"Oh, hell no!"

This Monday during my class titled: "You Are What You Eat," we were discussing food scares and people's reactions to them. We talked about the recall on ground meat in public schools in MA, listeria scares with milk, ecoli in Peter Pan peanut butter, the bird flu in Vietnam, the spinach recall last summer, and more. We talked about how food issues come up and people immediately stop buying and eating that particular food item. This happens more easily when the scare is in a food item most people do not like any way. Take for example, high mercury levels in tuna. Not many people are affected by this scare because more people do not eat tuna on a day-to-day basis.


My professor posed a question. She said something like... What would you do if there was a mozzarella cheese scared?
Almost everyone in the class gasped in shock! One student got so heated and couldn't contain himself and shouted "Oh, hell no!" Not only was this funny, but showed how people would genuinely feel if there was a mozzarella cheese scare. Perhaps any cheese scare, for that matter!

Then my professor asked us to think about whether people would stop eating pizza...
Well, I though about it... I think if just mozzarella cheese was recalled, then people would not stop eating pizza. I think people would just make pizza with a different kind of cheese.
People love pizza and they love cheese. The combination might taste a little different, but I think people would try it, like it, and continue to eat it.

Well, I would at least. Would you?

Mom's Chicken "Parmesan"

4 boneless chicken breasts, pounded to 1/2 inch thickness
1 egg
1/2 cup milk
seasoned bread crumbs
8 slices mozzarella cheese, or more
1 jar (16 oz) spaghetti sauce
Parmesan cheese

PREPARATION:
Whisk together the egg and milk. Dip the chicken breasts in milk and egg mixture and then cover bread crumbs. Brown in a skillet with olive oil or deep fry each piece for about 2 minutes. Set chicken in a baking dish.
Slice 8 pieces of mozzarella cheese and put two on each chicken breast. Pour 1 jar of your favorite spaghetti sauce over all. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese and a little more mozzarella and bake at 350° for about 25 to 30 minutes, or until bubbly. Serve with spaghetti and garlic bread.

This is the recipe my mother usually uses...

this weekend she substitutes the sliced mozzarella for shredded mozzarella. She threw out the cheese measurement and just used the whole bag. In this case, the more cheese the better!

(We had company, hence ALL the chicken)

Too Much Cheese???

In my previous post I wrote about an episode of Phantom Gourmet I had watched. Extra cheese was emphasized as a quality of comfort food. A reader left a comment and said "sometimes there is such a thing as too much cheese."

I would have to agree that "sometimes" there is such a thing as too much cheese. Recently, I have had two experiences with this. The first was at a campus dinning hall when I covered my pasta dish with grated parmesan. It was tortellini with chicken in a pesto sauce and I decided to add some cheese for extra flavor. Well, I over did it and ended up ruining a perfectly good dish. The second experience was at a Friendly's this past weekend. My friends and I ordered their loaded waffle fries. I found myself scrapping off a lot of the nacho cheese before I ate the fries.

I love cheese and will still put grated parmesan on pasta and still order loaded waffle fries. I just might limit the amount of cheese on the dish. I think that once you can no longer tell what the dish is under the cheese, you might have put too much.

I guess less is more (sometimes).

Phantom Gourmet

This Sunday, February 17th, I was watching Phantom Gourmet on The CW28. The episode focused on comfort food in the U.S. The host gave a list of words, one can find on a menu, that defines comfort food.

The List read as follows:
(1) deep fried
(2) extra cheese
(3) comes with a bread basket
(4) now with extra bacon

The "extra cheese" obviously stuck out to me. To me, extra cheese screaammms comfort food! I think that whenever I have had the option to add extra cheese, I have added the extra cheese. As the host said "the more cheese, the better!" Its tastes better and, as a comfort food, makes you feel better.

According to the show,
The Ultimate Comfort Food = Mac n' Cheese
The Ultimare Comfort Desert = Brownies with Raspberry Cream Cheese
...What ingredient do both dishes include? You guessed it, CHEESE!

Is cheese part of your ultimate comfort food?

In Regards to the Previous Post

Yesterday, on an adventure in Boston, I ended up in Faneuil Fall, looking for dinner. On my walk down the hall of Quincy Market I noticed a menu posted at this small Italian Panini shop.

Somebody pointed out that this might be a regional take on the dish. I gues I'll have to look into that.

Chicken Parmesan

Chicken Parmesan, one on my favorite meals ever, happened to be what I ordered for dinner tonight. I read the description of the "Chicken Parmesan Sub,” on the menu of one of the campus cafeterias. It read: breaded chicken, slice of provolone, covered in marinara sauce and topped with parmesan cheese toasted on a sub roll, or something like that.

