1. Bake some cheese in a circle until it melts.
2. Mold it into the shape of a cup so you can put more cheese in it.

Brilliant.  I mean honestly, why is this not a shape at our house?  The thought behind this is so marvelously simple, I thought this would be the perfect way to dive into The French Laundry Cookbook.

Just grate some parmesan cheese and form into circles.  I used a biscuit cutter to help me.

So far so good.  Bake for a bit until crisps are a rich golden brown.  (8-10 minutes)

Then lift them off the pan easily and place into clean egg carton to mold into cups.

Oh oh.  First one didn’t work.  Lets try again.

Damn.

This is truly tragic.  I think that I cooked it too long… may be didn’t use a cheese that was moist enough… may be didn’t use a large enough grate… not sure what went wrong.

At this point my Goat Cheese Mousse was done (just whip goat cheese, a bit of cream and some pepper and parsley in a food processor) so I had to come up with a solution.  It was still tasty.  The crispy parmesan flakes not bowls still served a salty crunchy purpose.

This is when you bring in the endive.

When in doubt, put something in endive and it looks amazing.

PS.  Did I tell you this was for a picnic?

On a beautiful day, with a glass of wine, if no one knew any better they never would have known this was a fail.

I’m going to try this again.  But next time when I grocery shop I’m going to come home with a couple heads of endive just in case.

Recipe and photo of what it is supposed to look like here.