Inside-Out Grilled Cheese

You may recall that my sous chef is out of town this week which means I was left to my own devices! *muahahahahaha*  Rather than stick with a traditional GGC recipe, I decided to branch out and come up with my own creation (and since I would be the only one who would have to eat it I was free to mess up as much as I needed to).

But what to make...hmm...

Ever since my first trip to the Wegman's cheese section I have been contemplating the mysterious entity known as "Bread Cheese."  Bread Cheese basically looks like a pack of cheesey breadsticks because it has that sort of charred look on the outside, but apparently it's just solid cheese.  I wasn't really sure what this cheese would be like, and the description certainly didn't help:

"Makes a great breakfast, delicious snack or wonderful dessert.  Be creative!  Dip it in coffee.  Cube it and microwave it for 30 seconds, saute in a skillet and top with jam, honey & walnuts or syrup."

Umm... what?  This food can allegedly be a breakfast, snack or dessert?  It goes well with coffee and syrup?  What?  But, hearing that it can be directly sauteed in a pan made me start to wonder about making an inside-out grilled cheese (obviously with the bread cheese on the outside and the actual bread on the inside). 

I actually bought the bread cheese a couple of days ago so I could get a feel for how it tastes before deciding what to add to it.  The verdict: it's really salty.  It's like really salty mozzarella cheese.  But that's fair, it just means it really is a blank canvas for me to dress up however I'd like. 

So, I hit the grocery store yesterday evening to find some suitable accompaniments.  I came across an asiago cheese crusted baguette-- and as we all know, if there is one thing that can make cheese better it's more cheese :-)  Plus, the whole loaf was on sale for $1.50-- done.  On a whim I went over to check out the cheese fridge since I was at Safeway and wanted to see what their cheese selection is like (compared to Wegman's).  Immediately a collection of jack cheeses caught my eye, one of which happened to be pesto jack.  I was already contemplating putting pesto on the inside out grilled cheese, so this was certainly an option to do that.  But (even for me) this would probably be too much cheese.  I decided to buy it anyway since I was in the mood to experiment.

When I got home I got out some other ingredients I had (leftover beefsteak tomato and mozzarella, both from last week, some garlic powder and some tomato sauce). 

I grated up the pesto jack to start off and had a taste of it-- it had a very sharp flavor which confirmed that it couldn't go on the bread cheese, that would just be too much.  Instead I went ahead and put some straight on a slice of the bread (with a few shreds of mozzarella as well), buttered each side and fried it up as a straightforward pesto jack grilled cheese. 

This browned up PERFECTLY and looked delicious with the already cheese crusted bread and the gooey pesto jack in the middle.

Oh yummm :-)

But let's not forget what we came here to do-- experiment with the bread cheese.  There was no way I would've been able to handle a sandwich made out of that entire slab of cheese, so to start off I cut off a thinner strip.

Next I cut that in half horizontally so as to make actual slices of bread(cheese).

This was pretty thick at first, so I actually ended up skimming off some of the middle to make them thinner and thus more edible (too much salty cheese would be an overload I was not ready for).

Next came a slice of bread in between.

Hmm... that looks boring.  Ah yes!  My delicious beefsteak tomato!  Let's add some of that.

Ahh, much better :-)

There wasn't much more to do at this point than plop it in the frying pan and hope for the best!

At first all seemed well.  I heard it sizzling, but the cheese was holding up and not oozing all over the place, so that was a plus.  It even survived the first flip remarkably well to show a nicely browned first side.

Sadly things quickly began to devolve.  Since there was nothing gooey holding the tomato and bread together and since the cheese was kind of heavy, the filling started to slip and slide all over the pan.

I tried just letting everything grill individually and reassembling at the end, but this didn't work as well as I hoped it would since the bread was still soggy (thanks to prolonged contact with the juicy tomato).  Oh well!  I was at least on the right track.  Surely my next endeavor would prove more successful.

This time I figured the key would be to put less cheese on the outside in hopes that it would actually melt onto the bread (rather than get soft but not really adhere to the bread a la the first sandwich).  I also opted to skip the tomato as it only seemed to make things more difficult during the cooking process.

This seemed to work decently well-- the cheese was melting a bit more (since there was less of it) and it was definitely easier to flip the whole thing and keep all the pieces together.

Now I had three nice little grilled cheeses to sample, but I couldn't let the rest of that delicious pesto jack go to waste!  Ditto on the Asiago bread-- that stuff is GOOOOD (I had been snacking on both of these during the whole cooking process).  I figured since I was trying new things, why not make a double decker grilled cheese that incorporated some of the jack and some of the mozzarella?

