So, the background: A few weeks ago, I had a bagel brunch with a friend of mine, and had some cream cheese left over. I decided to use it up in a grilled cheese sandwich, an experiment which turned out very well.
Well, I’d always thought of cream cheese as a bit decadent, but I was getting a hankering to make one of those sandwiches again. So the most recent time I was at the grocery store, I picked up a box, despite the price.
Wait, about that price… Let me look at that again. Wait, cream cheese is actually only half the price of solid cheeses!? How did I not realize that? Why have I not been using this stuff all over the place?
Interesting to see this post, because after being off bagels for a while, I bought a bunch the other day along with the Boursin herb & garlic cream cheese noted below. A toasted bagel, buttered, and richly slathered with that stuff is just a joy to have with a good cup of coffee!
P.S.- A good bagel slicer is a must! Too easy to injure yourself trying to slice the damn things with a knife.
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Cream cheese has its uses, but it’s generally not a replacement for other cheeses. The fat to protein ratio is around 5 to 1, whereas cheddar, swiss, havarti, will be less than 2 to 1. To me, cream cheese is more of a butter substitute than a cheese alternative.
Not to mention that the flavor is seriously lacking compared to cheddar and other hard cheese.
I endorse the sentiment, although not entirely true. A nice toasted buttered bagel is still a great thing to have with coffee. But a toasted bagel with Boursin herb & garlic cream cheese is a thing of beauty!
One of my favorite summer lunches is slices of Black Forest ham slathered in cream cheese with a tiny baby kosher dill pickle laid down the middle and rolled up. If no tiny pickles are available a quartered slice of a big pickle will do but the tiny ones are better. Yum.
I don’t do it often now, but this was a weekend “whatever” when I was a wee dorkling in short pants at Castle Vader. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, <time of day/night> snack for me. I could fix it myself and not bother the parentals, eat as much as I want and not get yelled at cause it wasn’t crunchy soggy chocolate sugar bomb milk sponge cereal(R)
I’ve been eating my bagels with French-styled cream cheese lately, and I’ve come to like it even more than the standard Philadelphia. It’s whipped and therefore lighter than the American version, with a lower fat content, and also slightly sweeter. One local brand sells it mixed with garlic and dill, which is amazing.
Oh, and about that grilled cheese experiment: Usually, I go with two slices of cheddar per sandwich. Here, though, I spread cream cheese over one of the slices of bread, in place of one of the cheddar slices. In between the two cheeses, I squirted a bit of Thai sweet chili sauce, and sprinkled some cumin on the buttered outside of the sandwich before cooking. The flavor was very reminiscent of rangoons.
We had jam-and-cream-cheese sandwiches often in my youth. Strawberry was terrific, but raspberry jam was phenomenal.* Sometimes we’d have cream cheese with some nuts, usually walnuts, sprinkled on top. They add a satisfying crunch to the sandwich.
Once I was having breakfast at a motel buffet. They had bagels and cream cheese, but the only sweet spread was grape jelly, which did not appeal. I noticed a bowl of salsa standing next to the steam tray of scrambled eggs. Salsa and cream cheese is an outstanding combination!
In my adulthood I discovered marmalade on cream cheese. Very good.
