Chanterelle Ravioli and Gjetost Sauce

Sometimes it's too late at night to cook from scratch. Or maybe you're too bone-tired from another day of non-stop, pedal to the floor getting-shit-done. I had a night like that this week, you know the kind, crawling home from "restorative" yoga and stopping at the over-priced Marketime corner shop for a bottle of prosecco, Bitch magazine, and pre-made dinner? Yes, I was so tired I thought about eating nothing but a box of "buffalo wings" and getting full off the carbon-dioxide in my screw-top (!!!) bubbly.

Instead, I picked up a pack of frozen ravioli by Rising Moon Organics. I've enjoyed their butternut squash ravioli quite a bit on other over-worked, under-napped nights. I've also been looking for a meatless way to enjoy the Gjetost Sauce featured on New Scandinavian Cooking, which is paired with meatballs in Norwegian fare. Holy Shit, they're like little umami dumplings slathered in the sweet dreams alfredo sauce has of being young and in love again. Feeds 1 (or 2 with a salad, you know, if you can bring your poor calloused hands to make one).

Chanterelle Ravioli (1 pack)

1. Boil water, no oil or salt, as these ravioli are fragile!
2. Bring the water from a rolling boil down to a soft one. Add the ravioli unthawed.
3. These are ready in exactly 8 minutes, no need to throw them against a wall.

Sauce
1/2 cup sour cream
3 oz gjestost cheese
zest of one lemon
pinch of sea salt

1. Get a small pot warmed up.
2. Add sour cream.
3. Add shaved gjetost, a little bit at a time, stirring and integrating the cheese before adding more.
4. When the sauce is nearly hot, add the zest of an entire lemon, and a tiny bit of salt.

One of the most exciting things for me about this recipe was the opportunity to put Ski Queen and Ektoste to a Pepsi Challenge. These are the two most popular brands of Norwegian Gjetoste in the US, if you've been living under a cheeseless rock.Ski Queen is part cow and part goat's milk and whey. Ektoste is more traditional, 100% goat whey. This gives it a slightly sharper tang than the Ski Queen. The caramel smoothness is stronger in the Ski Queen, so, although I'm ordinarily a goat cheese purist, I am really glad I ended up using both brands.

The dish turned out looking kind of sick in the pictures. It looks sort of like a melted Werther's Original in the picture, and although it had a salted caramel thing going on, it was complex and soft and stuck to the noodles more than the sides of your teeth. It was simple to make, only three ingredients, and yet really complex and tangy (goat whey will do that for you). It amazed me that with sour cream and gjetost, it was set to be really tangy, obvs., but it was the lemon rind that really brought out the tang, really mellowed out the almost too-creaminess of it.

Also it took me, seriously, no more than 10 minutes.