard of queso fresco and queso blanco, but for whatever reason decided to go with a new option: Panela (insert Wikipedia description here):

Queso Panela (Panela Cheese), also called "Queso Canasta" or "Queso de la Canasta" (Basket Cheese) because it carries the impression of the basket in which it molds itself, is a white, fresh and smooth cheese of pasteurized cow milk, served most often as part of a appetizer dishes such as nopal salads or quesadillas. It is derived from the Greek word for basket cheese. The cheese also has similarities to the Indian cheese paneer.

Oh good!  It's used in quesadillas.  Looks like we're back on track despite this minor hiccup.  Now I had all the ingredients (or what I deemed a close substitute if not).

As usual, the first step was the prep work.  Thinly slicing 1/2 of a large onion, slicing the sausage into 1/4" thick pieces and grating the cheese.  This was one of the more interesting cheeses I've worked with.  It was double wrapped in saran wrap and I could tell why as it was REALLY wet once I got it unwrapped.  But just because it felt covered in water didn't mean it was actually runny-- in fact it was strangely firm and crumbly.  As I was grating it pieces would just fall off in crumbly chunks.  This was my first sign that this may not be quite as similar to the oaxaca cheese because that cheese was described as very stringy.  Oh well!  I took a taste test and found it pretty mild, but it had a very salty flavor, which was interesting.

Step one was cooking the sausage over medium heat for about 10 minutes, or until it turned 2 shades darker than it was when I started and much of the fat had cooked off.  I'm not a big sausage fan, but as it was cooking it definitely smelled good!

Next I was to transfer the sausage to a plate lined with paper towels to absorb additional fat and discard all the fat in the pan except for one tablespoon, but it looked like there was less than one tablespoon in the pan, so I just left it all.

I used the fat to cook the onions for about 8 minutes (until they were limp and yellow, but not brown and caramelized).

Once the onions were ready, in went about 20 medium sized shrimp (I added a few more since I was using small shrimp).  These two should cook together for about 2 minutes (until the shrimp turn pink), but I was using frozen shrimp that had already been cooked, so just let these items cook for 2 minutes so the flavors could co-mingle.

I transferred the cooked onions and shrimp over to the other half of the plate holding the sausage so I could prepare the pan for quesadilla frying.  I wiped out the bottom of the pan to clear out some of the excess fat, but didn't wash it so as to retain some of the fat's flavor.

My sous chef helped me prepare the tortillas-- this involved brushing one side with some olive oil and then placing it oiled side down so it was ready to be filled.

First the sausage:

Then the shrimp and onions:

And finally, the cheese:

It should be noted that this recipe makes four quesadillas, so each of these quantities represents 1/4 of the total.

Now it was time to fry them up which (as you probably guessed) involves folding it in half and plopping it in the pan :-)

From here it was pretty standard operating procedure: cover the quesadilla and cook for about two minutes on one side before flipping, repeat until both sides are browned and the cheese has melted.

As I checked on whether the cheese was melted I was intrigued to find it looked like this:

You may not be able to tell from the photo, but this was basically cheese that had melted and yet somehow had stayed congealed and not at all gooey.  Innnteresting...

Anyway, a short time later all four were done and ready for consumption!

Taste Review:

This was probably the sandwich I was least excited by during the cooking process.  Usually I'm super anxious to take my first taste, but this time I wasn't so enthused.  Who knows why?  Maybe because I was still questioning my decision on the cheese substitute-- I think mozarella may have been a more accurate sub.

Before we even tried it we realized that it looked like it was begging for some sour cream and/or salsa.  Unfortunately I had neither, but for once I agreed with Colin that adding a condiment would have enhanced the flavor.

The very first flavor you get when you take a bite is SALT.  I think the saltiness of the sausage and the cheese were very overpowering.  As I chewed I noticed that the sweetness of the onions helped to balance out the saltiness, but the more I ate the more I concluded it wasn't quite enough and the salt was too strong (further argument in favor of sour cream).  By the end I actually removed the sausage from mine and gave it to Colin because it was too much salt for me.

One thing we both liked and agreed on was that the quesadilla was just the right amount of chewy.

As for the cheese itself, there wasn't a strong cheese smell or taste and the lack of gooeyness made me wonder if it was even there.  The cheese basically seemed to sit there and serve as an aid in keeping the filling in place.  Even then I struggled with keeping everything in the quesadilla.  I had shrimp, sausage and onions falling everywhere and had to sort of fold the quesadilla up to try to contain it.  Colin didn't have this same problem, so maybe I'm just a messy eater. 

Colin asked if I had ever tried Chihuaua Cheese and commented that it might do better since it's a little creamier.  Wikipedia description as follows:

Queso Chihuahua or Chihuahua cheese is a soft white cow's-milk cheese of Mexican origin available in braids, balls or rounds. The cheese is named after its place of origin, the Mexican state of Chihuahua.
Queso Chihuahua is good for melting, and is similar to a mild, white cheddar or Monterey Jack. It may be used in queso fundido (fondue like melted cheese), choriqueso, quesadillas, chilaquiles, chili con queso, or sauces.

Looks like, much like the mozarella, this would also be a good option (and perhaps more like the oaxaca cheese)?

FINAL RESULTS:

Sandwich:	Oaxaca Cheese, Chorizo and Shrimp Quesadilla
Gooey-ness:	1
Aroma:	1.5
Appearance:	Nicely browned exterior, but not very colorful filling
Taste:	C+

Gooey Scale	Aroma Scale
1 = still cold/hard	1 = can’t smell a thing
2 = slightly melted but still firm	2 = tender waft
3 = melted evenly	3 = makes your stomach growl
4 = melted and slightly runny (starting to get those cheese strings between your sandwich and your mouth when you take a bite)	4 = strong scent
5 = runny	5 = overpoweringly pungent
6 = sloppy mess!

Colin voted B+, and I definitely would agree that with some modifications it could be better-- but the fact that I had to remove ingredients in order to finish eating meant that it wasn't up to snuff just yet. I think the taste would probably be improved by the use of the oaxaca cheese as the cheese that we used ended up intensifying the saltiness rather than tempering it. Make no mistake-- it wasn't bad, just salty.

Next week: Time to try a dessert grilled cheese-- Chocolate-Hazelnut and Goat Cheese Melt.

P.S. Shout out to my loyal reader, the Cheese Whiz Kid :-)