Ah, just the name conjours up wonderful kidhood memories. Growing up it was Campbell's Tomato Soup and Cracker Barrel Cheddar Cheese on good white bread. Nowadays, we eat bread with rocks. Or at least whole grains. And, the kinds of cheese vary with what's at the front of the cheese drawer.
It was a busy day today. Very busy. I got home well after 7:00 and started in on my recipe for the Secret Recipe club. It's due to be posted next Monday but I'm out of town at the National Planning Holdings Women's Conference Wed-Sat so prep time is limited. I figured I'd get half of it done tonight and the other half tomorrow evening.
On the way home, as usual, I called Mom. She'd been to a luncheon today where one of the recipes included capers. The hostess had never used capers and didn't really know what they were nor where to find them in the grocery store. Now, growing up our birthday dinner was always flank steak with caper sauce. So, Mom repeated the story she'd told at lunch today. When my younger brother, John, was a little shaver (like 3 or 4) the two of us were at the Murray's for dinner. Jack, thinking John probably wouldn't want what the big folks were eating and thinking he'd probably want a hot dog or hamburger asked what he'd like for dinner. John promptly responded with the fact that he'd be delighted to have flank steak with caper sauce. Precocious young man, eh? Now, I'd forgotten all about that story so I told Connie as soon as I got home. He thought it was hysterical and asked why I'd never fixed him flank steak with caper sauce. So, that became one of the choices for dinner. Except we didn't have one in the freezer and having one would involve a trip to the grocery. Choice number two was a grilled cheese sandwich with gruyere and some other goodies. Unfortunately, I only had enough of the other main ingredient to make the Secret Recipe Club recipe.
It was now almost 8:00 and dinner wasn't started. Time to pull out the Knorr's soup. Tomato Basil. It's good if a bit thin. So, I dressed it up a bit. Added a can of crushed tomatoes, some chopped basil and a good slug of cream. And, it wound up being quite good. The gruyere was out so that became the base for the grilled cheese. We loved the grilled cheese. And, best of all, I have half of my sandwich and a bowl of soup leftover for tomorrow's lunch. Score!
Gruyere and Salami Grilled Cheese
serves 2
Ingredients:
olive oil
4 slices whole grain bread
spicy mustard
8 thin slices gruyere cheese
16 thin slices salami
blue cheese
mozzarella cheese
Directions:
Pour some olive oil in a large skillet. You just want to coat the bottom of the skillet. Slather the slices of bread with the spicy mustard. On two slices of bread, lay the gruyere, then the salami then the blue cheese sprinkles then the shredded mozzarella. Top with another slice of bread. Grill until both sides are nice and toasty brown and the cheese is all melty. See that wonderful blue cheese oozing out?
OPA! Don't you love going to a Greek restaurant and watching them light the halloumi cheese on fire then yell OPA? We do too. Last time we were at Jungle Jim's, we bought a package of halloumi cheese. The expiration date was October of 2011, so I was in no rush to find an excuse to grill it. Then, along came the June/July issue of Fine Cooking. A grilling issue. With an article about 13 Things You Didn't Know You Could Grill. Except, we'd already grilled 10 of the 13. Not a bad record.
Here are the 13 things: nuts, fruit, pizza, shellfish, quesadillas, salad, olives, avocados, bacon, flatbread, cake, herbs and cheese. Some of our favorite grilled goodies from that list include Caesar Pizza,
Grilled Lettuce,
Smoked Goat Cheese,
Grilled Rosemary Old Fashioneds,
Grilled Fruit a
and Cat Cora's Grilled Guacamole.
I read the page to Connie and we had a good laugh over how many of the items we'd actually tried - most of them more than once. Then, I turned the page and there was a homerun recipe. It sounded like it'd make a perfect appetizer for Saturday evening. Not that we typically have appetizers when it's just the two of us. But, what a fun idea.
What did we think? The recipe says you can actually make a dinner out of this. Had I not had my version of bangers and mash already underway, this would have been dinner. Fabulous. Fantastic. Absolute five. Grilling the grapes concentrated their flavor. I made a couple of small changes. The recipe didn't call for grilling either the garlic or the rosemary. I grilled both. The garlic was perfect. The rosemary got a bit lost but I'm not sure that was a bad thing. It easily could have overpowered other flavors.
