{"id":2092,"date":"2010-09-19T18:45:09","date_gmt":"2010-09-20T00:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/?p=2092"},"modified":"2010-09-19T18:45:09","modified_gmt":"2010-09-20T00:45:09","slug":"roelli-dunbarton-blue-gnocchi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/driftlessappetite.com\/?p=2092","title":{"rendered":"Roelli Dunbarton Blue Gnocchi"},"content":{"rendered":"\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a>

<\/a><\/a>We were shopping at the Driftless Market <\/a>in Platteville last weekend and we picked up a slice of Dunbarton Blue from the Roelli Cheese Haus<\/a>\u00a0 in Shullsburg.\u00a0 We’d never had anything from Roelli before, even though we drive past their store whenever we\u00a0go down to Illinois to visit Leslie’s family.\u00a0 For some reason, Roelli wasn’t on my radar in the same way Uplands<\/a>, Hook’s<\/a>, Fayette Creamery<\/a>, or other local artisan cheesemakers.\u00a0 Well, the imperfection was mine.\u00a0 And I’ve been really<\/em> missing out.<\/p>\n

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Dunbarton Blue is\u00a0nutty, cheddary, subtle\u00a0blue cheese created by cheesemaker Chris Roelli (you might recognize him\u00a0as Mr. March from your Wisconsin Cheesemakers 2011 calendar<\/a>).\u00a0 It is relatively new; I believe it’s been on the market since 2009.\u00a0 I hear it’s been selling very well, particularly in Chicago, but it hasn’t gotten the same press\u00a0as other (deserving) cheeses like Pleasant Ridge <\/a>or Hook’s 15 year cheddar<\/a>.\u00a0 I don’t know Chris Roelli, so I can’t give you any details about how\u00a0he makes the cheese you can’t get from other reviews (here<\/a> and here<\/a>, for example).\u00a0 The closest comparison\u00a0I can think of is Blue Mont’s bandage wrapped reserve (another favorite), but really even those two are quite different.<\/p>\n

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Like I said, I don’t know Chris Roelli, but I can judge him based on this cheese, and by that measure he really knows what he’s doing.\u00a0 The complexity of the cheese is quite striking, with the nutty cheddar flavor blending with the earthiness of the blue veins, and the texture ranging from crystalline at the outside to almost spreadable in the center.\u00a0 Unlike some other complex earthy cheeses though, we found the Dunbarton Blue played well with others and didn’t overpower subtle ingredients.<\/p>\n

So… what did we do with it?\u00a0 Well, the first half of the slice was gone before we could even find crackers to put it on.\u00a0 We wanted to something a bit different with the rest of it, and since the week before Leslie had just seen the Godfather\u00a0III<\/a> for the first time, we decided to make gnocchi.<\/p>\n

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I had never made gnocchi before (actually, I’d only eaten gnocchi 3 times in my life).\u00a0 When in doubt, I turn to Mario<\/a>.\u00a0 The following is Batali’s basic gnocchi recipe, modified slightly for my purposes:<\/p>\n