Taleggio is many things. It is the second most popular cheese in Italy behind the reigning king, Parmigiano Reggiano, it is one of our stinkier selections (making it less popular here in the states), it is one of the darlings of Cheese Cave II, and it is now the beneficiary of a local beer wash.

What was once an already delicious, funky, creamy cheese now also has an even funkier, more savory, and more ‘Utah’version. Both our cave aged Taleggio and our cave aged Double Skull Taleggio ebb and flow in ripeness and availability based on the whims of both our mongers, local chefs, and your fellow stinky cheese lovers. This has given me the opportunity to cook with both and investigate the best uses for each. The original I find to be the most suitable for cold dishes and entrees with milder ingredients. Think of a raddicchio and pear salad with cubes of Taleggio and a lemon/mustard vinaigrette OR Taleggio spiked polenta with browned butter sauce.

The Double Skull iteration loves to beef up dishes with more complexity and serve as the centerpiece for a cheese and salumi board for myself and my most enthusiastic cheese fiend friends. The complexity that develops in the cave after many a beer wash make it exemplary nestled with assorted cured meats, olives, and other cheeses. My favorite use, however, is this dish.

As the cold evenings become more frequent, I crave the comforts of risotto. There really is nothing like the pillowy cloud of starchy happiness created by rice, stock, and time. A saute of mushrooms atop a taleggio riddled risotto is both full of comfort, but also full of big, fun flavors that play well with each other while stepping back just enough to also appreciate the lovely creamy, starchy texture and subtle bite of each grain. While stinky and sometimes menacing in its original state of being a cheese wedge, both Taleggios melt down into a more mellow version when used in a recipe. The texture becomes even more silky and the flavor mellows to a slightly milder, much more approachable version. It invites you in with the lightest whiff of earthiness and keeps you coming back for its sweet paste and creamy mouthfeel.

Enough of me, let’s talk about you. This is the kind of recipe you could whip up on a weeknight (say, before a stroll around the neighborhood hunting for tiny morsels of candy) for a small dose of a comfort and a large dose of sustenance. This is also the kind of recipe you could stow away and save to impress company. The idea that risotto is both a toiling all day exertion of energy and a royal pain in the butt to make is completely false. Just take a look below.

Double Skull Taleggio Risotto
Serves 4

• 4 cups chicken or veggie broth
• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/2 cup onion or shallot, chopped finely
• 2 cups risotto rice
• 1/2 cup Double Skull lager or white wine
• 1 pound Double Skull Taleggio cheese
• Salt

In a medium saucepan, bring the broth to a very slow, steady simmer on a burner nearest to where you’ll be cooking the risotto.

Put 1 tablespoon of butter, the olive oil, and the chopped onion in a broad, sturdy pot, and turn on the heat to medium high. Cook and stir the onion until it becomes translucent, then add the rice. Stir quickly and thoroughly until the grains are coated well.

Add the lager or wine to the rice, stir and allow it to evaporate. (Note: you can skip this step and proceed immediately to stock if you prefer to not cook with alcohol, though all of it will cook off) Add ½ cup of simmering broth and cook the rice, stirring constantly with a long wooden spoon, wiping the sides and bottom of the pot clean as you stir, until all the liquid is gone. You must never stop stirring and you must be sure to wipe the bottom of the pot completely clean frequently, or the rice will stick to it.When there is no more liquid in the pot, add another ½ cup, continuing always to stir in the manner described above. Maintain heat at a lively pace.

Begin to taste the rice after 20 minutes of cooking. It is done when it is tender, but firm to the bite. As it approaches that stage, gradually reduce the amount of liquid you add, so that when it is fully cooked, it is slightly moist, but not runny. When the rice is about 1 or 2 minutes away from being fully cooked, add all the Taleggio and the remaining butter. Stir constantly to melt the cheese and wrap it around the grains. Off heat, taste and correct for salt, stirring after adding salt. Serve promptly.

