Scraps, Strong Cheese, and Suspicious Soups
Jacques Pepin's Cheese Dip
I met Jacques Pépin once.* And not only did I get to meet him, but I also got to cook side by side with him. I was working as a production assistant on a cooking show called Scraps. Where all the recipes were based around well, scraps! It was a neat concept and had very clever recipes that utilized bits of ingredients that would otherwise have been discarded. Think: turning corn cobs into a beautiful stock to make polenta, using stale cookies to create a mindblowing icebox cake, blending up leftover cheese scraps to make a SUPER cheese dip, or my personal fave, using the tough green parts of a leek to make a gratin. Some of the recipes featured on the show I still use to this day.
*Jacques Pépin is a very famous French Chef who made French cooking at home easy and accessible, and worked closely with the beloved Julia Child. I used to record their cooking show on VHS when I was a kid!
Fromage Fort is the official name of the super cheese dip, or the less pretentious name is leftover cheese dip. I say we turn up the pomp and call it Fromage Fort, or I would also accept super cheese dip. Fromage Fort means strong cheese in French, and that is exactly what this dip is: strong cheese!
Back to rubbing elbows and trimming cheese rinds with Mr. Pepin. I remember him being very nice, albeit very unapproachable to me. I would love to say I had a beautiful conversation with him and we became fast friends and giggled over a large vat of fromage fort all evening with the crew while copious amounts of Chenin Blanc flowed, but I didn’t. I was incredibly nervous and had a storm cloud of imposter syndrome looming over me at all times back then, even though I was thoroughly qualified to be there. I diligently did my work with my head down and apron tied tight.
I have grown A LOT in the past 8 years! Look at that cute little baby face (me, not Pepin).
This experience was one for the books, and I was extremely lucky to have found myself at Jacques’ studio, frying up smelt (a small ‘scrap’ fish) and pulverizing cheese bits for a cooking show. (We are cutting up a baguette, readying it to be schmeared with the super cheese dip and then melted in the oven.)
The Fromage Fort does not have a recipe per say but more a set of very loose guidelines. The first is that you should use leftover cheese to make this dip. Aren’t we all drowning in bits and pieces of leftover cheese right now (cause its the holidays, not just a random Tuesday, right?) I thought we could all get a second wind out of our cheese this holiday season and get our super cheese dip on! This is a GREAT hosting hack. Take all the leftovers from your Christmas cheese platter, make them into Fromage Fort, and serve them on New Year’s Eve, BAM, two birds one dip🤔.
The Cheese
1/2 pound of cheeses - clean out those cheese drawers!
A variety of soft and hard cheeses works best here. This will help make the dip spreadable but also contain the complex flavors from the hard cheeses.
Soft cheese examples: brie, camembert, blue cheese, goat cheese, ricotta, Swiss, feta.
Hard/semi-hard cheese examples: Parmesan, aged Gouda, cheddar, Manchego, gruyere.
A note on blue cheese: Go easy on the blue cheese for this dip. Blue cheese has a very intense and strong flavor and will quite possibly take over this whole operation if you allow it to. Start with a small chunk, and if you are craving more funk, add a little more after you taste test. Nothing wrong with a blue cheese dip if that is what you are craving.
The Extras
1 clove of garlic
1/4 c (a glug) dry white wine
Sub 1/4 c of vegetable broth if you have no interest in wine.
The extra bits are here to give our cheese bonanza a bit of flair and repurpose that played-out piece of brie into a tangy, pungent dream.
I highly encourage you to go off the rails here. This dip is an (almost) can’t-miss. What I mean is there's lots of wiggle room to PLAY! Here is a list of ideas for your extras.
Fresh herbs: parsley, chives, thyme.
A squeeze of lemon.
A touch of spice: chili oil, Aleppo flakes, a dash of hot sauce that you got for Christmas.
A glob of cream cheese helps make the dip even more spreadable.
Pat of salted butter for richness.
A drizzle of olive oil for a robust backbone of flavor.
Chopped up bacon bits that are leftover from breakfast (as if there is such a thing).
A teaspoon of honey for a touch of sweetness.
The possibilities are ENDLESS. Or stick to the garlic and wine and call it a day.
The blend
Put all of your cheeses, garlic, and white wine in a food processor. Save any extra bits until after you taste the dip and add them in as necessary.
