Cheese Straws or Twists
Ingredients
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 6 oz cold unsalted butter
- 3 oz finely-grated old cheddar cheese about 1 cup
- 2 oz finely-grated Parmesan about ½ cup
- 2 tsp dried pasture sage or 1Tbsp fresh finely chopped
- 3 to 4 Tbsp cold milk
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400F and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Prepare the dough. By hand: Cut the cold butter into small dice and place in a medium-sized bowl. Pour flour over top. Rub butter and flour with the fingers until it’s the texture of coarse crumbs with some pea-sized pieces of butter scattered throughout. In a food processor: combine flour and diced butter in the bowl of a food processor and pulse until mixture is the texture of coarse crumbs with scattered pea-sized pieces of butter. Transfer to a medium-sized bowl.
- Add all the cheddar and half the Parmesan to the bowl of butter and flour. Mix with a fork. Add 3 to 4 Tbsp of milk, stirring with a fork, until a piece of dough clumps together when pinched with the fingers.
- Transfer the dough—it will be quite crumbly—to a sheet of parchment paper dusted with flour. Press it with your hands into a rectangle of about 9 inches by 5 inches.
- Working from the long side, fold the top third of the dough over, followed by the bottom third, as if you’re folding a letter in three.
- Pat or roll the resulting rectangle out to 9 x 5 inches again and repeat the folds. (As you work, the dough will become less crumbly.) Wrap the dough in parchment and chill for 30 minutes.
- Roll dough into a rectangle of about 12 x 9 inches and 3/8-inch thick. Trim the rough edges and reserve the trimmings. Sprinkle the rectangle with most of the remaining Parmesan.
- Working from the short side, cut dough into strips about 1/2-inch wide, placing each strip on the prepared baking sheets. To make twists, simply twist each strip of dough before laying it on the sheet.
- Gather the trimmings into a clump, roll out again and cut into as many 1/2-inch wide strips as you can (don’t worry too much about the length).
- Bake for 18 to 20 minutes until golden and crispy. Eat warm or at room temperature, with a sparkly beverage. Store in a cookie tin in a cupboard—will keep for about one week. Heat the cheese straws on a baking sheet at 350F for 10 minutes, to perk them up again after a few days.
Notes
In the hills near Invermere, the pasture sage was thick and plentiful, scattered across the meadows above the Columbia River, waving its yellow wand of flowers in the wind that came up the river valley.
It was late June. A family wedding had taken my roommate and I to Fernie B.C., a stunning part of the world entirely new to me, though members of my family have lived there for several years. After a gorgeous week of parties, hikes, family rambles and a beautiful wedding ceremony, we took a sojourn in the Columbia River Valley. There we haunted first the Radium and then the Fairmont hot springs, explored mountains and wetlands and swam in Windermere Lake three times in one day.
It was heavenly to get away, and yet part of me hankered for the Yukon. I wondered what plants and herbs were showing up in the woods, who was flowering, who was going to seed. The sight of the pasture sage brought me, in imagination, to the edge of the clay cliffs in downtown Whitehorse, a favourite walk, and a favourite harvesting spot. Would the flowers be in bloom when we got back?
Several species of sage grow in the Yukon, many of them so strongly flavoured that they’re tricky to use in the kitchen. That said, I have made a fairly successful Absinthe with the bitter Artemesia tilesii, also known as wormwood, mugwort or stinkweed. It could be that the copious amounts of fennel and anise seed had something to do with that success.
Over the years I’ve found pasture sage, or Artemesia frigida, to be the only local sage mild enough to deliver a pleasing culinary experience—in stews, in muffins or scones—even in ice cream.
The sharp, pungent flavour, slightly reminiscent of mint, serves as an excellent foil for the rich, creamy tastes of cheddar and Parmesan cheese. I’ve always enjoyed those fancy boxes of twisty cheese straws, so I thought I’d give them a try. They’re a perfect whizzkid treat to pull out of the cupboard when someone drops by to hang out on the deck with a beverage.
You’ll need to experiment with how much or how little sage you like. I suggest starting with the suggested amounts, below, and ramping it up if you need to.
As always, when trying a wild food for the first time, be 100 percent sure of your identification, and eat small amounts at first, until you are sure you are not allergic.
PS: the sage flowers on the clay cliffs were not quite in bloom, but they are now!
