Play with your food! Swiss Dominoes

I must admit that garde manger (French for “Food Guard”, “Food Keeper” or “Keeper of the Food” just like a Beefeater in the Tower of London, except entirely different in every single way) is my favorite of the culinary arts, all the itty bitty work that goes into making a fruit salad look like a Chinese dragon, or an hardboiled egg that looks like a penguin, or many of the other pointless wastes of time that go on in garde manger classes that have absolutely no use at all in the professional kitchen. Or even the personal kitchen, I mean who in their right mind goes home after a hard day’s work and decides that they would be unable to eat a salad unless the carrots are cut into the shapes of freesias, the radishes in to chrysanthemums and the lettuce into a perfect chiffonade? Besides me, I have never been in my right mind, very much left, simply crazy in that psychotic kitten way, though that is not a good comparison. I might scratch your eyes out, however I am unlikely to poop behind the couch. Well with that out of the way.

Have you ever played dominoes? Or and I still shudder when I hear people call it this: “Bones”. Now why would that bother me? Bones? I played in abandoned abattoirs when I was a kid and wandered around the ancient crypts gawping at how the dead look kind of embarrassed after the first hundred years or so. The word “Bones” in the early nineties seemed to me to be sordid, and wrong, sick and twisted like members of PETA or those people who paint pictures of serial killers crimes and sell them on eBay for profit.

These little canapes were inspired by the former Executive Chef at the White House Henry Haller, who served five presidents with both gourmet delicacies and good home style American fare. In one of the photo captions he points out some canapés with Swiss cheese and that they have layered truffles underneath so that the black truffle shows through the holes in the cheese.

I can’t afford that much truffle, a little every now and then as a treat for a steak, creamy pasta sauce, or mashed potatoes swilling in butter. So I approached this canapé from a different direction. The first few times that I made this for potlucks and parties, I made it with a mixture of Dijon mustard and mayonnaise, on a slice of lightly toasted bread, topped with Swiss cheese and sliced olives arranged to make a set of dominoes. One double six set of dominoes is 28 dominoes, just right for a canapé tray.

Though these looked visually appealing, not everyone likes mayonnaise and mustard so it was back to the drawing board.

Boy did I find a winner; the answer was cream cheese, and rolling the bread to 1/8^th of an inch thick.

14 Slices of white bread preferably day old

2 8 oz tubs of herb flavored cream cheese

14 Swiss cheese singles

1 Large can of small olives sliced into rounds

Using a rolling pin roll out each slice of bread till 1/8^th of an inch thick, using a still wrapped cheese dingle (Dingle? Sorry that should read single) as a template cut out centers of each piece of bread, spread with cream cheese and top with a Swiss cheese, cut in half to create two rectangles. Arrange olives in the pattern of domino dots. (Place the olives close together in the center, they will spread out as they cook) bake on a rack on a baking tray for 5-8 minutes at 350 do not brown! They will look like hobo dominoes if you let them brown! Serve warm or at room temperature. Makes 28 canapes.

A Chardonnay or Gewurztraminer suits these very well.