Grilled Halloumi with Grape Relish
Ingredients:
1 medium red onion, cut into 3-4 slices
4 t olive oil
12 oz halloumi cheese, cut in 3/8" thick slabs
2 T olive oil
2 large garlic cloves
1 small loaf ciabatti or foccacia, sliced
1/2 c walnuts
1 sprig fresh rosemary
1 large bunch seedless red or black grapes
2 T balsamic vinegar - I omitted this
Directions:
This is one of those recipes where it's imperative to have everything ready to go before you start cooking anything. Heat your grill. Put the walnuts in a foil "basket." Put the sliced onions, garlic, walnuts, rosemary and bunch of grapes in a grill basket.
Drizzle the onions and garlic with olive oil. Cook them on the grill over direct heat. Watch them carefully because the walnuts will get toasty pretty quickly. Ditto the rosemary. Turn the onions, garlic and grapes once. Pull the basket off the heat when the grapes are cooked to bursting. Take everything out of the grill basket and put the halloumi in it if it's cracking like mine did.
If it's in nice slabs, you can put it directly on the grill grates. Smash the garlic and mix it with 2T of olive oil. Brush the bread slices with the olive oil. Schmear on the leftover garlic pieces.
Now, it's time to grill the cheese and bread. Put the bread on a couple of minutes after the cheese because it will take a lot less time to grill. You want the cheese to be bubbly with lovely grill marks. Because mine was cracking, I have lovely grill basket bubbles :-) While the cheese is grilling, take all the grapes off and put them in a bowl.
Reach in and smoosh them with your hands.
Chop the walnuts and rosemary and add them to the grapes.
Then, chop the onions and add them.
Remove the cheese and bread from the grill. Now, the cheese and bread go on a platter and the grape relish (more a salsa in my opinion!) goes in a bowl.
I found that drizzling the bread with a bit of the juice in the relish before putting on a piece of cheese was a great idea.
Adapted from Fine Cooking
One of my all-time favorite meals is grilled cheese and tomato soup. Doesn't that just conjure up kidhood? I was never much of a fan of peanut butter and jelly. To this day, the only time I eat peanut butter is in a sauce. That's another kidhood staple. I guess soda pop is too. But, we were only allowed one Coke a week. We could get it from the soda machine under the stairs at church. So, after Sunday school we got our pop. And, we were further underprivileged in that we weren't allowed to watch much tv. You have no idea how many times I've thanked my mother for being so strict. I'll choose a glass of water over Coke or Pepsi anyday. And, the tv in our home is rarely on unless there's a game we want to watch (football, baseball or hockey) or unless I really want to watch FoodTV.
Fortunately or unfortunately for my hips and cholesterol count, cheese is one kidhood staple that's stuck with me. Mom used to do grilled cheese with Cracker Barrel Extra Sharp Cheddar and white bread. She'd serve it with Campbell's Cream of Tomato Soup made with milk - never made with water. Now, I'll experiment with just about any kind of grilled cheese. Actually, grilled cheese is pretty often the first dish that comes to mind when I need something quick. After all, we're the nuts with over a dozen kinds of cheese in the fridge at any one point in time...
Then, there's breakfast. Eggs, waffles, bacon, french toast, hash browns... Bring it on. I love breakfast. I still use my grandmother's old griddle. I know they make the nice non-stick ones now. But, there's something about using her things that just makes me feel connected.
Needless to say, when I saw a recipe that combined grilled cheese with french toast, I was ready to make it right then. Don't ask why I've never paid attention to recipes for a Monte Cristo before. As my next younger brother would say, not enough o's in stooopid I guess. Well, I've now solved that lapse in judgment with Rachael Ray's Apple, Cheddar and Bacon Monte Cristo's. As she would say, YUM!
Rachael Ray's Apple, Cheddar and Bacon Monte Cristos
Ingredients:
6 slices good quality bacon
4 slices peasant or sourdough bread
1/4 to 1/3 lb extra-sharp white cheddar cheese
2 gala apples, cored and thinly sliced
2 large eggs
1/4 c half and half
pinch freshly ground nutmeg
butter or olive oil
shagbark hickory or maple syrup
Directions:
Fry and drain the bacon. Slice the cheese very thinly. I used four slices per sandwich. Whisk the eggs, half and half and the nutmeg in a shallow, wide bowl.
Heat about a tablespoon of olive oil or butter in a large skillet. Dip one side each of two slices of bread and put the bread dipped side down in the sizzling olive oil or butter. Layer on each two slices of cheese
then enough apple slices to cover the cheese.
