Image Cred: The Hungry Mouse

Fried goat cheese elevates a garden-variety green salad to something special. It also makes a top-notch appetizer. It comes off as fancy, but it’s easier to make than pancakes.

Fried Goat Cheese

Battered Fried Goat Cheese

Manning a kitchen involves the curation of recipes. When I’m not searing grill marks into a sausage, splitting open a couple of buns and slathering them up with butter, or discovering the hard way that I’ve dropped pieces of my frothing attachment into the garbage disposal, I’m surfing the net in search of kick-ass recipes. Welcome to miLam’s Curated Exhibits series.

Image Creds: hover over image or hover over green image captions.

♣

Exhibit № IV: miLam’s been exploring the solar system, in search of fried goat cheeses worthy to orbit its culinary planet. Those who have proven themselves deserving have earned membership in the Fried Goat Cheese Alliance. We’ve presented images on this page of the members.

Although one can serve goat cheese medallions in a number of ways, we at miLam feel that the best way would be gigantic Pez dispensers. Or a tennis ball server (with multi-function remote, of course). But because we suspect that’s not going to happen, our next best way is to toss them on top of a salad. They provide an interesting contrast while making the entire salad seem much more sophisticated and substantial.

Goat cheese (known as chèvre by people who will be spending the coming weekend at their shore house), comes in many of the same flavors as paint color chips: Apricot Ginger, Black Truffle, Blueberry Lemon, Cognac Fig, Cranberry Log,^[1] Sweet Fire, Sun-dried Tomato,^[2] and Toasted Coconut Lemon. Any of these would be as welcome in a salad as they would be on an accent wall, depending mainly on what type of dressings you intend to use.

Goat cheese, like many of my friends, will pick up what ever flavor it bumps into when the bar lights come on. It’ll bring that flavor home, let it spend the night, and next thing you know, we all have to put up with it at weekend brunches. But we’re not downright asshats. We withhold judgment. We reach out. We’re friendly. It’s just that we know what lies ahead, about two weeks out: that flavor will wither away, and few days later, another one will take its place. But, like my cohorts, goat cheese doesn’t come up short on self-respect completely. Deep down, it’s just looking for unconditional love.

Beeting Hearts

Unconditional Goat Cheese Luv

Yes, goat cheese will love you unconditionally. It won’t be in your mouth much more than six seconds before you understand that. It’s true comfort food. It’s rich, creamy, deeply satisfying especially when it’s warm, and it will happily make friends with just about anything you introduce it to. You can make your own flavored goat cheese to suit whatever taste profile turns you on.

Marinara

Part 2, Goat Cheese Hacks →