For TGRWT #18 hosted by Aidan Brooks I decided to use puff pastry dough and laminate some Norwegian blue cheese, “Norzola” (made to mimic Gorgonzola) between two layers and roll them out. To accompany this I made a plum reduction with my two favorite spices, star anis and ginger. I should also mention that I tried the very simplest combination of plum and gorgonzola as well: a simple slice of bread with some Gorgonzola and a thick slice of a blue plum. This was very delicious – and takes absolutely no time to prepare.

Norzola puffs
Spread room tempered blue cheese on puff pastry dough and cover with a second sheet. Roll out until doubled in size (at least). Bake at 200 °C until golden brown.

Plum reduction
200 g plums (I used red and green), stoned
100 g orange juice
35 g sugar
1/3 star anis (whole)
ginger to taste

Simmer for about 1 hour. Remove the star anis and purrée. Reduce further until desired consistency.

Serving: apply a generous spoon of plum reduction, sprinkle with finely chopped walnuts and place Norzola puff on top.

The few blue/purple plums take the final color a long way!

Verdict: This one was yummy! My wife (who’s not very fond of blue cheese) approved and helped herself with a second serving It’s both sweet, sour, creamy, airy, crunchy – and it’s even got tannins (plum skins + walnuts).

Finally it’s time for a new round of TGRWT. It’s the 18th round and the host this time is Aidan Brooks, a trainee chef who works in Spain. In his blog he’s touched upon flavor pairing several times and also wrote a blog post on the same topic for “Word of mouth”, the food blog of The Guardian. The foods to pair this time are plum and blue cheese, and as usual you can read more about how to participate in the announcement post. The deadline for submissions is September 1st.

TGRWT is not a competition, but Aidan wanted to add a little competitive element to round of the meal. So his challenge to you (in addition to the normal TGRWT contributions) is to make a dessert using plum and blue cheese which additionally incorporates any two of the following flavors: salty, sour, bitter, umami, pungent, astringent. He will pick a winner and the prize is quite cool: he’ll make a restaurant level version of it, with the name of the winner incorporated in the title of the dish and try to get this on the menu at Restaurante Ferrero where he works as a Pastry Chef on the team of Paco Morales, Spain’s “Chef of the Year 2009″.

Photo by mykrar from flickr.com (CC BY-NC 2.0)

Regarding the chemistry behind this pairing there is (for once) actually some informartion available. From a paper on gorgonzola I’ve learnt that 2-nonanone, 1-octen-3-ol, 2-heptanol, ethyl hexanoate, methylanisole and 2-heptanone are the most important impact odorants of natural and creamy Gorgonzola cheese [1]. For plums I haven’t found anything on impact odorants in fresh plums, but there is a paper on impact odorants in candied plums [2], and comparing the two papers I find that phenyl acetaldehyde, ethyl benzoate and ethyl octanoate are present in both Gorgonzola cheese and candied plums and have odor activity values greater than 1. There’s another paper as well comparing two plum varieties were the abstract mentions odor unit values, but alas – I don’t have access to the full text (maybe someone with access could check it and give me a hint about the impact odorants?) [3]. There are probably some differences between fresh and candied plums, but at least this shows that you’re safe if you want to use candied plums when cooking up something with blue cheese.

[1] Moio, L.; Piombiono, P.; Addeo F. J. Dairy Research 2000, 67, 273 “Odour-impact compounds of Gorgonzola cheese”. DOI: 10.1017/S0022029900004106
[2] Nunes, C.; Coimbra, M. A.; Saraiva, J.; Rocha, S. M. Food Chemistry 2008, 111, 897 “Study of the volatile components of a candied plum and estimation of their contribution to the aroma”. DOI: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2008.05.003
[3] Gómez, E.; Ledbetter, C. A. J. of the Science of Food and Agriculture 2006, 65 (1), 111. “Comparative study of the aromatic profiles of two different plum species: Prunus salicina Lindl and Prunus simonii L”. DOI: 10.1002/jsfa.2740650116