Add the bacon slices. Or, in my case, I had already cooked bacon pieces so used those up...
Then, add the rest of the cheese.
Top with slices of bread - the dipped side out.
Cook until the first side is nice and brown then flip. Once the second side is nice and brown and the cheese is wonderfully melty, serve your sandwiches.
MMMMM, I'm typing this as I'm eating this sandwich.
I wish it didn't have to end. This is the first of my recipes for New Belgium Brewing. Hopefully, the rest will be equally yummy.
One of the things I've discovered over the years is that if you're making a grilled cheese sandwich, the cheese melts much better if it's grated first. I've also discovered that rather than slathering the bread with a dressing such as mustard or mayonnaise, it's sometimes better to mix it with the cheese. That was the case here. Had I used cheese slices and loose chilies, they'd have skittered all over the place. This way, I only had to deal with the cheese mixture that oozed out of the sandwiches - not slip-sliding fillings.
I'm sure the filling would be good with another bread but it's designed for the beer bread. I used the cheddar scallion bread made with New Belgium's Mighty Arrow pale ale. It was a great match. Beer bread is so easy to make that I'm not sure why I've not made it regularly!
Chili Cheese Beer Bread Melt
serves two generously
Ingredients:
4 slices cheddar scallion beer bread, cut about 3/8" thick
1 c grated cheddar
1 c grated smoked gouda
2 oz chopped green chilies (I used Trader Joes)
2 T mayonnaise
1 T Dijon mustard
butter
Directions:
Combine the cheeses, chilies, mayonnaise and Dijon.
Lightly butter one side of each slice of bread. Pile some of the cheese mixture on two of the slices - NOT on the buttered side. I'm not saying that any of you would do that, just that that we've got the voice of experience here. Top with the other slice - buttered side out. Place the sandwiches in a heated skillet.
They'll take 8-10 minutes per side on medium heat. I'd advise against using a grill pan because the cheese mixture will ooze out and you'll have a mell of a hess to clean up.
I received a stipend from New Belgium Brewing to purchase the beer.
Mezzetta just had a sandwich smackdown. The rules of the game required using two of their products in a sandwich in one of three categories: hot, cold or vegetarian. To say my local grocery carries a limited selection of their products would be overstating matters. They had gardiniera, roasted mixed peppers and some pickled jalapenos. Hmmmmmm, what sounded good? Gardiniera is a bit lumpy to put in a sandwich. Isn't that a great visual, someone eating a sandwich with a big, ole piece of cauliflower hanging out of it. So, what would happen if you smooshed the veggies in the gardiniera? Maybe turned them into an aioli? Next decision, what kind of bread, meat and cheese? The roasted peppers and the gardiniera aioli screamed Italian. So, Italian it was.
Saturday night I made a tomato tart that was pretty much a bust. It looked gorgeous but the crust was gummy and I thought the filling needed a little oomph. But, it was a Todd English recipe so I was convinced that it was salvageble. The original recipe called for baking it in an 8" cast iron skillet but I wanted to use a tart pan since my 8" cast iron skillet is rather a wreck. So, the idea was to make another on Sunday and pre-bake the crust. That tart was halfway done - pre-baked and the ingredients ready to go - when I got around to reading the instructions on the Mezzetta site. Big oops. The contest was over on the 6th. That meant I needed to make the sandwiches NOW and get the recipe entered NOW. Well, fine then, we'd have the sandwiches for dinner and the tart for breakfast. Problem solved. Well, except for the fact that Connie whined that he couldn't have slices of happiness for two days in a row. (I'll update the blog on those treats shortly.)
Italian Garden Sandwich
Ingredients:
1 heaping cup gardiniera vegetables, drained
1/2 c Hellman's olive oil mayonnaise
2 ciabatta buns
8 slices genoa salami
6 slices capicola
4 slices provolone cheese
roasted red and yellow peppers
Directions:
Put the vegetables in the bowl of a food processor
Process until they're crushed.
Add the mayonnaise and process until you've got a slightly chunky aioli.
Toast the ciabatta buns. Smear the cut sides with the aioli.
Layer on the meats, cheese and peppers. Start with the salami, then half the provolone,
then the peppers
Then the other half of the provolone, then the capicola.
You're using that order try and keep the peppers from slip-sliding away while you're eating the sandwich. The melty cheese will envelope them...
Either wrap the sandwiches in foil and bake at 350 for about 15 min or grill them in a skillet on dry heat until the cheese melts.
