Montasio Cheese Please!

I can’t believe it is finally starting to feel like fall. I live in Arizona so that just means it’s not “hot” in the morning. It also means it is time to start brushing off those recipes that I’ve clipped out of magazines all year long and start looking at them for the State Fair contests. This year there are nine contests and my husband and I plan to enter all of them. We say this every year and then somewhere along the way, we lose interest and swear we’ll never do it again. Ah, but my memory is failing so, of course, we signed up for all of them, again. Anyway, I digress. In my quest for recipes I stumbled across this contest called “The Legends from Europe Contest” which is a contest to raise awareness of their products. The contest works like a market basket challenge. You are assigned a random product and you use it in a recipe you’ve created. I kept telling myself it would be great practice for the fair so I decided to try it.

 

My product assignment was “Montasio Cheese.” I was excited to get started. I was told it might be difficult to locate the cheese but I live in an area where there are about five large grocery chain stores as well as many specialty stores and markets, so I thought there’d be no problem. Ten phone calls later I decided they were right and was about to order it from a specialty store on-line when I found a wine and cheese store locally that had it so I was finally successful in locating my product. The cheese was well worth the effort. The only way I can describe it is it is a cross between a mild Asiago and Parmesan. It has a fruity, almost nutty flavor and has a slightly pungent smell. I tried it with fruit and I was hooked. It is my new favorite cheese and I knew what I would try for my recipe.

 

I love custard pie so I decided to make a Clafouti which is a rustic kind of pie usually made with cherries but it can have any kind of fruit. I like pears so that’s what I used. I used about six ripe Bosc pears but any pear will do as long as it is somewhat firm. I also like orange marmalade and used a little grapefruit balsamic vinegar which added another layer of flavor. I used coarsely grated Montasio cheese on the bottom of a phyllo crust. The cheese mellowed quite a bit in the Clafouti and seemed to enhance the flavor of the pears without overpowering them. The Orange-Balsamic glaze added just the right amount of sweet and acid to bring all of the flavors together.  Anyway, here’s my recipe.   

 

Montasio-Pear Clafouti with a Mandarin Orange-Balsamic Glaze

1-8oz roll phyllo dough, thawed

½ cup butter, melted
1 cup coarsely grated Montasio cheese
6 Bosc pears, peeled, cored, finely sliced
3 eggs
1/3 cup sugar
2 Tablespoons flour
2/3 cup cream or half and half
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 teaspoons orange zest

¼ cup orange marmalade

1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar (I used grapefruit)

Spray 10 inch springform pan with cooking spray. Heat oven to 350 degrees

Unroll phyllo, remove a single sheet and place in the bottom and partially up sides of  springform pan. Brush with butter and crisscross with another sheet brushing it with butter. Pivot next sheet of phyllo slightly and brush with butter. Continue layering until you have 8 layers.

Place layer of cheese in bottom of crust and top with sliced pears. Cover with damp paper towel and refrigerate while you prepare custard.

In a small bowl, beat eggs and sugar about 1 minute. Add flour, cream, orange zest and vanilla. Pour mixture over pears.

With remaining phyllo, remove 2 or 3 sheets at a time and roll sheets and tuck phyllo around top edges of custard to form crust. Brush generously with butter. Bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees.

In a small bowl, combine orange marmalade and balsamic vinegar. Remove  Clafouti from the oven and brush with orange mixture. Cover edges of Clafouti pan with a pie ring to keep crust from burning. Return to oven and bake an additional 10 minutes. Cool slightly. Serve warm with remaining orange sauce. Makes 8 servings