Grilled Cheese Day

Two Books About Grilled Cheese

by Deidre Woollard, Posted Aug 29th 2005 @ 9:14PM

Just in case you haven't had enough grilled cheese after all of our efforts, there are also two books devoted to the subject. Both came out in 2004 and are slim volumes with 50 recipes that take the grilled cheese far beyond its humble roots. Grilled Cheese: 50 Recipes to Make You Melt by Marlene Speiler is a lushly photographed offering by Chronicle Books. It has a decidedly European flair featuring recipes from around the world and including offerings like crisp truffled comtes with black chanterelles, and goat cheese toasts with desert spices. Great Grilled Cheese: 50 Innovative Recipes for Stove Top, Grill, and Sandwich Maker by Laura Werlin sticks more to the classic bread and cheese formula, adding twists like red pepper flakes, grilled spinach, figs and blue cheese. This book also features tips on how to make each recipes on the stove top, grill or sandwich maker. Both books are available from Amazon.

Source

Filed under: Grilled Cheese Day, Books

Grilled Cheese Gadget: The Bacon Press

COMMENTS 0

by Deidre Woollard, Posted Aug 29th 2005 @ 8:39PM

All these thoughts of grilled cheese took me back to my first summer job at the Centerville Pastry Shop, a little restaurant on Cape Cod. In the heat of summer, we made dozens of grilled cheese sandwiches for vacationing children. Our sandwiches were for the most part simple, slices of bread buttered, each resting on the end of the other as peeled slices of cheese of an industrial brick. The trick was the slight of hand required to get two buttered-on-one-side slices of bread plus cheese assembled and onto the grill without getting the hands too buttery. That and trying to find room on a large grill that was also cooking burgers and bacon. The grilled cheeses were held in place with bacon presses, flipped once and served with potato chips and and a pickle on chipped heavy china, standard diner food. It was after the lunch rush that grilled cheese turned creative. After all the vacationers were sent back to the beach it was time for the staff to eat. Often grilled cheese would be a good choice because is might be the only left on a day in which the special flew out of the restaurant. And like any bored restaurant workers we'd get bored and be experimental. I've eaten grilled cheese and clams, grilled cheese and chicken livers, the inspired and carbtastic grilled cheese and mashed potatoes and the more traditional always-satisfying grilled cheese with bacon and tomato. In the end, the simple grilled cheese, on a hot griddle using the bacon press was always the most satisfying because most stuffed sandwiches could not support the weight of the bacon press without disgorging a bit of their ingredients. These days I prefer my sandwiches bursting at the seams with additions and I know that even if I were to get a bacon press and replicate the sandwiches with the same ingredients I could never quite capture the exact taste made by the dirty grill, the crumb-speckled butter, the room-temperature cheese and the relief of finally sitting down after hours of running around to eat lunch.

Source

Filed under: Grilled Cheese Day

Makeshift panini press

COMMENTS 3

by Nick Vagnoni, Posted Aug 29th 2005 @ 8:15PM

Photo: Nick Vagnoni

Now, you could go out and buy a Le Creuset Panini pan for upwards of $100, or you could just do what I did and use the cast iron pan and another grill pan you should already have in your kitchen.

For this pressed sandwich I split a baguette, drizzled it with olive oil and red wine vinegar, and layered it with fresh mozzarella (at room temperature), roasted peppers that I charred and skinned this morning, and some Thai basil from my garden. Italian basil would be more appropriate perhaps, but the Thai basil seems to deal with the Florida heat better than other varieties.

Anyway, I heated up my grill pan and my cast iron skillet, placed my sandwich in the pan with a piece of foil on top, and then pressed the hot and heavy cast iron skillet down onto the foil. I flipped the sandwich after a few minutes, grilled it some more, and then removed it to a cutting board. I let the cheese set briefly, and then cut it in half.

The results? The Thai basil added a fresh anise flavor to the mellow roasted peppers and mozzarella and the baguette stood up nicely to the moisture of the cheese. The acidity of the vinegar offset the sweetness of the peppers as well.

I’m sure the Le Creuset looks nice hanging from your pot rack, but this will certainly get the job done.

Filed under: Hacking Food, Grilled Cheese Day, Ingredients, How To, Methods

Cuban grilled cheese

COMMENTS 0

by Nick Vagnoni, Posted Aug 29th 2005 @ 6:38PM

Photo: Nick Vagnoni

In Key West, Florida, where I grew up, Cuban “cheese toast” or “cheese bread” is king. In almost any sandwich shop on the island, you can find a panini-style press, or two, behind the counter. While pressed Cuban sandwiches or “cuban mixes,” as they’re called in KW, are probably the most popular thing to come out of the sandwich shops, cheese bread, sometimes with eggs, ham or bacon, is a close second.

The cheese is nothing special—usually just yellow American. What it comes down to is the spongy, lard-enriched Cuban bread. Made properly, an airy loaf will be compressed down to half an inch thick, its crust blistered here and there, feathery crumbs tearing away from the edges, and molten cheese lining the interior. With a buchito or a café con leche, it’s the breakfast of champions.

If you happen to find yourself in Key West, the best places to try a cheese toast are 5 Brothers Grocery and Sandy's Cafe at the M&M Laundry.

Note: Don't forget to DIGG grilled cheese day!