If you wish, serve along with sauteed mushrooms. Here, I sauteed them quickly in a pan with olive oil, 1 tablespoon minced shallot, 1 clove smashed garlic, and a teaspoon of thyme. You won’t regret it.

There are certain cookies we make for the delicious tastes of the season and there are other certain cookies we make to celebrate the themes of the season. Christmas is an easy example. Gingerbread is for taste, sugar cookies for decorative fun. But now consider Hallow’s Eve. Sure, there are cookie cutouts and images aplenty, but there’s little left for taste other than the spices behind the now cult favorite Pumpkin Spice everything.

In the spirit of both taste and decoration, we’ve combined the two here with a simple swap of ingredients. Bitters are much like vanilla extract in that the flavors of a raw ingredient are extracted into an alcohol based solution over a long period of time. When used in baking, the alcohol evaporates and leaves behind the ghost of its place presence in the form of those extracted flavors. While sugar cookies are often a blank canvas for spooky cookie cutters and sweet icings, seasonal bitters are an invaluable resource to also breathe some flavor into what was once just a fun cookie to look at and never sink your teeth into.

Instead of a recipe, here’s the pro-tip for tip top tasty treats. Substitute equal amount of bitters for vanilla extract and take a taste. Add more flavor if needed, but the same amount should do the trick.

During my lunch date with Gia and Frankie, both our sugar cookies and royal icing had Workhorse Rye’s Pumpkin bitters in place of vanilla extract. There’s just a hint of spice in both, but nothing too potent to change the place a sugar cookie serves. They’re tasty and almost as adorable as these two little ladies, but now with a hint that fall flavor we love so dearly.

Have you made the switch to bitters in any of your recipes? What’s been your favorite?!

Just like last year, I’m still not the Pinterest loving, paper-crafting, holiday-decorating millennial my grandmother wishes I would be. I’m just not. I’ve gotten away with wearing an animal onesie for the last few Halloween’s (this year’s rendition is a llama) and my pals have since refrained from lamenting about my lack of creativity and excitement surrounding such days.

Again, just like last year, all the festive fun I’ve held in my fun-bank savings have been reserved for the kids in my life. With none of my own, the littles of the Caputo clan are my go-to gals for holiday baking and festive, spooky treats of both the sweet and savory sorts. While Matt and Yelena were out of town, I borrowed their cuties for a lunch date filled with pasta, cookies, and festive decorations. It was carb-laden, delicious, and my favorite way to celebrate.

Our pals at Ritrovo are the source for our favorite Halloween time pasta, tagliolini colored with squid ink, and also the inspiration behind lunch. Baked sugar pumpkins are the perfect vessel for serving pasta. The roasted inside is easy to scoop out while attacking the pasta, and an easy way to trick your kids into eating some semblance of vegetable along with their promised pasta treats. With such a fun presentation and high quality ingredients, there’s no need to heap on loads of sauce here. Instead, we opted for browned butter with fried sage leaves. The sage pairs so well with the pumpkin and the nutty complexity of browned butter compliments both noodle and vegetable perfectly. This was the perfect meal to fill us up before an afternoon of cookie decorating…and eating.

Roasted Pumpkin with Squid Ink Tagliolini 
Recipe from our friends at Ritrovo

Yield: 4 Servings

• 1 package Ritrovo Squid Ink Tagliolini
• 4 small sugar pumpkins
• 4 tablespoons olive oil
• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter
• A handful or so fresh sage leaves
• Grated Parmigiano Reggiano
• Salt & pepper – to taste

Directions:
Pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees F. Wash the pumpkins, cut the top stems off, and scoop all the seeds and pith out (keep the seeds to make roasted pumpkin seeds). Brush the inside of the pumpkins with around four tablespoons of olive oil and season with salt and pepper, then place face down on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake for an hour or until the meat of the pumpkin is fork tender

While the pumpkins are baking boil a large pot of salted water on the stove top. Once the water has reached a rolling boil add the Ritrovo Squid Ink Tagliolini and cook for 8 – 10 minutes until pasta is al dente, Add the butter to a skillet and heat to medium high, stirring frequently. When you begin to smell a nutty aroma and the solids become colored dark gold, add the sage leaves. Stir until the sage starts to crisp and remove from heat.

