The combination of these two ingredients is not a huge leap from the fairly tried & tested, hard cheese & pineapple (the totally eighties, party cocktail stick combo and the combination on a ‘Hawaiian’ pizza immediately sprang to mind). However, combining the pineapple & blue cheese in a new recipe was not so easy.

 

I thought I’d attempt to make a bread, partly because I’ve not made bread before and also a recipe which wouldn’t have any other strong flavoured ingredients that may affect or overpower the cheese & pineapple combination. Attempt No. 1 was a bit of a disaster, the end product being extremely dense, cooked on the outside and uncooked in the middle. A combination of my inexperience in making bread, adding too much pineapple and using baking powder that I found out after was out of date! The taste was also very much on the side of the gorgonzola, without much pineapple taste coming through.

 

I reduced both the amount of cheese (from the taste point of view) and the pineapple (from a density point of view), read a few more bread recipes and came up final bread, as above. The end product this time was cooked and edible, although I was disappointed with the flavour combination. The gorgonzola still dominated and the pineapple flavour wasn’t as strong as I would have liked, despite having almost twice the amount in the recipe as the cheese.

 

Still searching for a better way of combining the two ingredients, I made the good old cheese and pineapple on a stick and also a suggestion from Ms M, grilled (or barbequed) pineapple with blue cheese and sugar on top. The party stick combo was OK, and whilst there’s no doubt in my mind that the flavours go together, I think blue cheese doesn’t work quite as well with pineapple as other hard cheeses, such as cheddar. The melted gorgonzola on the (fresh, not tinned) pineapple ring was by far the best combination, though. The melting of the cheese took away some of the bitterness which seemed to overpower the pineapple in the other combinations (albeit less so on the cocktail stick) and the sugar helped pick up the sweetness of the pineapple to get a much better balance.

 

Overall, not a mind blowing combination. If you’d like to try the recipe, it’s as below:

 

Recipe (one loaf or 6 wedges):

 

250g Self-raising flour

2 tsp baking powder

75g butter

2 eggs

90g fresh pineapple, roughly chopped

50g gorgonzola, chopped into small squares

 

Mix the flour, baking powder and butter in a bowl or blender until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add one egg, then half the pineapple and mix. Then add the other egg and the rest of the pineapple, until the dough forms a ball.

 

Knead for a couple of minutes, then fold in the cheese. Shape into a disc, cut into 6 wedges and place on a greased baking tray in the oven for 20 minutes on Gas mk 4 (180C or 350F), until browned.

 

Place on a rack to cool. I’m not really sure what you could serve this with, to be honest, apart from butter, so any suggestions will be welcomed!