I hope everyone had a great Holiday and that you are looking forward to the New Year! I totally am. Nothing like starting over fresh with new ideas and new opportunities.
And to celebrate, we are having caviar.
This is Caviar Cheese Ring!
AuthorRetroRuth
From Food of My Friends by Virginia Stafford, 1944
Tested Recipe!
Mix the cream cheese with blue cheese and cream. Add Worcestershire sauce and chives, mix until combined.
Place in a small ring mold lined with plastic wrap (or use plastic wrap to form the cheese mixture into a ball) and place it in the refrigerator for five hours.
Unmold, fill with watercress and spread top and sides with caviar. If formed into a ball, spread caviar around the outside and place watercress around as garnish on the serving plate. Serve with crackers, wafers or thin toast.
Ingredients
Directions
Mix the cream cheese with blue cheese and cream. Add Worcestershire sauce and chives, mix until combined.
Place in a small ring mold lined with plastic wrap (or use plastic wrap to form the cheese mixture into a ball) and place it in the refrigerator for five hours.
Unmold, fill with watercress and spread top and sides with caviar. If formed into a ball, spread caviar around the outside and place watercress around as garnish on the serving plate. Serve with crackers, wafers or thin toast.
This recipe is from Food of My Friends by Virginia Stafford, which was published in 1944. This is a really interesting book, especially if you read it back to back with another cookbook of the time, MFK Fisher’s How To Cook A Wolf. While Fisher’s book deals with food economy, foraging for food and stretching to get every bit of nourishment out of what you could get your hands on during rationing or food shortages, Stafford’s book centers on entertaining in style during rationing. Most of the recipes in Food of My Friends are from wealthy hostesses and hosts who were pulling out all the stops even though the war was on. One of the hostesses is quoted as saying, “War conditions have taught us that hors d’oeuvers can be greatly simplified – even omitted entirely. And certainly it is not necessary to bake a ham in champagne.”
But this recipe is a great reminder that not every luxury was rationed during World Ward II. Because there was no rationing on fish, if you had the money you could get your hands on basically as much caviar as your guests could scarf down, making caviar a popular choice for party fare.
“You ready for some fish eggs?”
“Bring it on.”
“How is it?”
“It’s good, but the cheese ball part is so strong you really can’t taste the caviar.”
The Verdict: Strong
From The Tasting Notes –
The cheese ring/ball portion of this recipe was really good. It was creamy with a good kick from the blue cheese. And I am always a fan of a dish that mixes chives with blue cheese. But while this was a delicious cheese ball recipe, it probably wasn’t the best way to showcase caviar. The strong flavors really overpowered everything, so much so that you really couldn’t tell if you got a cracker that didn’t have much caviar on it. Luckily, we didn’t buy expensive caviar so this turned out just fine for us, but if you have sunk a bunch of money into fancy caviar, then I would serve it a different way. On the flip side, this makes a great cheese ball even without the caviar!
Tom, eating fish eggs, while wearing a Weyland-Yutani Tee shirt.
Brilliant!
I really enjoyed your retro cocktail posts, could we have one for new years eve?