Great Value Cheeses: Rumiano Sicilian Jack

If Pizza Was a Cheese

At the suggestion of one of my favorite wholesale cheese reps, we added another flavored cheese to the lineup at Potash Markets, and boy are we having fun with it! Sicilian Monterey Jack, from Rumiano Cheese, features four flavor ingredients: sun-dried tomato, black olive bits, garlic, and basil. “Tastes just like pizza,” said the rep, who knows that I have a weakness for cheese with stuff in it.

California Jack

Monterey Jack is one of the few old-school American original cheeses. And California is the place it is most associated with. It’s a semi-soft, mildly-tangy cheese that melts easily, and has much in common with Danish Havarti. Rumiano Cheese is a 90-year-old, family-owned and operated company that produces multiple lines of cheese from its cheese plant in Crescent City, Calif., near the Oregon state line. These include an extensive line of grass-fed organic cheeses, and a number of Monterey Jack products.

Jack Loves Olives

Raymond Rumiano, a fourth-generation officer in the company, says the Sicilian Monterey Jack was created in the late 1980s after a local olive grower proposed a merger of cheese and olives. “We tried the black olives, but it didn’t perform particularly well in the market,” Rumiano says. “It was mostly positioned as an ingredient for pizza. Taking what we’d learned from that experience, other Italian ingredients were added to the Monterey Jack as an homage to our family’s Italian heritage.” Rumiano says the recipe underwent some changes, before becoming “a bit of a cult favorite,” particularly on the west coast. I might now consider myself a fringe follower of the cult.

The flavors of the four inclusions are bright and clean, marrying nicely with the buttery flavors in the cheese. I think the Rumiano Sicilian Monterey is a fine cheese, and it meets my standard for flavored cheeses. It still tastes like cheese. At Potash, in Chicago, we can sell it for just under $15 a pound, which, to my ears, sounds like 2010 prices. Our customers have really taken to the cheese, and to the value. When we sample it on the counter the wedges fly out the door.

How to Use Sicilian Jack

La Marca Prosecco and Grilled Portobello with Sicilian Jack — La Marca and Grilled Portobello with Sicilian Jack

With those familiar, pizza-like flavors in this creamy cheese a multitude of pairing ideas might spring to mind. Recently, after some discussion with my partner in crime, we settled on mushroom-cap pizzas, paired with genuine Italian Prosecco. We used three large portabella caps, and carefully removed the gills. We course-grated the cheese--two parts Sicilian Jack with one part mozzarella. We rubbed a bit of chopped garlic and olive oil into the hollowed-out caps and added a bit of pizza sauce before smothering them with the grated cheese. Finally, we topped it with a sprinkle of red pepper flakes.

When our mini pizzas emerged (about 15 minutes at 350 degrees), the cheese had browned just a bit after melting all over the place. We found that the tangy pizza flavors in the cheese married nicely with the mushroom umami.

The La Marca Prosecco an affordable everyday prosecco made by an Italian cooperative and owned by Gallo, was a great partner for the dish. The fruity and effervescent bubbly cooled the burn of the red pepper flakes and cut through the fat and umami. The mushrooms released a lot of moisture, and we think that adding breadcrumbs to the cheese mix (or on top of it) might firm things up a bit.

Ray Rumiano says Sicilian Jack works well on a pizza, in a baked pasta dish, and “straight up on a cracker.” We are sure that this cheese would have several other great applications including cheesy garlic bread, paninis and on a pizza burger. Cheese Professor editor Amy Sherman also reports it is excellent on a grilled cheese sandwich.