Chilli cheese shortbread 唐辛子とチーズのショートブレッド

This is my wife's savory cookie/shortbread which belongs to a similar category as the anchovy black pepper cookie she made before. This is seasoned with red pepper and worchestershire sauce.

This is not sweet at all and clearly calls for wine or some other drink to accompany it.

Ingredients:

2 cups AP flour

12 Tbs. butter

2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

1 tsp  red pepper flakes

1 1/2 cup shredded cheese (cheddar and gruyere)

Blend all the ingredients in a food processor. (Word of advice: This is a very dry flaky dough. Don't panic if it looks like it is not coming together. We had to dump it as crumbs out of the food processor and my wife worked at it diligently. Eventually she was able to make the ball shown in #1 below.) Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and put in the refrigerator for 15 minutes. Roll out dough as shown in #2. Cut out cookies whatever shape you want and put on a cookie sheet #3. Preheat oven to 325 degrees and cook for 15 to 18 minutes until golden. Put on a rack to cool #4. 

This is an ethereal cookie. It dissolves on your tongue leaving behind a slight saltiness (from the Worcestershire sauce) followed by a pleasant buzz from the red pepper that slowly kicks in and builds. Although anchovy is the main ingredient for Worcestershire sauce, this version of savory shortbread is much more subtle compared to the anchovy black pepper cookie.  Despite all the butter in this shortbread the texture is somewhat grainy and some libation helps nicely to wash it down. We had it with Spanish red wine which went really well.