Since when is provolone cheese involved in chicken parmesan? I called my mother to ask her what type of cheese she uses for chicken parmesan. She told me she usually uses shredded parmesan but will substitute shredded mozzarella. Then, I remembered an experience I had last year at another cafeteria on campus. I ordered a chicken cutlet with marinara sauce and American cheese on a sub roll. The woman sort of laughed at me and said something like "you want a chicken parm sandwich?" Like an idiot, I said "yes."

Now, I need help trying to recall the ingredients in the Friendly's Chicken Parmesan Supermelt. Is it actually made with parmesan? For some reason, I'm thinking no. If my memory serves me correctly, it is made with provolone. ...I guess I'll have to get back to you all with that one.

The point of this post is not to complain about the common parmesan cheese substitution in chicken parm dishes, but to inform my readers about it. I've enjoyed all of the previously mentioned dishes. I simply love cheese and my opinion is: the cheesier, the better! But, should be call every chicken breast topped with marinara and a random cheese Chicken Parmesan? I think not.

Feel free to comment with your own suggestions for this falsely named dish.

Cream Cheese

In an earlier blog I wrote about my family's experience at Dunkin' Donuts. I talked about my mother's order of a bagel and cream cheese and the small tub of Philedelphia cream cheese they gave her to spread herself. Well after breakfast this morning, I think it is important to expand on this subject.

I went to breakfast at one of the cafeterias on campus. I got a blueberry bagel then went over to get some cream cheese. The cream cheese at this particular cafeteria, is in two large dishes, each with its own spreading knife. I put, what I expected to be enough to spread a thin layer on each half of my bagel, on the side of my plate. There was somebody on the side of me who was getting cream cheese form the other container. This person heaped a mound of cheese onto his plate.

From my experience with those small Philedelphia cream cheese tubs, his mound was way more than would fit into one of those tubs. What would he do at Dunkin' Donuts? Maybe, he would ask for two. Would they charge him extra? I know that at another cafeteria, on the other side of campus, they serve their cream cheese in those little tubs and charge you per tub. Dare I call this a scam???

Blue Cheese

Whenever I see blue cheese, I always ask "where's the buffalo chicken?" and ask for blue cheese when I see buffalo chicken. Though all people do not eat the two together, they are always paired together on and menu. The dynamic duo can be seen on salads, sanwhiches, pasta, pizza, or alone. I absolutely LOVE all of those buffalo chicken dishes (only if there is blue cheese to top it).

Tonight for dinner I went to a salad bar, at one of the cafeterias on my college campus, and ordered a buffalo chicken salad. The menu specifically said the salad was topped with crumbled blue cheese. WELL, the caferteria ran out of crumbled blue cheese! The women asked me if a ranch dressing substitute would be okay. I said yes. But, was was I thinking??? After eating that salad I realized it was not a good substitute. I wanted my blue cheese.

I went back to the salad bar and order another buffalo chicken salad. I told the women I did not want ranch dressing. She then told me again that they ran out of crumbled blue cheese. Then she told me they had blue cheese dressing in the back. Why didn't she tell me that before???

Well that got me thinking about blue cheese and blue cheese dressing.
BLUE CHEESE= aged cheese (usually in a cave) that accumulates streaks of mold that give it a "tangy" distinct taste; the longer it ages, the tangier it tastes.
BLUE CHEESE DRESSING= a runny paste with a crumbled blue cheese base; some dressings are made to taste like blue cheese, but do not contain actual blue cheese... they do NOT taste the same!

For more facts check out this site... http://www.foodsubs.com/Cheblue.html

For those of you who have never tried blue cheese, I urger you to! Don't let the word "mold" or the greenish/blueish color scare you! If you don't like it move on and try another cheese! Atleast you can say you gave it a try.

Cheese on Pizza

I noticed something interesting this weekend in my world of cheese. My mother was making pizza muffins (English Muffins sliced in half, topped with tomato sauce, layered with cheese, and often some time of sliced meat, then baked until the muffin is toasted and cheese is melted) for my family. While they were baking, my sister opened the oven and was horrified because my mom did not put enough cheese on the English Muffins.

It got me thinking about "regular" pizza and the preferred amount of cheese on it. I know it is healthier to order "light cheese" on pizza, but I know that I and my friends and family tend to order "extra cheese." Do most people prefer more cheese?

Then, while eating the pizza muffins, I noticed they did not taste the same as usual. I asked my mom if she had done anything differently. She did. She told me she had to use shredded cheddar cheese because we did not have any shredded mozzarella left. So, that got me thinking about the types of cheese pizza is normally made with. In a future post I will discuss my discoveries of the types of cheese used by various restaurants, when making pizza.

...hm, there are also those four-cheese pizzas in the frozen food isles.