Grilled Cheese Day

We here at Slashfood actually had a grilled cheese day back in 2005, but today is the official Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day.

Everyone has their own way of making a grilled cheese. Some people are very strict and only use American cheese and white bread. Some get creative with their breads, and some add tomato and fresh basil.

The sandwich above, by the way, is this Breakfast Cinnamon-Raisin Apple Grilled Goat Cheese Sandwich.

But whatever you do, don't make this one. Trust me.

Very rarely do I cry. I don't cry in movies. I don't cry over stories in books. I didn't even cry (that much) when my heart was broken. However, I do cry over food. Though, like with other things in my life, these tear-inducing occasions are rare, they are...fabulous. Call me a sissy; I don't care.

Up until recently, I have wept twice over food. Once, it was the first time I tried toro sushi. The other time was the first time I tasted steak rare. (I had eaten steak well-done my entire life previous, and had eaten raw beef in the form of carpaccio and marinating galbi, but never steak.)

Now I can say I have cried three times over food. The grilled cheese sandwich at Table 8 in Los Angeles made me weep, y'all. It was ridiculous, and I swear it was not "that time of the month." Chef Govind Armstrong (yes, the one on whom I have confessed to having a massive chef-crush) serves the Grilled Cheese with Pulled Short Ribs in the bar/lounge area only of his newly re-modeled LA restaurant.

What is it about the sandwich that brings this girl to tears? I have no idea, but I have Chef Govind's cookbook (which I had him sign when I was in the restaurant that night) and the recipe for the sandwich in on page 241. The shortribs are slow-cooked for four hours. The bread is spread with butter. The sandwich is fried in grapeseed oil in a cast ion skillet.

If ever you're in LA or Miami (there's a Table 8 in South Beach), and have an extra stash of Kleenex in your bag, go to Table 8. Get the Short Rib Grilled Cheese Sandwich.

Obviously, a headline like that requires a little explanation. Here goes: 11 years ago, Diana Duyser (right) of Ft. Lauderdale made a grilled cheese sandwich and, upon taking her first bite, noticed what she said was a likeness of the Virgin Mary burned into the bread. She quickly put the rest of the sandwich in a plastic container padded with cotton for safe keeping in her freezer. Two years ago, Duyser put the sandwich on eBay, where internet casino and exemplar of good taste GoldenPalace.com snatched it up for $28,000, as well as the frying pan that birthed it, for another $6,000. The holy sandwich has since brought plenty of notoriety to Duyser (as well as Golden Palace), getting her back stage at a Hall and Oates show and elevating her to saint-like status among some South Floridians. Duyser recently had the sandwich tattooed on her chest to "keep it close to her heart," the Miami Herald reported. The Herald page also has a link to local video coverage of the story.

All this talk about grilled cheese and so many great recipes. But if you don't know what you're doing, a grilled cheese sandwich can be one of your more lame meals.

Case in point: I go through these periods when I'm going to eat all healthy and stuff. You know, drink 8 glasses of water a day, not eat anything past 7 pm, cut down on sugar, eat low fat this and low calorie that. But I like grilled cheese sandwiches so I came up with this: take two slices of low carb bread and toast them in the toaster. Then take two slices of low-fat American cheese (the brand doesn't matter - they all taste like tangy construction paper), place them in the middle, and press down firmly. And there you have it: a faux grilled cheese sandwich only a masochist could love. You can, of course, add several slices of tomato to it, to hide the flavor of the cheese.

I suggest 10.

The wonderful blog Taste Everything Once adds to our Grilled Cheese extravaganza with a book recommendation. Marlena Spieler's Grilled Cheese: 50 Recipes to Make Your Mouth Melt has been a hit for Jennifer, the blogger behind Taste Everything Once. She writes "This little book is pure food porn. The photographs are lush and sumptuous. Delectable sandwich after sandwich is vibrantly pictured next to an accompanying recipe."

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