goat cheese Archives - A Calculated Whisk

Building an Easy Winter Cheeseboard + Beaujolais Wine

December 10, 2018 By Becky Leave a Comment

This post is sponsored by Discover Beaujolais.

An Easy Winter Cheeseboard + Beaujolais Wine

This easy winter cheeseboard paired with Beaujolais wine makes holiday entertaining a snap. Plus, there’s a recipe for a five-minute pomegranate chèvre cheeseball!

Want to know the secret to super easy holiday entertaining that looks and tastes fancy and will impress all your guests? Here its is: wine and an epic cheeseboard. This is so simple to put together, but everyone loves it. Best of all, there’s no cooking required! I’ve teamed up with Discover Beaujolais to bring you this easy winter cheeseboard that pairs perfectly with their Moulin-à-Vent red wine.

Beaujolais is a region of France north of Lyon that produces red and white wines as well as rosé. The soil there has pink granite in it with streaks of manganese, which gives the grapes and thus the wine a special flavor. I would love to go see this gorgeous region for myself, but for now, I’ll be imagining it while I snack on this cheeseboard and sip on glass of Moulin-à-Vent red.

Persimmon Bacon Bites with Rosemary Goat Cheese

December 16, 2016 By Becky 32 Comments

These persimmon bacon bites with rosemary goat cheese are the perfect festive appetizer and only require four ingredients! This post is sponsored by Cavit in partnership with Honest Cooking.

If you’re looking for a craveworthy appetizer to keep your family happy while you finish cooking Christmas dinner or to pass around at a New Year’s Eve party, I have totally got you covered. These persimmon bacon bites are the best app I’ve eaten in recent memory, and are super cute to boot. They pair perfectly with a chilled glass of Cavit’s crisp Pinot Grigio, and the combination is pretty much guaranteed to put even the grinchiest of grinches in the holiday spirit. When you’re snacking on fruit with bacon and herbed goat cheese and sipping on tasty Italian wine, there’s just no way not to feel festive.

I just discovered persimmons this year and they’ve quickly become my new favorite fruit. They taste kind of like a delicious mashup between a mango and a papaya, and I find them incredibly addictive. I used fuyu persimmons here and haven’t had a chance to try other varieties yet, so I recommend finding fuyus for this recipe. They’re the ones that are kind of squat like little pumpkins and are not pointed at the bottom.

When I’m eating a persimmon plain, I like to let it get nice and soft so the insides are custardy and smooth. However, when you’re making persimmon bacon bites, you want to choose persimmons that are still a bit firm so the slices will hold together well. Once roasted, they’ll have that smooth texture of a perfectly ripe raw persimmon with an even deeper sweet flavor. The hint of rosemary in the goat cheese makes these bites taste fresh and seasonal, and the bacon ties everything together both literally and figuratively.

Summer Kale Salad with Peaches and Candied Pecans

July 18, 2016 By Becky 14 Comments

This refreshing summer kale salad is packed with seasonal superfoods and topped with creamy goat cheese and crunchy candied pecans.

Kale salads. How do you feel? I was a little suspicious back in the day, but if I give the kale a good massage and add a lot of different toppings, I can now get pretty excited about them. If you’re not into kale salads yet, let me see if I can sell you: we’re adding juicy peaches and blueberries, creamy goat cheese, and perfectly salty-sweet candied pecans. CANDIED PECANS! Sorry to shout, but they’re so good, and they’re super easy and quick to make on the stovetop in less than ten minutes. No fuss, no oven. And you may want to make a double batch, because it’s hard to stop snacking on them. I ate a lot of mine before the salad even got dressed!

In other news, I have a serious peach problem. Last summer, we got down to Chattanooga at the end of peach session, right after The Peach Truck had left town. I was so mad I had missed out. All year I waited and checked the schedule. And when they came to East Ridge a little over a week ago, I was there. I bought a 25-pound box of peaches and a one-pound bag of pecans.

Since then, it’s been all peaches all the time. In addition to eating an embarrassing number of them out of hand, juice dripping everywhere, I’ve made a peach dutch baby, peach margaritas (I shared the full recipe on Insta–they’re so good!), peach muffins, and peach ice cream.

Heirloom Tomato Galette

July 5, 2016 By Becky 14 Comments

This gluten-free, grain-free, nut-free heirloom tomato galette is the perfect way to celebrate summer’s bounty. With a tangy goat cheese filling and fresh basil on top, it’s irresistible!

A couple of weeks ago I made a tomato galette and shared it on Instagram, and a lot of people asked about the crust. It’s the exact same cassava flour crust used in this gluten-free quiche lorraine with leeks, but the tomato galette was so good that I decided it merited its own post. (I also used the same crust to make a plum and blackberry galette, but I’m still tweaking the frangipane filling. This crust works just as well for sweet galettes as savory ones, though!) This tomato galette has a creamy goat cheese filling and is topped with a rainbow of tiny heirloom tomatoes from Big Sycamore Farm. I’m amazingly into it for someone who never really liked tomatoes that much!

Anyway, Otto’s cassava flour makes the best crust. It’s flaky, buttery, crunchy–everything a classic crust should be. Since cassava flour behaves so much like wheat flour, I was able to take this all butter crust from Simply Recipes and adapt it with only a few changes needed. Adding egg yolk helps the dough hold together, and a tiny bit of extra sugar balances out all the flavors.

