Go Cheese Tasting With Chef Ranveer Brar

An interesting evening of cheese tasting with Go Cheese Tasting with Chef Ranveer Brar!

This Monday morning the Go Cheese tasting event with Chef Ranveer Brar in association with Femina, seemed like a welcome break from my mad month of work.

 

I have been having a mad month. it feels like the last month of the year which is supposed to be full with happiness and cheer, which is meant for celebrations and partying seems like a month which has engulfed me with work, work from all directions. Consulting, recipe design and everything else I do seems to descend on me together. And among this load of work.

I have been a user of Go Cheese for sometime now, I think in the Indian packaged cheese they certainly do stand apart with the quality and variety of cheese they are doing. Their cheese angles are child’s favorite munch snack, so I was pretty excited when I got an invite for the tasting event.

 

 

The event was pretty packed on Monday evening, I guess Cheese does excite people and then there was Ranveer Brar which people were queuing up enough to take a picture with 🙂

The program started with an excellent stand up comedy by Sahil Shah, he had the audience in splits and that too with good quality jokes, not what gets passed off as humour in India in the names of Great Indian Comedy Circus and the likes.

 

 

After the ice had been broken and we were all in a jolly good more, Mahesh Israni, Chief Marketing Office of Parag Milk Foods (Gowardhan) who took us through the history of Parag Milk Foods, its products and the path it wants to take in future. His talk covered some very interesting & fun points like Gujarat is the highest consumer of cheese in India and Bangalore is 4th, however Gujjus do a lot of fusion stuff whereas we eat it in more in the form of cheese (adjusts collar).

 

 

Following up Mahesh, was the star attraction of the evening Chef Ranveer Brar himself. He did a fun quiz with audience on where does Colby, Montreal and other cheeses come up. Concluding that none of them really come from the originating names and hence won’t it be better to eat their local varieties than imported one. Smart one that was.

He also gave options that suit Indian palate to be served with our cheese platters. Some of them being

– Blend together lettuce, lemon juice, pepper, a touch of mayo and some ice to create a sorbet to cut the sharpness of cheese.
– Serve it with Mushroom jam made by parboiled mushrooms & chillies cooked in microwave and served with sea salt.
– Give your olives accompaniment an Indian twist with a tadka of panch phoran.
– Serve it with green tomato chunda.

 

 

He started the pairing with a simple platter of three cheese and Krsma wines (which I really like BTW). When asked on what wine should be tasted with which cheese, he told us that the rule of thumb is that sharper the cheese, darker the wine however one should go with our own palate and not be afraid of making our own rules. Coming to the cheese, I somehow felt that their cheese tasted better when I had them at home. May be they were kept outside for too long. But honestly saying again, I do like their cheese.

 

 

Also served were Chef Ranveer’s creation highlighting varieties Go Cheese. The platter contained – Cheesy Pepper Agrodolce Calzone, Beetroot Carpaccio with herb Almette and mini greens, Cheddar and Monterey Jack flour nacho with avocado salsa, Mustard, Tomato and Olive bruschetta, and a wedge of crumb fried cheese accompanied by Chilli Grape chutney. I loved the Beetroot Carpaccio and thought the mustard in the bruschetta worked very well with cheese. However, the calzone didn’t hit the right notes for me and I would have loved to see something more interesting then the crumb fried cheese though I can’t find fault with it’s execution.

 

 

The dessert platter had on the Saffron Cream Syllabub with fresh fruits and Biscotti Crumbles as well as the Almette Cheese Topped Humming Bird Cake with Edible Flowers. The humming bird cake was a tad too sweet for me and even the flavours didn’t hit the right notes but I liked the Syllabub, light and fresh dessert contrary to what we perceive of cheese based desserts.

I came home with a bag full of Go cheese goodies (half of which were polished off before I get to taking picture so please forgive the lack of pictures) but I love what they are doing with flavoured cheese slices. I really like the periperi and kacha aam.

All in a it was a fun evening where I realised that at least for some of my cheese needs , I now have a local option.

Disclaimer : This post has been brought to you in association with Go Cheese & Femina however the views are my honest self