I love chips, and crunchy salty things, but crunchy, salty chips tend to have carbs. Lots of them.
So, to solve my dilemma, I thought back to an old friend of mine: parmesan tuiles. Tuile means ’tile’ in French, but the culinary understanding of the word is a crispy wafer made of dough or cheese. We’re obviously going with the latter here.
Traditionally, a tuile is used as a garnish on another dish (I feel like I mostly saw these on cooking shows in the early 2000s), but we’ll be using it as the main attraction.
The Cheese
You could really use any hard cheese for this, cheeses that are low in moisture works really well. Hard cheeses like aged gouda, parmesan, pecorino romano or piave all make great crisps. Softer cheese like young cheddars or mozzarella can be used, but require more baking time!
This recipe calls for a mixture of grated and shredded cheese, but that’s up to you – it’s more of a texture/appearance thing! All shredded or all grated should be just fine.
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese (see note above)
- 1/2 cup shredded parmesan cheese
- about a half teaspoon of pepper
Method
- Preheat oven to 350°, and line a cookie tray with parchment or a silicon baking sheet.
- Mix together cheese and pepper.
- Spoon out cheese into 6-8 equal piles, and flatten. Don’t worry about the piles spreading, they’ll pretty much bake down as is. Just be sure to leave about an each between each “patty” of cheese.
- Bake for 10 minutes, until golden and no longer bubbly and pale.
- Pull out of the oven and let cool for 5-10 minutes before removing with a flat spatula. Alternatively, you could lift a corner of the silicon mat/parchment and peel them off. They should lift easily.
- Enjoy!
