Fontina Cheese Rissoles
60 g all-purpose flour
60 g rice flour
500 g Fontina cheese
150 g butter
200 ml milk
4 egg yolk
2 eggs
salt and pepper
nutmeg
frying oil
For breading
1 egg
breadcrumbs
In a large saucepan, mix together the two types of flour, egg yolks and eggs, using a wooden spoon.
Then, slowly add the milk, mixing carefully over medium heat.
Add the fontina and butter. Season with a pinch of salt, a pinch of pepper and a sprinkling of nutmeg.
Continue stirring and cook for five minutes over high heat once the mixture reaches a boil.
Then remove from the heat and transfer the mixture to a terrine to cool.
Once cold, prepare small round croquettes and dip them, one by one, in the beaten egg and then bread crumbs, repeating this process a couple times for each croquette.
Fry in hot oil and serve.
Food History
The history of cheese is closely tied to the evolution of man. Cheese was probably made for the first time when humans stopped migrating and began tending to the land and sheepherding. At that point, someone must have realized that, when stored, milk quickly turns into a completely different food that can be kept for longer periods of time, is easier to transport and has an excellent flavor.
From then on, the human race has continued to experiment with ways to make cheese and creating a wide variety of categories of cheese, very different from one another. Fontina, for example, is typically produced in the Aosta Valley and involved a complex and laborious production process. It is made exclusively from the milk of a specific indigenous breed of cow and the milk must be worked within a couple hours of milking. The paste of the cheese is places in molds for 12 hours and then the wheels are left to age for three months on wooden shelved inside rock caverns.
During the entire aging process, the cheesemaker must turn the wheels everyday, covering them with a salt wash one day and brushing off the mold, which forms due to the humidity of the rocks, the next day.
This way of making cheese has been passed down for centuries. In fact, the first mention of Fontina comes from a parchment document from the 13th century, however it wasn’t actually given the name Fontina until the 18th century.
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