Using tongs remove the pasta from the water into the skillet with the olive oil and sage. Add the Parmigiano to the skillet with the pasta, butter, and sage. Mix and distribute among each of the pumpkin “bowls” and season with  more salt and pepper to taste. Enjoy by digging into the sides of the pumpkin bowl to eat with the Tagliolini.

Here at Caputo’s, we love to marry tradition with innovation in the most delicious ways. You may or may not be surprised to know that chocolate and cheese actually make a marvelous match. If you need further convincing, take one of our pairing classes and allow your doubts to melt away in sweet cheesy bliss. Or come into a Caputo’s near you and ask us to illuminate you with some of our favorite pairings! You can even let Blue’s Chocolates do the pairing for you and try filled chocolates like parmigiano and honey, Double Skull Taleggio and red wine, and chabrin reserve and fig (using Caputo’s cheeses and Solstice chocolate!).

And lest you think a blue cheese truffle might come as a bit of a shock to your palate, rest assured that the blue cheese we picked for this recipe, called Fourme au Moelleux, is a dainty dame of a blue cheese. It’s not without a punch, but the brashness of the blue is a balanced by a tantalizing floral note. And because we are passionate about preserving food traditions, a cheese like Fourme au Moelleux serves not just as a palate-pleaser, but reads like a volume of history, preserving time and place in its rich blue veins. You can tell your friends while serving them that Fourme au Moelleux is actually a newer innovation to an ancient cheese called the Fourme d’Ambert. Originating in the Auvergne region of France, it has been produced using traditional methods since Roman times. Rodolphe Le Meunier (a.k.a. “the world’s best cheesemaker”) injects the creamy paste with Vouvray wine to amplify the flavors, a beautiful innovation to an ancient classic. Paired with Valrhona chocolate, a consistent and quality favorite among Michelin 3 star chefs, the truffles that result are unique and alluring, but subtle enough to please even your pickiest dinner guest.

Ingredients
6 ounces heavy cream
8 ounces Valrhona Guanaja, chopped, plus two chopped ounces for rolling
4 ounces Fourme au Moelleux, chopped in small pieces

In a small saucepan, heat the cream until boiling. Pour over the 8 ounces of chocolate in a small bowl, stirring until smooth. Let it sit until it arrives at room temperature. Then stir in the cheese and cover with plastic wrap, pressing the plastic wrap so it’s touching the ganache (to prevent condensation).

Refrigerate for about an hour until the ganache is firm enough to roll into balls.

Scoop out the ganache with a spoon and roll it into a ball, placing the formed balls on a plate. Any size is fine, but I prefer to make blue cheese truffles a little smaller since they are so rich. You can ensure that they are perfectly round or a bit more “rustic” looking. Chocolate truffles were named after the original truffle, as in the mushroom-like fungus that grows on tree roots, so if your truffles end up bumpy and imperfectly round, tell your friends that they more fully resemble their namesake!

When all of the ganache is rolled, cover them and put them in the freezer for about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, melt the remaining two ounces of chocolate using a double boiler (or make your own by placing a metal bowl or smaller pan over boiling water). Pour the melted chocolate into a deep and narrow container (I use a short glass). You’ll want the truffles to be fully submerged in the chocolate, so keep that in mind when choosing a container. After the chocolate has cooled slightly, drop a ganache ball into the chocolate. Make sure it is fully coated, and then lift it out with a fork, letting the excess chocolate drain off before rolling the truffle off the fork and onto a plate or parchment paper. Continue with the rest of the truffles. Let the chocolate shell harden and the truffles come back to room temperature, when the ganache is most creamy and delicious.

It may seem overwhelming, but making truffles is actually quite simple (the hardest part is coating them with chocolate without making a mess!), and the blue cheese adds a savory, creamy dimension that you’ll love. Join us in delicious innovation on old classics, and tell us how your adventures go!