Filed under: Grilled Cheese Day, Ingredients

Grilled Cheese for Dessert

COMMENTS 4

by Deidre Woollard, Posted Aug 29th 2005 @ 6:10PM

My mission was simple: grilled cheese for dessert. I'm one of those people who believes every meal should come with dessert so this was an exciting prospect. I've never really thought about grilled cheese for dessert before but I had an idea that I wanted it to be sweet but still a bit edgy. I bought several different kinds of bread (sourdough, baguette, Hawaiian sweet bread, croissant, fruit (pears and peaches), various jams, chocolate and cheese (cheddar, mascarpone, peccorrino-romano) and set to work. What follows are the results of some very fun experiments.

Filed under: Grilled Cheese Day, Ingredients

What do you eat with your grilled cheese?

COMMENTS 3

by Sarah Gilbert, Posted Aug 29th 2005 @ 5:41PM

grilled cheese with tomato soup and pickles

Anyone who's ever eaten a can of Campbell's knows that the classic American grilled cheese accompaniment is tomato soup. At my house, we make a simple tomato soup with half-and-half mixed in at the last minute, then cut the sandwich into fingers so we can dip the buttery cheesy bread sticks into the soup. It's the easiest comfort food going. In an informal survey of restaurant menus and time-honored traditions, here are the top five side dishes with grilled cheese sandwiches:

Tomato soup
French fries
Pickles
Potato chips
Carrot sticks

Filed under: Grilled Cheese Day, Lists, Ingredients

She Made Grilled Cheese Famous - Nancy Silverton at Campanile

COMMENTS 3

by Sarah J. Gim, Posted Aug 29th 2005 @ 5:23PM

nancy silverton starts grilled cheese at campanile

It all started at Campanile, the rustic Mediterranean restaurant in Los Angeles. Nancy Silverton, the godmother of La Brea Bakery, took one night a week to hop next door (Campanile and La Brea Bakery are right next door to each other) with her Italian panini press to create and serve sandwiches based on her incredible breads in a relaxed, yet intimate setting. Thursday night became one of the busiest nights of the week at Campanile as Nancy Silverton’s Grilled Cheese night.

It was the success of Campanile’s Thursday Nights that inspired one of Chef Silverton’s many cookbooks, Nancy Silverton’s Sandwich Book – The Best Sandwiches Ever from Thursday Nights at Campanile. Sandwiches aren’t complicated to make, and it almost seems like it would be overkill to have instructions on how to build a sandwich. Bread, cheese, meat, press together, Dummy. But the book is valuable for the sandwich pornography, Chef Silverton’s thoughts on bread, what makes a good sandwich, and her creative ideas and combinations of ingredients.

Chef Silverton has moved on from Campanile, but her legacy lives on in the restaurant as the Thursday Night Sandwich night. Campanile takes reservations for larger parties, otherwise, it’s first come, first sandwich served.

Campanile Restaurant
624 South La Brea Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90036
(323) 938-1447
www.campanilerestaurant.com

Filed under: Grilled Cheese Day, Ingredients, Chefs & Restaurants, Books, Restaurants, Methods

Global Grilled Cheese: Mexico and the Quesadilla

COMMENTS 3

by Sarah J. Gim, Posted Aug 29th 2005 @ 5:03PM

brie cheese and grape quesadilla, canal club, veince, ca

“Go make yourself a dang kay-sa-dill-uh.”

If you’ve seen the movie, then you know that “kay-sa-dill-uh” is Napolean-ese for quesadilla, Latin cuisines’ version of a grilled cheese sandwich.

The quesadilla traces back to Mexico, but it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly when and where they originated, nor who was responsible. Certainly, the tortilla was being made from corn by the native people of the area long before the country was known as Mexico. The addition of cheese to tortillas to make quesadilla could only have followed shortly after. Let’s just say that it was at least before the 15^th century, when the conquistadores arrived and “discovered” them.

Filed under: Grilled Cheese Day, Ingredients, Methods

Grilled Cheese and Bacon and Me

COMMENTS 3

by Josh Ozersky, Posted Aug 29th 2005 @ 4:19PM

The love of a sandwich must, I suppose, be an unrequited one; and so grilled cheese and bacon has never stopped to think about how much it means to me. I must know more about it than any person alive.

That is saying something. A food scientist in Kraft’s massive research facilities in Terrytown, NY or East Hanover, NJ probably knows more about the mechanics of melted cheese than I do, and Harold McGee more about butter. Dan Phillips, the founder of the Bacon of the Month Club, knows more about bacon. But put these things together in a glorious gestalt, and I am its master – and its slave. I have given the consideration of this sandwich everything, and am a crude and pitiful human being in all non-grilled-cheese-and-bacon-related ways. My knowledge has been purchased at great cost, and if now I can prescribe its construction with the exactitude of a Japanese tea ceremony, it is only because I have neglected whole vast tracts of human life to do so.

Filed under: Food Porn, Alt-SlashFood, Hacking Food, Food Oddities, Grilled Cheese Day, Food Quest, Feast Your Eyes, Ingredients

Matching Wine and Grilled Cheese

COMMENTS 3

by Andrew Barrow, Posted Aug 29th 2005 @ 3:04PM

Do you know I can't recall any time I have eaten cheese on toast and had a wine on the side? This is going to be tricky, thought I, as I blindly agreed to write a "grilled cheese and wine post".