Cheese Lace Salad Bowl

Cheese is one of my favourite foods.  In fact it's more like a food group :) 

I discovered cheese lace quite some time ago.  It is extremely easy to make and most hard cheeses can be used so there are endless possibilities for flavour.  I used an aged cheddar for the cheese lace bowls.  For a lacier effect you can stir a about 1 tsp flour into the shredded cheese before placing on baking sheet or spread the plain shredded cheese apart more.   Cheese lace can be left as rounds, formed into bowls, formed into smaller cracker sized rounds or broken to be used as a salad topping.  Since most of the oil has been removed, cheese lace is low fat yet packs a lot of flavour.

Method:  Spread shredded cheese in a circle on a Silpat (1).  Bake at 350ºF until melted, edges are golden and centre firming (2).  Carefully transfer the cheese lace to cover the inverted bottom of a glass (3).  If you want a slightly more compact bowl light press the cheese lace closer to the glass as it cools.  Once cooled remove from the glass.  Set on a paper towl and place a wadded up piece of paper towel in the lace bowl to absorb any additional oil (4).  Fill as desired just before serving. 

I like using cheese lace bowls as edible salad bowls.  They make such a lovely presentation!  Cheese lace bowls would also be suitable for serving cheese cubes or shorter breadsticks.  If using for salad, do not add any salad dressing until served.

I filled each cheese lace bowl with leaf lettuce, cucumber slices, green onion, green pepper and mushroom slices sprinkled with sunflower seeds.  The salads were topped with  simple vinaigrette then served with grilled Oktoberfest sausages.