Since I was back to using bread as the exterior I was confident that the filling would stay in the sandwich more easily, so I opted to add in my beloved beefsteak tomato and to top it with some pesto jack.  Next came another slice of bread that was topped with mozzarella and a sprinkle of garlic powder (why not?).

Oh hello, deliciousness!  Into the pan you go!

The cheese melted surprisingly quickly leaving me with my fourth and final sandwich of the evening :-)

Taste Reviews and Final Results:

The first thing I noticed was that the aroma I got was from the asiago bread.  It smelled amazing and made me even MORE hungry for the bread, which is saying a lot since I had been snacking on it already.  I brought along a small bowl of pasta sauce just in case I needed a little condiment action (since sous chef wasn't here to take the lead there).  I'll break my comments up so each sandwich gets its own little feature:

1) Standard Grilled Cheese: Pesto and Mozzarella
This one was very gooey with a perfect crunch thanks to the nicely browned crust.  The pesto jack has a bite to it, but surprisingly not too much (when I sampled the cheese on its own I thought it might be too strong for a sandwich, but I guess the bread balanced it out).  I'm not sure how much the mozzarella actually contributed to the sandwich since it's so mild I couldn't really taste it one way or the other.  I could take or leave the tomato sauce on this one since it just sort of drowned out the flavor of the pesto jack.  Overall it basically was a simple but super cheesy grilled cheese.  Deelish :-)

Sandwich:	Pesto and Mozzarella on Asiago Bread
Gooey-ness:	4
Aroma:	3.5
Appearance:	Perfectly crisp with delicious fried cheese oozing out.
Taste:	A-/B+

2) Inside-Out Grilled Cheese with Tomato
On one side of the sandwich the cheese had actually melted to the bread, so that was surprisingly good :-)  I thought that (since it had been so all over the place in the pan) it would be very hard to eat, but it was actually no problem.  In the first bite I couldn't actually tell if I was tasting the bread or the cheese-- which was odd considering both had their own distinct flavors.  But, the more I ate the more I could tell that the cheese was taking over.  It was just SO SALTY!  The tomato on the sandwich didn't do nearly enough to cut down on the salty flavor and although the pasta sauce helped, I had to put so much on to balance out the flavors that it basically ended up tasting like I was eating a very cheesy pizza.  Overall, not impressed.

Sandwich:	Inside-Out Grilled Cheese and Tomato
Gooey-ness:	5 (sloppy, not runny)
Aroma:	2
Appearance:	Looks... interesting.
Taste:	D+

3) Plain Inside-Out Grilled Cheese
First observation: the top of this sort of looks like a pancake.  But that's neither here nor there.  Moving on.  I was scared to try this without sauce after how salty the last sandwich was.  I took one bite without sauce but then proceeded to literally pile it on.  Again, it was no big whoop-- it still just tasted like salty cheese and tomato sauce.  Boo.

Sandwich:	Inside-Out Grilled Cheese
Gooey-ness:	2
Aroma:	2
Appearance:	Looks like two little pancakes with bread in between.
Taste:	D+

4) Double Decker Grilled Cheese
I would say this is tied for most successful sandwich of the night (with the basic pesto grilled cheese).  The first tastes I got were the garlic and tomato-- a very welcome change after the salty assault on my taste buds courtesy of the last two sandwiches.  The light sweetness of the garlic and tomato was immediately followed up with some sharp support from the pesto jack.  I'm not really sure how necessary the middle slice of bread is, particularly considering it just gets soggy due to its proximity to the tomato (just like the inside out grilled cheese with tomato).  If I had toasted the middle slice of bread beforehand that would've been ideal!  But, since I liked this bread so much I was still happy to have an extra slice of it in there.

Sandwich:	Double Decker Grilled Cheese
Gooey-ness:	4
Aroma:	4
Appearance:	Looks thick with perfectly crispy outer edges.
Taste:	B+/A-

Gooey Scale	Aroma Scale
1 = still cold/hard	1 = can’t smell a thing
2 = slightly melted but still firm	2 = tender waft
3 = melted evenly	3 = makes your stomach growl
4 = melted and slightly runny (starting to get those cheese strings between your sandwich and your mouth when you take a bite)	4 = strong scent
5 = runny	5 = overpoweringly pungent
6 = sloppy mess!

And, just to affirm that I'm not a fatty for eating four sandwiches, here they all are on my plate so you can see how small they are:

Phew!  That was a lot to cover!  All in all it was a mixed bag, but I enjoyed experimenting.  As a result of this week's craziness I'm not sure I can even think about what will be going on next week.  Rest assured, it will be much less all over the place than this was!

P.S. I did a field report on Sunday, but I think it made me sick, so I prefer not to talk about it.