For 6 pockets: 1 packet frozen puff pastry (500 g), 2 goat's cream cheese of 100 g each, 50 g pitted black olives, 3 eggs, 1 tbsp cream, 5-6 sprigs fresh thyme, salt, white pepper.
Spread the frozen puff pastry slices side by side and let them thaw. Meanwhile, knead the goat cheese with 2 egg yolks, add the olives, not too finely chopped. Beat 2 egg whites until stiff and fold in. Season well with pepper and salt to taste. Place 1 tablespoon of the cheese cream on the bottom of each pastry sheet, brush the edges of the sheet with beaten egg yolk and fold the pastry into a pocket. Brush with the remaining egg yolk before baking. Bake the pockets in the oven at 200° for twenty minutes. Serve the pockets still warm with a fresh salad. They are also delicious cold.
200 Cheeses from the Affineur
You can talk about cheese with Thomas Vetterling for hours. Despite the almost 20 years he has been in business, the cheese specialist shows no signs of wear and tear. Because his customers motivated him again and again.
So the trained food merchant, who also studied business administration once, never had reason to regret the entry into the business with the sensitive stinkers. Vetterling presents around 200 types of cheese at his stand, but limits himself essentially to the classic French raw milk cheeses. He doesn't buy them from just any wholesaler, but from an affineur, Jaques Hennart, from Lille. The maître-fromager buys the cheeses from the producers and then lets them mature until they reach the optimum stage. This can lead to bottlenecks, for example with Saint-Marcellin from the Dauphiné, a cow's milk cheese that is wonderfully soft and creamy in its ideal state. It is sold in small bowls, because really ripe ones would otherwise run away. The more available Saint-Félicien can replace it quite well. It lives in clay pots.
Cheese is not cheap, so Vetterling urges his customers to store it properly. This starts with the wrapping paper, which at Käse-Thomas consists of two layers: paper and perforated foil. Then the odour-sensitive cheeses belong in closed plastic boxes, in which a piece of Parmesan can keep for up to 6 weeks. If you only touch the chunk with freshly washed fingers, it will not go mouldy. Slicing it over arugula has become part of the kitchen canon. Like Vacherin de Mont D`Or, which, when made hot with potatoes and salad, makes a quick meal.
Thomas Vetterling is not always successful in convincing people to eat cheese and drink wine, because there is a deep-seated belief that red wine goes with cheese and that's that. With hard cheeses that are not too old, one is right, as with port wine with blue cheese. White wines with a clear residual sweetness, on the other hand, are ideal companions for older, salty hard cheeses; and red smear cheeses in particular, Munster being the best known, call for a noble sweet wine. Also against concise goat cheeses red wines have no chance.
Which sweet wine fits where, whether it already does a not dry developed Spätlese or whether one of the many further noble sweetness must be here, that can be decided only at the respective cheese. Unfortunately, only few are sovereign enough to pass the noble sweet wines disregarded by the spirit of the times to the cheese, one regrets at Käse-Thomas. If all this is too exotic for you: Vetterling was able to find very edible raw milk Gouda in Holland (depending on age 1,30 - 1,80 per 100 g).
8 sorts of Camembert from Normandy, about 40 different goat cheeses, mainly from the Loire region, the variety is great. Faiselles is also available, highly refined, fat and creamy layered cheese; with sugar and ripe Cavaillon melon it makes a nice summer dessert. Nice ready-made dishes are sometimes available too, such as puff pastries filled with fresh goat cheese and olives. You can easily make them yourself at home.
Cheese Thomas
Thomas Vetterling
Kleinmarkthalle, Stand 68/69
Hasengasse 7
60311 Frankfurt am Main
Phone: 069-291500