Three Great Additions to your Fall Cheese Boards: Sweet and Savory Bacon Jam, Fromage Fort and Toasted Walnuts and Raisins

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Top Left: Sweet and Savory Bacon Jam. Center: Toasted Walnuts and Raisins
Right: Fromage Fort

Simplicity itself: Toasted Walnuts and Raisins

Fromage Fort with Garlic and Pepper

I am always on the look-out for ways to freshen the tried and true. And as the temperature drops in the East, and entertaining moves indoors, Andrew and I love to put out a big platter of cheese and grapes, crackers and biscuits for our guests. If you do it right, it not only stems those pre-dinner pangs of hunger, it looks gorgeous on your table. But our cheese platters inevitably leave us with bits and pieces of various cheeses. There’s leftover Brie, a morsel of hard cheese like Manchego and, if I fish around in the cheese drawer, I can usually come up with some mozzarella that’s too big to throw away or some gruyere that’s too good to do so. I remembered reading about what the French do with the odds and ends and so I went on a quick and found the recipe for Fromage Fort. It’s so thrifty, I could practically hear my mother applauding from heaven. And what a way to meld all these flavors together and get something completely new: A wonderful spreadable cheese, rich in garlic and pepper. So I had a new anchor for our cheese selection. At a recent cocktail party, my clever host, Huey, had simply combined some really good raisins with some toasted walnuts. Nothing could be simpler or more satisfying. But my new discoveries didn’t end there. I was confronted with a recipe I’d been wanting to try since forever. It was for Sweet and Savory Bacon Jam.

Sweet and Savory Bacon Jam

When friends go to the trouble of pointing my search in a new direction, I am always supremely grateful. One afternoon last week, I got an email from one of my favorite people on earth. I’ve been a friend of Judith for about 35 years. We don’t see each other that often because she lives between Denver, Aspen and Rancho Mirage CA. But she gets to New York annually and it’s always a treat. When I opened her email, she’d taken the trouble to send me an article from The Denver Post’s food section. Its author, a woman named Stacey Brugeman, who calls herself the Denver Omnivore, says she’d wanted to try making Bacon Jam ever since a Top Chef contestant, Kevin Gillespie, topped a fricassee of

Atlanta’s Kevin Gillespie once topped
snails with Bacon Jam

snails with bacon jam in 2009. Now Kevin looks like he knows a thing or two about bacon but I am afraid the snail topping might have turned me off sooner than it turned me on. Stacey, meanwhile, made this combination of thick sliced bacon, onions and shallots, mustard, Worcestershire sauce and Maple Syrup for a breakfast party. It was such a hit that for weeks afterward she kept getting requests for the recipe—some from people who were not even at the original party. This kind of endorsement sent me straight to the stove. Here are the recipes for Fromage Fort and Sweet and Savory Bacon Jam. Make them and you’ll have all kinds of things to talk about over your next cheese platter.

Recipe for Fromage Fort with White Wine and Garlic:

Beware the “Stinking Rose”

I first followed this recipe to a T. And, candidly, even though I am great garlic lover, the “stinking rose” was overpowering. This was actually easy to fix. I just added 8 more ounces of cream cheese. However, I’d suggest one of two things: Either take the 3-4 garlic cloves called for, wrap them in tinfoil and roast them in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes, or add the garlic one clove at a time, tasting as you go until you hit the desired level of garlic. Either way, this is a wonderful discovery which changes completely depending on the cheese you have on hand. Brie, Cheddar, farmer cheese, Chevre, Roquefort, Mozzarella and really any other cheese can be used here.

1. Gather together 1 pound of leftover cheese (3 kinds is enough, 6 or 7 will be even better). Trim off any mold or very dried out parts from the surface. Toss as many as 3 or 4 peeled cloves of garlic into a food processor and process for several seconds until coarsely chopped. Add the cheese to the garlic along with 1/2 cup dry white wine and at least 1 teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper. Process until the mixture becomes soft and creamy, about 30 seconds.

2. Remove the mixture from processor and transfer it to a crock or bowl. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate.

Recipe for Sweet and Savory Bacon Jam from Stacey Brugeman, the Denver Omnivore

This takes a good hour and half to make and another 30 minutes before you can serve it. It makes 1 ½ to 2 cups of jam. Since it keeps in the fridge in an air tight container, Stacey says you can double or triple the recipe. All I can say is, that’s a lot of Bacon Jam. Stacey went whole hog and left all the bacon fat in the pan. I drained a good portion of it. I let you decide which to do.

1 pound thick-cut bacon, cut into 3/4-inch pieces

2 small sweet onions, peeled and thinly sliced

1 large shallot (2 cloves), peeled and very thinly sliced

1/2 cup pure maple syrup

1/4 cup balsamic vinegar

2 tablespoons Dijon mustard

2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce

Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

1. Set a large Dutch oven or heavy skillet over medium-high to high heat. Add the bacon and cook, stirring occasionally, until it begins to brown and crisp, 15 to 20 minutes. Drain (or do not drain) the excess bacon fat.

2. Lower the heat to medium. Stir in the onions and shallots, and cook until softened, 8 to 10 minutes.

3. Add the maple syrup, vinegar, Dijon, and Worcestershire sauce. Season with salt and pepper. Pour in 1/2 cup of water and stir to combine. Bring the mixture to a boil, reduce heat to low and simmer, stirring occasionally if necessary. Cook until the the jam has a glossy appearance and syrup-like consistency, about 1 hour.

4. Allow the mixture to cool for 20 to 30 minutes. Transfer to a blender and pulse a few times to puree the larger pieces, stopping every pulse or two to stir and check the consistency — it should be thick and chunky, not a paste.

5. Transfer to an airtight container. Serve at room temperature or slightly heated in the microwave.

Three Great Additions to your Fall Cheese Boards: Sweet and Savory Bacon Jam, Fromage Fort and Toasted Walnuts and Raisins

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