Christmas Cheese Balls

This Christmas time we offer you a recipe to prepare a cold-snack dish with cheese that everyone will love.

The cheese ball is traditional for this time of the year and it´s also very easy to make.

Source: Chris Buecheler in Flickr

INGREDIENTS

• 2 packages (8 ounces each) cream cheese, softened.
• 2 cups (8 ounces) shredded sharp cheese, Golden Label (Gold Medall of World Cheese Awards 2010)
• 1 tablespoon finely chopped onion.
• 1 tablespoon diced Green peppers.
• 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce.
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice.
• Chopped toasted pecans (as much as you want).
• Chopped toasted almonds (ídem).
• Finely chopped dehydrated pineapple or apricot.
• Assorted crackers.

DIRECTIONS

In a large bowl, combine all the ingredients but the pecans, almonds and fruits. Shape into three balls. If you see them too little you can just shape them into two or add more quantity of all the ingredients.

Once everything is well mixed, roll each ball in the pecans, almonds or fruits. Make sure the cheese ball is well covered and let it chill.

Whenever you want to serve the balls, we suggest you to remove them from the refrigerator 15 minutes before.

Serve with crackers and enjoy!

On Christmas time we don´t forget about you and would like you to don´t forget about us. Let´s share the same table and have us with you. It´s easy through our online store or web.

MERRY CHEESEMAS!

Spanish Snack Board. Surprise your guests!

It´s Friday afternoon and you have some friends coming home by surprise… WHAT TO DO NOW? You can amaze them with a simple but delicious board with some of the most typical snacks from Spain.

Easy, classy and yummy!

What are the ingredients that we´ll need?

The Spanish snacking culture or “tapeo” is based on 4 main pillars. These are; cold meat, cheese, bread & wine.

From here your imagination has no limit, but sometimes the simpler, the better a snack board will be.

We propose the following one:

• Cold meat:
• Spanish “jamón” (cured ham) must never be missing.
• “Chorizo” (hard pork sausage).
• “Salchichón” (salami-type cured sausage).
• Cheese: all kinds of cheese can be used. A number of 4-6 different types would be great. We recommend start eating the softest one. From there keep on tasting a stronger cheese than the previous one. This way people can fully enjoy the flavour of each cheese.
• Bread & Wine – Wine & Bread: The order is not important because both are the perfect and irreplaceable accompaniments. They will be the finishing touch of a perfect cycle of Spanish gastronomy.
• You can also add some nuts and quince jelly to surpass the senses, but that´s an option.

Source: Flickr of Gonmi 

There is one last ingredient that will turn this simple dish into the perfect one in your house: a good conversation with good friends. It makes everything ten times better.

Our cheese offer comprises many different kinds; from creamy to hard ewe cheese, going through goat cheese, wine cheese and more. All of them are rich in flavour and texture.

We encourage you to visit our website and see the entire world that surrounds the production of our cheese. Then you will understand why we are so proud of what we do and also of how we do it.

ENJOY!

Original Spanish Potato Tortilla with a twist (cheese & bacon)

This recipe is little different from the authentic Spanish Tortilla most of us already know. You can add practically any tasty ingredient to give it a nice twist: red or green paprika, carrots, tomato, spanish Jamon/Ham, etc. This time we added our 9 months cured rawmilk variety from Sierra de Albarracín® “Black Label” and some bacon to add some deeper flavours to the tortilla.

Ingredients:

-Eggs 4-6

-Salt

-Potatoes, 3-4 medium sized

-Raw milk (unpasteurized) Sheep´s Cheese, in this case we used our “Black Label”

-Bacon

-Olive Oil

Preparation:

After peeling, cut the potatoes into randomly sized slices (usually around 1-2 mm thick). Fry the potato slices in olive oil and take them out of the pan before they are done/coloured, leave them in a heat restistant bowl and put aside. With the oil still hot, add the bacon and fry untill they´re almost crispy. In the meantime you can stir up the eggs by hand inside a small bowl, add some salt, but remember the cheese already contains salt so don`t add too much. When the bacon is nicely coloured and almost crispy, take them out of the pan and add them into the bowl with the tortilla slices. Now you can add some cubes of cheese and mix everything together with the previously stirred eggs.

Use a non stick pan with a little bit of oil, when hot add the contents of the bowl and wait for the eggs to set up, to avoid any burning lower the heat of the stove. As soon as you notice the eggs are set, we get to the trickiest part of the process: turn the tortilla over while using a big plate/pan cover or -optionally- a special “tortilla turner”.

Enjoy! This recipe made exclusively for “Cheeses from the Sierra de Albarracín” by www.recetaycocina.com

"Rioja Tapas Fantasticas 2012" celebrated next month in London

London’s award winning celebration of Rioja wine and Spanish food is back! And so are our award winning cheeses from Albarracín! Our U.K. based distributor "Tozino Ldt." will participate -same as last year- with their own tapas stand at the "Tapas Fantasticas 2012" festival.

"Slices of Heaven" accompanied by toasted tomato bread ("pan con tomate") prepared by Tozino Ltd. 

Tozino is a London based Spanish food importer specialized in Spanish hams and totally dedicated to the art of carving ham. They have a stall at Maltby Street Market selling some of Spain´s best artisan produce: Jamon de Teruel from Aragon or delicious acorn fed Jamon Iberico from Los Pedroches in Cordoba and of course our award winning cheese from Sierra de Albarracín accompanied by great Rioja wines.

Tozino´s stall at Maltby Street Market (April 2012)

The South Bank of the Thames will be taking on a flavour of Spain’s most famous wine region as Rioja Tapas Fantasticas returns for two days on Saturday 14^th and Sunday 15^thJuly 2012.  The free event will be held at the same fantastic venue as last year – Potters Fields Park – so grab your friends, come down and enjoy the food, drink and entertainment. 

Mediterranean Diet, healthy and delicious

Snacks have always been a part of most of people´s lives, but the question is: How can we adapt this not too healthy habit to the famous style of the Mediterranean Diet? Our lives are nowadays more and more busy, so we don´t have time to sit down and have a full meal. A little snack helps us to keep on going until the next meal, the problem is that those bites tend to be chocolate or chips from a vending machine. These types of snack are not only poor in nutrients, they also provide us the worst elements for our health, such us saturated fat, salt, flavours and preservatives, all of them not included in the Mediterranean Diet.

Why snacking can be good for us.

‘Snack’ foods have a bad reputation, which is usually well deserved. However, the concept of snacking is not bad at all. A healthy snack between meals can help us to bear hunger. In addition, if you go to eat lunch very hungry, it is possible that you will over eat, or grab the first thing you find without thinking about nutrition.

Eating at regular intervals is also beneficial for our metabolism, and thus helpful with weight control. If we suffer hunger for a long time, our body starts keeping “fuel”, this means storing energy in the form of fat, instead of burning it. An ideal snack should be around 200 calories or less.

As last advantage, snacking is a great way to add more nutrients to your diet. You can have more calcium with a snack such as yogurt or cheese, or increase vitamins with fresh fruit or vegetables.

One of the ingredients that has always been part of the Mediterranean Diet is hard traditional cheese; and what better option than our Cheese from Albarracín? Don´t miss the chance to enjoy a piece of any of our unique cheeses with some bread and a glass of good wine, come visit our online store! You won´t regret!