Mascarpone and Other Adventures in Cooking

We tried a couple of new recipes tonight. One was really lame (shame on you, Giada). The other was fantastic and fresh (way to go, Giada).

If you've never used mascarpone cheese, do yourself a favor and try it. We'd been wanting to cook with it, but this was the first time we got to it. If nothing else, it's a great alternative for buttering bread (it's half the fat of butter, but has great flavor). I wouldn't use it for replacing butter in cooking, but it's great on bread and is commonly used in desserts and lots of Italian cooking. I got a big tub for a few bucks and it will last.

In this recipe, it was used to make the sauce creamy. This is shrimp on garlic bruschetta with arugula and tarragon. There are lots of other things going on (tomato, wine, shallots, etc), but mixing tarragon with shrimp was especially unique to me. If I'm called upon to make hors d'oeuvres for Xmas again, you guys might get to try this one.

One last thing... definitely try mascarpone, but DO NOT mispronounce it. People tend to pronounce it as though the R is before the S as frequently as they add imaginary syllables to nuclear (or larynx, if you're a Taylor).