Note on hard cheeses: Cut them into smaller pieces before you put them into the food processor. This will help the cheeses break down and blend together nicely.
Taste the blended cheese and season with salt and pepper.
Viola! You have a new lease on life, and your cheese just got a facelift.
To Eat
Fromage Fort can be enjoyed cold or at room temperature. It can be served as a dip with some crackers or spread over a sliced baguette and warmed in the oven. It can be eaten with carrots and celery or slathered on a slice of sourdough and made into a sandwich. Whatever you want from this cheese dip, it can be. We should call it the Magic Cheese Dip, Snake Oil Dip, or the Slap-yo-momma-dip!
The Pros of Making Fromage Fort
It will never turn out the same way twice.
The Cons of Making Fromage Fort
It will never turn out the same way twice.
For better or worse, this dip has many identities, and I think that is a positive thing. But you know some people hate change 😏.
I am on board with the Fromage Fort, and I challenge you to do a cheese overhaul in your fridge and see what dip you can come up with!
This scrap cheese dip reminds me of another method that I witnessed while working on the cooking show. A TRUE dish made out of scraps, I am hesitant to even tell you this because you might not believe it.
Here it goes…
This Chef was truly amazing. Every year after Thanksgiving dinner, she would take ALL OF THE LEFTOVERS and put them into one giant pot and make what she called Thanksgiving Soup.
Let’s catch our breath collectively.
ALL OF THE LEFTOVERS.
Not just the last few stragglers of the green beans, or the bits of stuffing crusted to the edge of the pan, she scraped every bit of leftover food off of everyone’s plate. Using her fingers, she wiped the plates clean one by one, and everything went slopping into one giant pot. I am not kidding. With the utmost confidence, she was just getting in there, determined to prove to us her soup was the most genius idea on the planet. The crew looked on in astonishment and watched the spectacle unfold.
Maybe this soup was the elixir of life, and we would all live forever after just one slurp. Maybe we were in fact ‘missing out’. With bated breath, we observed, well, they observed. Assisting the Chefs was my sole responsibility, so I got to scraping (I used a spoon).
Once everything was in the pot, she added a bit of stock to encourage the items to ‘soup’ (a verb). All the extra turkey was shredded and set aside to add to the pot later, so it didn’t just dissolve into the, for lack of a better word, slop. The pot was set on the stove to simmer overnight. The next day, it was seasoned with salt and pepper and god only knows what else, and the extra turkey was added.
The aesthetics of the soup did not help its origin story. Remember when you were finger painting as a kid, and it was all fun and games in the beginning. The red still red, the blue still blue, everything still pure and hasn’t yet been subjected to the ever-looming I am getting bored mania. To be fair, this mania was the best part. When the self-control to dip only into the yellow became unbearable, we turned into a free-for-all. We were all of a sudden feral raccoons, and that beautiful rainbow of colors turned….say it with me….BROWN. All colors mixed together always make brown. The same rule applies to the Thanksgiving soup. Take all the lovely leftovers (on an already uber brown menu), put them together to stew, and they will turn… say it with me…brown. The gravy didn’t help matters.
Thanksgiving Soup was a big ole vat of brown with chunks of turkey. Appetizing not so much, but in ALL honesty, it tasted mostly like gravy, and the turkey was very moist because of the brown bath it was drowning in.
Do I recommend Thanksgiving Soup? I don’t think so. But then again, there may be situations in life where knowing you can make a soup out of anything just might save your life, literally or metaphorically, I am not sure which.
Here is the move—make your own tradition and do a Sunday Soup. Use all the leftovers you have in the fridge on Sunday and add them to a giant pot and let them soup (a verb). This idea is genius, it will either encourage you and the fam to chow down on the leftovers, or they get to eat them in their new and improved form.🙃
I scoured my archives to see if I had a picture of the Thanksgiving Soup, and I can’t find any! Here is a photo of the Thanksgiving Feast setup. My job as a Culinary Production Assistant was to help make the feast.
Fun fact: We couldn’t find a turkey and had to use a giant chicken.
Scroll down to see a few more photos from behind the scenes of this shoot (Fall 2018). As I was writing this, a flood of stories and food memories about this time came rushing back to me. Look forward to more Escapades as a Culinary Production Assistant in the new year!
Cheers,
Nicole | Butter Cult