Spiced Beef and Sweet Potato Bowls with Crispy Eggs #30MinuteMondays

September 22, 2015 By Becky 10 Comments

Spiced beef and sweet potato bowls with crispy eggs, fresh figs, and goat cheese: a unique and satisfying grain-free breakfast or dinner in less than 30 minutes.

This may seem like a strange combination of foods, but don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it. This quick spiced beef with sweet potatoes is delicious all on its own, but adding a crispy egg, a few fresh figs, and a generous dollop of goat cheese kicks things up several levels.

The spiced beef and sweet potatoes is a fast, pared-down version of my bacon and sweet potato chili, with a few slightly more exotic spices added in. Microwaving the sweet potato chunks for a few minutes while the meat is browning saves times and ensures even cooking. Coriander, turmeric, cardamom, and allspice give the beef and sweet potatoes just the right amount of fragrance and spice.

In case you haven’t had the pleasure of indulging in a crispy egg, let me sell you on it. It has perfectly cooked whites, a runny yolk, and irresistible crunchy browned lacy bits all around the edges.

Kale and Bacon Quiches with Hash Brown Crust

April 1, 2015 By Becky 41 Comments

It’s my second blog birthday! I feel like I’ve come a long way since my very first post, but last year’s blogiversary feels like it was just yesterday. Time flies when you’re eating well!

At the risk of sounding sappy, I want to say thank you for stopping by my site. Reading your comments and connecting with you on social media makes my day, and turns the often solitary activities of cooking, photographing, and writing into something that’s actually meaningful.

To celebrate the occasion, I made grain-free kale and bacon quiches with hash brown crust. They’re like little crispy nests of savory goodness. This was my first time making a potato crust, and I’m totally hooked. I’m even thinking it might work in some sort of a dessert pie (is that too radical?). Here, the crunchy potato tangles hold a filling of eggs, kale, shallots, crisp bacon, and crumbled goat cheese. These are perfect for Easter brunch or any weekend morning (or a blogiversary, of course).

As I embark on my third year of blogging, I’d love to hear from you. What would you like to see more of here on A Calculated Whisk? For example, are you looking for quick and easy recipes, Whole30 meals, desserts, vegetarian meals, or something else? Would you like to see more non-recipe posts (reviews, giveaways, perhaps travel stories)? Whatever it is, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

Balsamic Steak with Fig & Arugula Salad

August 27, 2014 By Becky Leave a Comment

Do you think beautiful food tastes better? I do.

Of course, every once in a while you come across a beautiful dish, take your first bite, and feel disappointed because it doesn’t taste nearly as good as it looks. In my experience, though, that doesn’t happen much.

More often, a food’s level of beauty and deliciousness are relatively close together, with the gorgeousness boosting the deliciousness up a notch or two (or perhaps vice versa, but I don’t really find that a food looks prettier once I’ve tried it and know that it’s tasty…we eat with our eyes first, after all). The food looks good, so it tastes even better. I think that’s how it goes with me and figs. Yes, they’re yummy, but most of all, their colors are just so pretty. When I take a bite of fig while looking at the freshly-sliced figs that are still on my plate, the beauty of those figs makes the one in my mouth taste even better.

Roasted Beet & Carrot Salad with Goat Cheese Vinaigrette

April 28, 2014 By Becky 32 Comments

What’s your favorite color? Mine is pink (shocking, right?).

When I was scrolling through the recipes on K & K Test Kitchen to choose something to make for this month’s Secret Recipe Club, the gorgeous hue of this healthy salad caught my eye. By the time I read the words “goat cheese” near the end of the post title, I was totally sold. When I see a food that’s naturally bright pink and has my favorite kind of cheese in it, I sign myself right up.

Stuffed Zucchini with Goat Cheese & Herbs

September 4, 2013 By Becky 4 Comments

Cheese is back! After finishing up my version of a Whole 30, I’ve been adding some dairy back into my diet. I’ve made some interesting discoveries. I used to think that too much coffee upset my stomach, but since switching to almond milk, I realized it was all the milk in my coffee that was causing me problems (I like a LOT of milk in my coffee). So I’m trying not to go too crazy with the dairy, but I’m fine with a little cheese.

Goat cheese is one of my favorite cheeses, and it’s one that people who are lactose intolerant can often still enjoy. Apparently this is because the fat molecules in goat’s milk are shorter than those in cow’s milk, and thus easier to digest. Whatever the reason, I’m glad I can enjoy goat cheese. It really takes these stuffed zucchini over the top.

One more note on ingredients: this was my first time cooking with ground pork. It was so good! Why is everyone still buying ground beef all the time? I mean, I’m sure this recipe would be good with beef, or even ground chicken or turkey, but the pork just has so much great flavor. Perhaps this is due to a higher fat content? What I really want to know is this: why don’t people make hamburgers out of ground pork? Any thoughts? After all, they are called HAMburgers…

On to the recipe! I’m eager to try this with other vegetables as well: maybe mushrooms instead of peppers, or shallots instead of onions. Let me know if you try this or any variations!