Movin On Up to the Cheese Pie

Half the week I'm stirrin' up some curds and haulin' large wheels with some great cheesemakers in Waco. The other half, I'm playing a proper 1950s housewife back in Del Rio. I make pies. Many pies.

It all started three months ago with one of my favorites, southern lemon chess pie. The chess pie was my first ever pie and pie crust attempt; it met rave reviews and is likely the main reason my boyfriend put plans in motion to propose marriage. The obsession progressed to the point where I was making three pies in one day.

Cheese is no stranger to pies. So, eventually, I decided to set up a play date for my good friends cheese and pie.

You've heard of cheesy desserts incorporating smooth, sweet cheeses like cream cheese (cheesecake) or mascarpone (tiramisu). Stronger cheeses can also participate in the dessert party as a standalone treat (cheese plate, or see blue cheese-honey-Sauternes combo from my Valentine's Day post). But I'm a believer that non-traditional cheese desserts have a place in the sugary pantheon as well. Enter pies.

Remember that ricotta I made in the last post? It would meet its sweet fate in my first cheese-based pie attempt, a "Cheese and Honey" pie.

Stumbling through several online recipes, I discovered that the so-called "cheese and honey" title that initially caught my eye was actually a traditional Greek dessert called Melopita. Generally the pie is made with either Ricotta or Myzithra cheeses. Myzithra (also Mizithra) is a Greek cheese made from whey remaining from feta production and a bit of added goat or sheep milk. The cheese is then pressed and salted, so it resembles Ricotta Salata in texture and taste. Myzithra would have been the more exotic and daring choice, but my castaway ricotta from my mozzarella debacle needed a home.

Because whey ricotta is a by-product of an initial cheese-make, it's a fairly low-yield cheese. I needed 16 ounces total, so I had to combine my small ricotta ball with some whole milk ricotta I purchased at the store. Because whey is high in protein and low in fat, my ricotta was the healthier of the two. Whole milk ricotta is made entirely or partially from the actual milk. The milk is curdled by vinegar in a manner similar to paneer, so the finished product still has all of the fat and cream from the original milk.

Melopita dusted with cinnamon

The pie was fairly simple: mix ricotta, 4 eggs, 1/2 cup honey, 2 tablespoons flour together for the filling. I then added cinnamon, vanilla, and a bit more honey according to my own taste. I also boozed up my basic crust recipe with some bourbon and vanilla. My final result tasted like a fantastic pumpkin pie. It was creamier in taste and a bit thicker in texture, but very reminiscent of fall.

The first Melopita recipe I found called for either ricotta or "other curd cheese." Translated, the vaguely stated instructions simply direct you to either ricotta or cottage cheese. In the comments one hapless woman, confused by the term "curd cheese," decided to use cheddar curds she had laying around. Fortunately, she said her pie turned out fantastic. While that's not what the Greeks had in mind, I'm just crazy enough to be intrigued by the blundering variation. If I can get my hands on some cheddar curds (not in Del Rio), I might just experiment with such pie insanity.

For now, I'll just tell you about the other, far more "traditional" (so-to-speak) cheddar and pie experiment to which I progressed. A surprisingly sizeable portion of the U.S. population has likely heard of apple pie being served with cheese melted on top or on the side as curds or chunks. I believe it's fairly popular in New York and other Northeastern states. The rest of you probably just threw up in your mouth a little. You have no reason to trust me. I'm the type of person who likes weird food combinations like ice cream and cheese sandwiches when I was a kid or Funyons with a Fig Newton when I was ...bored.  But believe me, you haven't lived until you've eaten apple pie with cheese.

I'd seen the combination on menus before and in a scene of Taxi Driver where Robert DeNiro's character orders apple pie with cheese. But I wanted to try to make cheese get cozier with the pie. I wanted to add the cheese directly to the pie as it appeared in many recipes for Yorkshire apple and cheese pies. In fact, our pie-with-a-side-of-cheese tradition was likely brought over to the colonies from English and Scottish settlers.

I found the best white cheddar Del Rio had to offer (some $10/lb blocks from a random New York cheesemaking factory I'd never heard of), and let my madness unleash itself. I found four or five recipes to start from, mixed and matched, and ended up with two experiments.

This unassuming crust holds
a delightful hidden ingredient

One was a streusel pie with the cheese in the filling: standard crust, sliced apples tossed with 1/2 lb of shredded cheddar and the other filling accouterments (cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon juice, corn starch, brown sugar, vanilla, and yes, bourbon), and a sugar-flour-butter streusel topping.

The second pie incorporated cheese into the crust instead of the filling. So I made the same filling, minus the cheddar. Then I folded a 1/2 lb of shredded cheddar into the crust instead. The dough tasted like a cheddar biscuit. It was so good I started to eat raw dough with glazed, crazed delight in my eye. Feeling ill, I returned to pie-making.

I lined the pan with the cheese crust, added the filling and covered the top with the cheddar crust as well (no streusel). Then, I made a maple-*ahem*bourbon sauce to be added to either pie. In the end, neither pie needed the sauce, so I just used it as ice cream topping. The pies were amazing standing alone. The classic combination of sweet fruit with salty cheese. Incorporating the cheddar into the recipe made for a cohesive and subtle cheese flavor. I imagine that taking bites of curd alongside pie would pack a stronger punch.

I'm obsessed, so I could have actually used a bit more cheese flavor in my pie. Next time I might try a pie with cheddar in the crust AND the filling. Convention and moderation can't hold me down.



I was too excited to eat these pies in immediate succession to make time to focus my camera