Grilled Camembert – Camembert A La Parrilla

That camembert was good eh? So good you went to take a nap AFTER STEALING IT FROM ME!

The dog ate my homework. Really. Everything was perfect. Toasted rind. Cheese oozing out. Good lighting. Then I turned my back for a second and poof no more. This 6 month old monster decided to creep up out of nowhere and steal it off the table. Couldn’t believe it. All that work was gone! My mouth was watering yet someone else got to savor perfection. Savor no, gulped is a better word. Oh well, but don’t worry, no one was harmed. She did however get screamed out of the area.

When I saw Dan’s post over at SaltShaker about grilled camembert he enjoyed at Lo Rafael, I thought hmmm one of those little wheels just might have to be forcefully volunteered as a specimen on my parrilla. Like I’ve mentioned before, the chance to enjoy many culinary delights at a restaurant near the bottom of the world is not one that comes easily. When you need something done around here you just have to do it yourself.

Cheeses like camembert and brie are some of my favorite types of aged curdled milk. You know the sort that appear to have been drenched in powdered sugar or fine bleached flour, yet are actually coated with a fungi rind. Thick slices on a baguette with a light warming in the oven until the cheese starts to melt like butter. Good stuff!

I’m no cheese expert, but sometimes I taste a little bitterness on the rind of these cheeses. Sometimes a little too much. I don’t know if that’s a good sign or the result of bad storage. Therefore, I wasn’t quite sure what would happen in regards to bitterness when grilled on a parrilla. When I saw Dan’s photo I noticed what appeared to be a bit of charring on the cheese and posted a comment to see if indeed it affected the rind’s taste. He replied that it was more toasted than charred and delicious. That was good enough to give me the green light on giving a lil ‘bert the grilling it so deserved.

I only have access to Sancor’s (large dairy company) Camembert, which isn’t bad but lacks in flavor and texture compared to the really good stuff. And if you get a freshly delivered batch and it was stored well, it really does appear to be frosted with powdered sugar with hardly any bitterness. No gourmet cheese shops in my area offer anything artisanal from around the country much less anything imported from say France. You gotta make due with what you have.

Although I’ll probably experiment a little bit more in the future I followed everything I did with the first attempt. The outcome was good, short of my dog stealing it, and I didn’t want to try something different, then fail, and start all over again.

Before cooking I decided to keep the cheese slightly cooled. I know that’s a no-no in the grill world but being that camembert is a very soft cheese I feared a melting explosion might occur within a minute on the grill. Cheese is not to be wasted.

I set the grill to where I could keep my hands right above the rack for about 5-6 seconds. Right about the time when your hand screams to the brain: “Please move me!!” Go slow and maybe a disaster won’t be in the making, I thought. Next, made sure the grill was clean and lightly oiled. You don’t want that rind to stick so that upon flipping, all that cheese slips through the cracks; literally.

After I placed the cheese on the rack, I think for every minute that passed I couldn’t stop myself from peeking at the bottom. After six minutes, when there were some nice grill marks and the side felt soft, I decided to give it a flip. Six minutes later the cheese was ready.

You know on those food tv shows how the host or guest exaggerates their satisfaction when sampling food? Swaying their head and upper body around with moans of “That is good, that is good. Oooh man that is so good, so good!” I think I was doing that myself after cutting into this and slathering it onto crackers. Luckily no one was around to see me. Lightly smoky crust with an unbelievable silky buttery cheese. But still, I think it could even be better. Next time I’ll leave it on the grill for a couple more minutes on each side. Also, Sancor produces a camembert-bleu cheese hybrid nambed Blue-Bert and that might just need a trial too.