Chocolate Cheese

*2/16 Update: I just got off the phone with the people at Marion Street and they assure me that they can do shipping of the chocolate. They ship through UPS, so obviously charges would vary depending on location. For anyone who'd like some I'll offer a trade. I'm going back out that way next week. I'll send you a yummy bar of chocolate if you send me something unique to your region. Let's share!*

The other day I went to check out a cheese shop in Oak Park (a Chicago suburb) called Marion Street Cheese Market. They have a lovely wine set up, a place for you to create your own six pack, and a restaurant in addition to a cheese counter.

I bought a few cheeses including baked lemon ricotta which I've never had before. This is crucial to the second part of the story. My favorite thing though was the Cheese and Chocolate bar. Dark Chocolate studded with two year old L'Amuse Gouda. Sooooooo yummy. According to the label, they make it in house. The only thing that could improve this delicacy is a sprinkling of fleur de sel on top. Lucky for me, I had some at home.



Remember how I told you I bought some lemon ricotta? Once I got home I wasn't quite sure what to do with it. I opened up the freezer and saw some frozen berries, and some puff pastry. And so the Piestry was invented. It looks like a pie, but made with pastry dough.


If you're like my guests that evening you're probably thinking something along the lines of, "What the hell happened?" Let me tell what what happened.

• The top pastry was too much. It turned this from a ricotta and berry dessert to a puff pastry dessert with a wee bit of filling.
• Even though I'd cooked the berries beforehand, they were super wet and soaked right through the ricotta.
• The berries were stronger than the amount of ricotta I had and kicked it's butt.
  
• The texture was...um...atrocious. The ricotta was too grainy. I should have smoothed it out with some mascarpone, or creme fraiche or something.

What we ended up with (besides a good laugh) was an anemic looking, gritty, grainy, berry-soaked, too much puff (especially in the crust) piestry catastrophe. On the positive side though, we'd had enough good food and wine during the course of the night that one sad little piestry didn't spoil the evening. Plus, we had cheese studded chocolate to nosh on.