All we needed was: sourdough bread, red pepper flakes, 6 oz. jack cheese and 1 oz. dry jack (or, in this case, Parmesan).
No sooner do I unpack the ingredients and ask sous chef to help me with grating the cheese than I hear "Yum, this cheese is good." Sous chef has absconded with the Parmesan and took it upon himself to take a bite right out of the cheese wedge!
Come on now-- no one should be eating cheese straight from the wedge like that.
Oh! I didn't see you there...erm... moving on.
Step one was grating the dry jack-- I only needed 1 ounce, so I grated enough to fill my 1/8 cup measuring cup (and then grated a little more for good measure). I added that to a bowl along with 2 Tbsp. of softened butter.
Next I mixed this together to form my new favorite creation: cheese butter.
Oh baby! The road to a heart attack never seemed so right :-)
Once that was done I moved over to grating 6 ounces of regular jack cheese and adding in 2 tsp. of red pepper flakes.
At first I was thinking: 2 tsps? For 4 sandwiches? Surely this is too little. But then I got a bite of some cheese that had a pepper flake attached and my mouth was immediately set afire. I was reminded of Eddie Murphy in my favorite Saturday Night Live Skit: "James Brown's Celebrity Hot Tub Party." See the clip below for reference.
So yes, it was "too hot in the hot tub," aka my mouth (OK, that analogy really made no sense, but whenever ANYTHING is too hot I always say "too hot in the hot tub" out of reflex and wanted to share this little idiosyncrasy with the masses). The fact that the pepper flakes felt so hot may have something to do with the fact that I am slightly wussy when it comes to spicy things, but nonetheless, my fears that the spicy double jack wouldn't be spicy were laid to rest.
Next I buttered four slices of bread with the cheese butter and proceeded to top the non-buttered side with the jack cheese/pepper flakes combo.
Looking good! Next came the remaining four slices of bread (also buttered with the cheese butter) and into the pan went the first one. In addition to the usual hissing/cooking noises I usually hear, the sandwich was also making a popping sound at regular intervals. I concluded this must be the cheese that was cooking to the outside of the bread and chose not to be alarmed. Turns out I was right.
Since there was just cheese on the sandwiches they all cooked very quickly (because there was nothing impeding the melting of the cheese), so we were ready to eat in no time.
Taste Review:
There was a light aroma of bread with a light cheese crust, but not so much so that you would notice it if you weren't actively sniffing the sandwich. The first bite I took had a little spice to it, but it didn't overwhelm me. However, the spiciness was sort of cumulative in that the more that I ate the hotter my mouth felt. I had assumed that the red pepper flakes would change the taste of the cheese (and just make it into something like pepper jack), but you can actually still taste the flavor of the cheeses themselves-- it's just that now your mouth is on fire too. Well, MY mouth was on fire. Colin said that it needed MORE pepper flakes. So, when making this one, just season it with red pepper flakes to meet your individual taste preference (seeing as how I appreciate my taste buds and don't want to kill them, I'll stick with a lighter application).
The cheese butter makes for a more chewy crust than a crispy one-- I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that this time the recipe called for blending the finely grated cheese into the butter to make a paste rather than sprinkling it on separately to make sort of an outer crust (like I've experimented with in the past). Either way, it was delicious! I love the taste of cheese that has been fried up right in the pan and this had that along with a nice little kick that Parmesan always provides.
Colin determined that he likes it better with salsa and thinks it's too plain otherwise (there's a shock). But, I can sort of see his point-- since this is such a simple recipe (almost a classic grilled cheese were it not for the red pepper flakes), it's a bit of a blank canvas that you can dress up or dress down depending on your mood at the time. I think it would taste great with some guacamole (probably because I wanted something to cool my mouth off), but I also liked it on its own. Sometimes you have to appreciate simplicity :-)
FINAL RESULTS:
Sandwich: | Spicy Double Jack |
Gooey-ness: | 3.75 (I wanted a 4, Colin wanted a 3.5) |
Aroma: | 2 |
Appearance: | Looks like a classic grilled cheese except for the addition of little red specks. |
Taste: | A-/B+ |
Note: I voted A-, Colin voted B+. I think the discrepancy arose from the fact that he is less appreciative of a simple sandwich than I am (he was babbling on and on about how we should turn this into a hamburger...)
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! |
Next Week: I'm travelling again, but several people have already highlighted an excellent field report locale for me, so stay tuned!
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