Two Delicious Flavors—Blue Cheese & Curry—Are Wonderful Tools For Exciting Entertaining
CAPSULE REPORTS: These delicious savory (not sweet) shortbread cookies make many things possible. Take a plain bowl of soup or a typical salad, for example, and turn them into special courses, simply by adding curry and blue cheese shortbreads to the plate. They bring glamour to almost any meal. In short, a new product for the Cabinet of Magic Tricks.
We had never had a savory shortbread cookie before we tasted these all-natural products from Carolyn’s Gourmet: Blue Cheese Shortbread, low-key blue cheese flavor in a shortbread; and Taste of India, a powerhouse flavor with lots of tingly curry taste. These soft, buttery shortbread cookies are now one of our favorites.
The Blue Cheese Shortbread is the more tame of the two. The blue cheese is obvious but very subtle, almost like a blue cheese tart pastry. Many of the “less is more” school might prefer this flavor profile. We of the flavor-forward school might like it amped up a bit. But we find that the light touch enables us to play with it more—topping it with smoked salmon and a blue cheese-flavored spread, or with a sour cherry preserve. We also enjoyed this shortbread plain with a cup of tea, which is something that could never be done with the robust, curry-flavored shortbread.
Taste of India is described by the manufacturer as “A little spicy, a little sweet, with a whiff of curry.” Don’t be misled—while there may be some sugar hiding in the recipe, the result is definitely spicy curry. It’s not fire-engine spicy, but if you don’t like curry, this is not your cookie. If you do like it, you’ll want to purchase more than one bag. This shortbread stands up to heavy beers and can add zing to many dishes.
The fun part of finding new specialty products like savory shortbreads is that they open chapters of culinary adventure. How can you pair them with other foods and dishes, for example, so that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts?
Serve them:
With aperitifs, especially red wine
and beer
As a base for hors d’oeuvres
With the soup course, especially vegetable soups
With the cheese course
As a tea snack
With fruit salad and dessert wines (Blue Cheese Shortbread)
Because of the contrasting intensities of the flavors, pairing the shortbreads with spreads takes you in different directions. For Blue Cheese Shortbread, think delicate: crème fraîche with some salmon caviar was interesting, as was creme fraîche and spiced apple chutney.
There are seven 1-ounce shortbreads in the
cellophane package, shown above.
For the heartier Taste of India, we mixed cream cheese and chutney, tried a slab of spicy country pate and some smoked fish salad.
The savory shortbreads are available in 7-ounce cellophane bags, shown in the photo above, or as part of the Edinburgh keepsake gift box, where they are joined by their sweet siblings, Almond-Amaretto and Raspberry-Almond Shortbread.
CAROLYN’S GOURMET SHortbread Blue Cheese, Taste of India
Blue Cheese Savory
Shortbread 7-Ounce Bag
$10.29
(Currently On Sale $9.25)
Taste of India Savory
Shortbread 7-Ounce Bag
$9.69
(Currently On Sale $8.72)
Edinburgh Gift Box
8-Ounce Jar
$27.49
(Currently On Sale $24.75)
