Gorgonzola – Simply Delicious: The Cookbook Project

8-39: Tournedos with Blue Cheese Sauce

Jamie Martin Group 08: Beef, Section 2: Main Courses March 5, 2024March 4, 2024beef, beef bouillon, beef tenderloin, black pepper, blue cheese, butter, cheese, cheese sauce, cream sauce, crème fraîche, deglazed, dinner, egg-free, expensive, fairly easy, Gorgonzola, reduced, salt, seared, sherry, sour cream, soy sauce, steak, toothpicks, tournedos, trimmed, untested

Back again with another beef-but-not-beef recipe for you–today’s is yet another one that’s been sitting in my queue for quite a while, 8-39: Tournedos with Blue Cheese Sauce. This one is pretty indulgent, whether you use “real” ingredients or not. With the price of everything these days, save this one for a special occasion.

Tournedos are slices taken from the smaller end of a tenderloin (essentially a filet mignon) and are typically paired with something fatty/rich (like bacon, foie gras, cream sauce) due to their leanness.

1-37: Savory Cheese Appetizers

Jamie Martin Group 01: Hot & Cold Appetizers, Section 1: Appetizers & Starters May 26, 2017August 5, 2020appetizers, blender, blue cheese, buttermilk, cayenne pepper, cheese, chives, cream cheese, creamy, crème fraîche, dips, easy, food processor, fruit, garnish, Gorgonzola, grapes, herbs and spices, inexpensive, lunch, paprika, parsley, party food, radishes, salt, savory, sherry, sliced, snacks, sour cream, untested, vegetarian, white bread

We can pretend that 1-37: Savory Cheese Appetizers is something fancy and unique, but it’s really just a blue cheese spread on squares of white bread. If you like blue cheese, I suppose this could be an exciting concept–the 1980s were big on both blue cheese and dips (which this recipe can double as).

Simply Delicious has a lot of blue cheese-related recipes–a few I covered just recently include 5-20: Golden Cheese Tartlettes and 1-20: Prosciutto Appetizers. After making all three of these essentially back-to-back, I’m a little burned out on blue cheese for a while.

5-20: Golden Cheese Tartlettes

Jamie Martin Group 05: Eggs & Cheese, Section 1: Appetizers & Starters May 7, 2017December 20, 202180s party, all-purpose flour, appetizers, baked goods, blender, blue cheese, brandy, breakfast, butter, Cheddar, cheese, chilled, cognac, Colby Jack, cookie cutters, creamy, dough, dried spices, egg yolks, eggs, fail, fairly easy, fairly inexpensive, filling, food processor, Gorgonzola, Grand Marnier, Greenback apt, herbs and spices, hors d'oeuvres, Jarlsberg, liquor, paprika, party food, pastry, pastry cups, pie crust, revisited, roach motel apt, Roquefort, shredded, snacks, Swiss, tart, tartlette, vegetarian, whole wheat flour

Finally, one from the “revisited” pile–those are recipes I’ve already made before, but am making again for the sake of this project. 5-20: Golden Cheese Tartlettes were one of the appetizers I made for a Valentine’s Day 80’s party I talked about in 1-22: Onion-Potato Diamonds–I thought these little cheese tarts seemed very 1980s.

They’re not kidding about the “fragile” part when it comes to these tartlettes–I originally made these for this project back in July of 2016, but the whole operation went so poorly that I abandoned it and never even posted about it. Now that I’ve bought the proper equipment and ingredients for it, it went much smoother.

1-20: Prosciutto Appetizers

Jamie Martin Group 01: Hot & Cold Appetizers, Section 1: Appetizers & Starters May 3, 2017January 28, 2020appetizers, basil, black pepper, blue cheese, cheese, chilled, chives, chopped, cream cheese, creamy, dollop, dried herbs, easy, egg-free, fairly expensive, favorites, filling, gluten-free, Gorgonzola, ham, herbs and spices, hors d'oeuvres, parsley, party food, Prosciutto, Roquefort, sage, salt, snacks, stuffed, stuffing, tarragon, toothpicks, untested

There’s not a lot to 1-20: Prosciutto Appetizers, but think of them as a fancier version of the classic appetizer roll-ups that feature some sort of cold cut wrapped around some sort of cream cheese. I originally intended to make these to bring with when we attended a fancy picnic-type event last year, but ran out of time before the day arrived.

Since I’m the only one who can eat these anyway, I ended up making them as a snack for myself when Adam was out of town a few weeks ago. I love Prosciutto ham, blue cheese, AND cream cheese, so these were snacks I was quite looking forward to.

19-14: Cheese & Other Dairy Products

Jamie Martin Group 19: Basic Ingredients, Section 4: Cooking School April 7, 2016October 18, 2020blue cheese, Brie, butter, buttermilk, Cheddar, cheese, coconut milk, cooking school, cottage cheese, cream cheese, crème fraîche, goat cheese, Gorgonzola, half-and-half, Jarlsberg, milk, Parmesan, party food, sour cream, sweet butter, Swiss, whipping cream, yogurt

As I said in a previous Cooking School installment (19-13: Cooking with Cheese), cheese is a really big part of Simply Delicious, and other dairy products factor in heavily as well. Today we see a lot more alternatives to traditional dairy (coconut milk, tofu, etc.) which is probably good given environmental and ethical concerns related to commercial dairy & meat production. However, it’s important to understand the original ingredient if we hope to find workable alternatives.

Not much more to add to what they’ve written here, but after the jump we’ll take a look at some common culinary dairy ingredients (check out 19-13: Cooking with Cheese for some recipes using specific types of cheeses) and I’ll link you to some recipes that use those ingredients.

19-13: Cooking with Cheese

Jamie Martin Group 19: Basic Ingredients, Section 4: Cooking School March 5, 2016October 18, 2020blue cheese, Brie, cheese, cooking school, cottage cheese, Feta, French, goat cheese, Gorgonzola, Greek, how-to, Italian, Jarlsberg, Parmesan, Swiss

There’s a lot of recipes in Simply Delicious that use cheese–all different types. While by no means an exhaustive list, 19-13: Cooking with Cheese goes over a few different types that you’ll probably encounter in your own culinary adventures. This is part of the last section of the book, a Cooking School compendium of basic culinary reference material.

Cheese might not be a big part of your diet, but it’s always been a big part of mine (for better or worse–what can I say, my maternal grandparents were Swedish and French and lived in the Midwest USA). After the jump, read more about some common types of cooking cheese.