Cheese or cheese? Baked or fried? What a choice. Sitting at the bar at Axia Taverna in Tenafly and guessing I probably couldn’t go wrong with either of them, I asked the bartender for help.
DANIELLE P. RICHARDS / THE RECORD
Cheese is the main feature in many Indian dishes like saag paneer.
She pointed to the baked Kefalograviera, a hard, rich, salty cheese flamed with Metaxa brandy. “That’s really good,” she said. And of course it was.
A hearty thanks to the food gods for figuring out that cheese could be the star in a dish, as opposed to just playing a supporting role. Don’t tell our cardiologists, but it provides some of the most fun, most indulgent eating around here.
That will come as no surprise to anyone who’s ever had the fried brie at Jack’s Café in Westwood or the mozzarella in carrozza at Campania in Fair Lawn, or for that matter, the ever-present mozzarella sticks on many a menu. Or a nice caprese salad with mozzarella and tomato. Or the grilled Halloumi and arugula salad at Axia, which is now off the dinner menu but is still being made for anyone who asks (and plenty have).
The fried cheese on Axia’s menu is also Halloumi, a sheep’s and goat’s milk cheese with a high fat content that sears and doesn’t melt if it’s grilled or roasted. Executive chef Alex Gorant rolls it in flour, deep-fries it and serves it with a jam of onions, tomatoes and mint — the Greek version of mozzarella sticks.
DANIELLE P. RICHARDS / THE RECORD
Rasmalai is served at Namaskaar in Englewood.
It’s not diet food — which is why Gorant is considering pan-roasting it so he can take “fried” off the menu. Maybe it’s the combination of “fried” and “cheese,” but the restaurant isn’t selling very much of it these days.
The baked Kefalograviera — which Gorant describes as similar to Gruyère — is a traditional Greek dish. But, he says, the flaming brandy is a rather American spin.
The importance of cheese to Greek cooking cannot be underestimated, said Gorant, who added that all the cheese on his menu results in him going through self-imposed “fits of cheese avoidance,” reasoning that “I gotta keep cheese off something!”
Likewise, a staple of Indian cooking is paneer. Indian menus commonly refer to it as an Indian cottage cheese, but its texture is firmer, like tofu.
“If you’re a vegetarian in India, paneer is your meat dish,” said Adarsh Saigal, the owner of Namaskaar in Englewood, which serves up cubes of paneer in the traditional dishes — saag paneer (a spinach sauce), paneer madhani (a buttery tomato sauce), matar paneer (with peas in a curry sauce). Other Indian restaurants, Saigal said, often do a tandoori paneer, stringing pieces of cheese on a skewer and seasoning them and baking them similarly to tandoori chicken.
And you already knew about cheesecake and cheese plates, but cheese also can be dessert: Aa traditional Indian dessert is rasmalai — little paneer dumplings floating in a milky sauce that Namaskaar scents with cardamom.
E-mail: ung@northjersey.com
