Gorgonzola Cheesecake

Somewhere, stuffed in the dusty coves of the Mind-Blogging Archives, is a piece I wrote on La Bottega's fantastic appetizer Gorgonzola Cheesecake. I had tried on several occasions to duplicate it at home from a CDKitchen recipe (no longer available), with good, but not great results...until now. For a wine/cheese pairing class I prepared this rendition, and stopping short of breaking my arm patting myself on the back, it was awesome...don't take my word for it.

Try this:
Gorgonzola Cheesecake

Make a batch of polenta, with 1 ½ cups of water, ½ cup of cornmeal , two garlic cloves, chopped, salt, cook covered for fifteen minutes. Add ¼ cup grated parmesan cheese and a couple leaves of chiffoned fresh basil (the recipe called for dried basil –horrors!). Set aside to cool.

In a small ramekin, roast a head of garlic with lots of olive oil drizzled over, in a 400 degree oven for half an hour. When cool enough to work with, strip cloves from the shell, and set aside. Turn oven to 325.

1 pound of Costco special Gorgonzola, mild stuff, but just fine for this. Now, instead of sitting around for weeks waiting for this to be workable, I put crumbled cheese in the microwave for 45 seconds. But it seemed like it was getting a little rubbery, so I put the cheese in a stainless steel mixing bowl and into the oven for about 5 minutes. That just barely started to melt it.
Then I used only 3 packages of 8 oz. cream cheese (recipe called for 5), and one at a time softened them in the microwave, about 30 seconds each. Add cream cheese to the warmed Gorgonzola in the bowl, whip it all together. Add 4 eggs, one at a time, and stir away until it's all very creamy.

Grease (or butter) a 10-inch spring form pan, and spread polenta over bottom. Pour in the cheese filling, spreading it around, trying to remove all air bubbles. Place garlic cloves on top at the ends of imaginary wagon-wheel spokes at the edge of the cake.

Cook for 1 hour. Do the ole toothpick trick to make sure it’s done. Then let cool for at least an hour.

The texture was creamy, the flavor fantastic, and everyone in class gave it two YUMs up. For wine pairing check out The Wine Iconoclast.

La Bottega serves this as a ‘starter’ in a pool of tasty tomato sauce, with lots of crusty bread.