Cheese of the Week - Asiago with Rosemary and Olive Oil

So Cheese of the Week might be a little ambitious.  After all, there are only three of us that eat cheese now and you can only eat so much at a time.  But you must admit, it sounds better than Cheese of the Indeterminate Time Period Between When We Bought This One and Finished the Last One (I don't know, cheese of the indeterminate time period has a nice ring to it).  And I need some little feature to house our exploration of cheese.  We've tried a lot in the past, but now I'm going to start keeping track.

We picked up this fine specimen at Trader Joes -
one of our go-to spots for new cheeses.

"Asiago (pronounced /ɑːsiˈɑːɡoʊ/) is an Italian cow's milk cheese that can assume different textures, according to its aging, from smooth for the fresh Asiago (Asiago Pressato) to a crumbly texture for the aged cheese (Asiago d'allevo) of which the flavour is reminiscent of Parmesan."¹

This Asiago was right in the middle, had a delicious buttery texture with a stronger rind, and the hint of flavouring was perfect.  We ate the whole wedge on a cheese plate over the course of a couple nights at dinner, but it'd be great with pasta bianco or on a sandwich.  It was a great compliment to our Creminelli salami.

1. wikipedia (Anyone can add anything so you know you're getting the best information in the world)

Bruschetta

Raelene was feeling a bit peckish (that's Irish for snackishly hungry) after lunch today, so I whipped up some bruschetta.  That's brew-sket-tah, not brew-shet-ta, by the way.

 
In any case, I just took a demi-baguette out of the freezer, defrosted and sliced it, then added olive oil, mozzerella frescha, finely diced onions, diced tomatoes (I used canned tomatoes because we were out of fresh ones, and they performed admirably), fresh basil, and some kosher salt.  Then I popped them in the oven at 350F for 10 minutes and we had ourselves a delicious little snack with minimal effort.

There are tons of variations to this simple recipe, but the most important element to making a good bruschetta is making sure you don't overburden the bread with ingredients.