Breakfast of champions

I helped out a friend this week by preparing a tray of nibbles for her to take to a fancy-schmancy function. It is one of my favorite easy and impressive recipes. I made up a platter this morning, and had just enough left over to have a few of these delightful little rolls for breakfast.

First, you take thin sliced roast beef and lay it flat on a prep board. Then you break a piece of chicory (endive is ok too) in half and lay it on the beef. Then you put a few little crumbles of bleu cheese on the leafy stuff, and roll the whole business up into a tidy little roll. I cut them in half and stab a toothpick through them for easy handling by circulating guests. For breakfast I skip the toothpick and just pick 'em up with my fingers.

Bleu cheese and roast beef for breakfast. That's a guaranteed good start to the day. Yum.

Oh, and a word about bleu cheese. L hates it. Won't even eat anything off a plate that has any bleu cheese anything on it for fear of contamination. I have only developed a taste for it in recent years. I like a brand called St. Pete's Select, produced by a company called Amablu. It is available at my local Hannaford grocery store and it is aged in natural limestone caves in the riverbank in Faribault, Minnesota. The temperature and humidity are perfect and constant, and it shows in the creamy sharpness of the cheese. Faribault sees temperatures that range from 40 below in the deepest winter to 110 in the heat of summer. The caves don't care. They are just right. All the time. Nature is so freakin' cool!

We lived and worked in the Faribault area for a year and a half. We didn't like it much, and it didn't really like us any better. But the cheese was really good. And it still is. I just glad we can get it here.