Growing up, I enjoyed the many varieties of cheese paste. In the Caribbean, this delicious spread is common in many homemade sandwiches. Both adults and children enjoy it a lot. I especially remember the red and green cheese paste between sliced white bread served at parties. Cheese paste is very simple to make. However, it all begins with this basic recipe, but later in this post I will show variations. The basic form of this wonderful spread is used for the puffs (choux pastry). Though, some people do add mayonnaise to the paste to make a smoother paste, I personally think the cheese and butter is enough at times.
This cheese paste make terrific sandwiches as well. You can use slices of toasted bread, large pastry puffs, even a crescent. You can fill it with or without slices of meat (chicken, sausage, ham, turkey). Add some lettuce, onion rings, and tomatoes and you have a wonderful sandwich for breakfast or dinner.
Cheese Paste
¼ pound cheese
2 ounces butter
1 teaspoon mustard
½ teaspoon pepper sauce or 1 dash of white pepper
¼ cup of grated carrots, raw
½ teaspoon grated onion (optional)
Direction:
Grate the cheese and place in a bowl. Add the butter, a little at a time. Add mustard, pepper, and (if you wish) onion. Blend well until smooth.
If mixture is not soft enough add a little bit of milk. Mix well. Can be used as a filling for puffs.
Cheese Paste variations:
- For sandwiches, you can add a drop of red or green food colouring to the paste. Again, mix well before spreading on to the slices of bread.
- If you don't like red food colouring, you can add beet root. Boil a small beet root and grate it very fine. Then add it to the spread.
- For the spread using mayonnaise click here.
- You can add grated carrot to the spread. This is how you can do it:
The carrot and cheese paste can be used as a filling or spread especially for breads. Here it is used as a spread in wholewheat hops bread.
I cut the hops bread in half and spread the paste, then layered the lettuce, the tomatoes, onion rings, and sweet relish.
This cheese paste encourages me to eat more vegetables. It makes a wonderful breakfast and a good welcome to a busy day.
That it for this post. Until then, straight ahead.
Cheese Paste
Ingredients
- 1/4 lb. cheese
- 2 oz butter
- 1 tsp. mustard
- 1/2 tsp. pepper sauce or 1 dash of white pepper
- 1/4 cup of grated carrots raw
- 1/2 tsp. grated onion optional
Instructions
- Grate the cheese and place in a bowl. Add the butter, a little at a time. Add mustard, pepper, and (if you wish) onion.
- Blend well until smooth. If mixture is not soft enough add a little bit of milk. Mix well. Can be used as a filling for puffs.
Notes
For sandwiches, you can add a drop of red or green food colouring to the paste. Again, mix well before spreading on to the slices of bread.
You can add mayonnaise to make it creamier as in the filling for puffs
You can add grated carrot to the cheese paste: Add some grated carrots to this mixture and blend well until smooth. The more carrots you add, the deeper the colour. The carrot is a good natural substitute for the food colouring.
By the way, the Simply Trini Cooking Cookbook is now available in Amazon.com. The book has over 600 Caribbean rich recipes you and your family can enjoy making. Thank you for your support throughout the years.
A true West Indian favourite.
I agree!
I was looking for a recipe to check against my memory of my grandmother making cheese paste for me. She used to put a couple leaves of bhandania in hers with the onion and pimento but the basic recipe was the same. Everybody has different additions to theirs after all. Thankfully I no longer need the food colouring to hide the carrot :).
I recently made some lemon bombs with choux pastry and I think I’ll use the cheese paste for puffs too next time. I didn’t think about it at all!
Looking forward to checking out your other posts.