The Devil Wears Grilled Cheese

This week's sandwich was inspired by a cinematic classic starring three time Academy Award winner Meryl Streep.

For those of you who don't remember the movie quite as well as I do, there's a scene in which Anne Hathaway's character's boyfriend (Adrian Grenier) makes her a grilled cheese sandwich filled with Jarlsberg cheese.  This is my second favorite cheese related moment in the movie, the first being:

While the prospect of an all cheese diet is tempting, I'm pretty sure I'd need more than one cube per day, so I decided to go with re-creating the grilled cheese perfected by Adrian's character.

But first I had to figure out what Jarlsberg cheese is.  Some preliminary searching revealed that it's similar to Emmentaler and Swiss, but is a little softer and sweeter.  Sounds good to me!  Since I didn't want to do a plain cheese and bread sandwich, I decided to pay tribute to the biting and devilish commentary lurking under Miranda Priestly's refined exterior by including something hot and spicy to undercut the sweetness of the cheese, so with that, here we go!

Ingredients included: Pepperidge Farm sourdough (a perennial classic), sweet hot mustard and red pepper flakes, and Jarlsberg cheese (I think I had about 12 ounces).  I wanted to keep things pretty simple.

After grating the cheese I buttered one side of four slices of bread and spread about 2 tsp. of mustard on the opposite side of each slice.

Next came a heaping 1/3 cup of grated cheese.

Followed by a sprinkling of red pepper flakes (for two of the sandwiches, I wasn't sure how much hotter this would make them and didn't want to push it too far).

With that they were ready for grilling!  The Jarlsberg is so soft to start off with that it melted more quickly and evenly than any other cheese I've encountered (except for Gouda).  So the sandwiches were all done in no time at all.

Taste Review:

The first taste I noticed was the sweetness of the mustard-- it actually tasted a lot like honey mustard.  But once I chewed for a bit I noticed the mustard's spicy aftertaste-- not so spicy that it was burning my mouth, but definitely a little kick!  The cheese is ooey gooey and stringy and there's lots of it!  This is good because the cheese is pretty mild in flavor, so there needs to be a lot of it for it to stand up to the stronger mustard taste.  But even with the cheese's strongest effort, the mustard is still the main focus of the sandwich (it should be noted that the red pepper flakes went virtually unnoticed unless you bit into one directly).  As such, it feels almost like something is missing (as I imagine is always the case when a condiment is the star of the show). 

But what exactly is missing?  Well, I realized that this is very close to the Croque Monsieur and the only major ingredient from that sandwich that is absent here is a meat, like turkey or ham.  In many ways I like the Jarlsberg cheese and sweet hot mustard on this sandwich better than I did the Gruyere cheese and Dijon mustard on the original Croque Monsieur, so it's good to know that I've moved closer to perfecting the recipe for my own taste.

FINAL RESULTS:

Sandwich:	Jarlsberg and Hot Sweet Mustard
Gooey-ness:	4
Aroma:	2
Appearance:	Very yellow!
Taste:	B

It was good, but not perfect.  But I think adding some meat to the sandwich would bring it up to star status worthy of Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway.

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!

Guest Post: The Two Cheese Avocado Sandwich!

It's an exciting day for The Big Grilled Cheese-- time for our first ever GUEST POST!  It couldn't have come at a better time seeing as how some weeknight plans have precluded my ability to write my own post this week.  Thankfully, Whitney and Caroline have stepped up to the plate (ba dum ching) and bring us a tasty twist on a recipe Whitney found.

Caroline, Whitney and me.

Whitney's description and notes are as follows:

Hi!!!

You must have such a good time each week! Caroline and I had fun tonight making this. :o) Attached are photos. Slight caveat: We did not have pesto. Why? 1) We are lazy and did not want to make pesto 2) We could not find pre-made pesto 3) We decided we were still lazy and didn't want to revert back to making pesto. Therefore this recipe's "green goddess" quality has been slightly rewritten and renamed. It is now: The Two Cheese Avocado Sandwich!

Ingredients: 1 avocado, 1-2 cups shredded mozzarella (dependent on how cheesy you want it), whole wheat bread (2 slices), spinach leaves (1 handful), AND the best part: basil goat cheese (sprinkle 'til satisfied)!
It was super easy to make:

Step 1: Prep Items (slice avocado, etc.)

Step 2: Begin grilling bread in pan

Step 3: Add mozzarella to bread
Step 4: After mozzarella has melted a slightly, add spinach leaves

Step 5: Wait a minute or two and then add the secret ingredient: basil seasoned goat cheese (we bought this pre-made, but you could probably just mix your goat cheese with basil and add it)

Step 6: Add avocado

Step 7: After mozzarella is melted, smush (technical grilled cheese term) the two sides together
Step 8: Voila! Yummy grilled cheese in 20 minutes or less :o)

Here is our review:
Gooey Scale: 3-3.5 We tried to get a picture of how the cheese pulled apart, my phone's camera abilities are sadly not high-tech enough!
Aroma Scale: 2 There isn't anything too fragrant, aside from the goat cheese, in this sandwich. So it was a pretty neutral smell in the kitchen.
Overall Grade: B-B+ (you pick, we didn't want to alter your grading curve)

We really liked this! It wasn't anything too special, but we did enjoy it so much that we made another batch so we could each have one in our lunch tomorrow! (fingers crossed it keeps overnight!)

Quotes from the Kitchen:
"Everything is better with avocados." - Whitney
"You can never go wrong with goat cheese!" - Caroline

Thanks to Whitney and Caroline for this stellar guest post!  They presented some interesting ideas for me to try-- most notably grilling the cheese on open faced bread (aka not assembling the sandwiches before frying).  I've also spotted the seasoned cheeses at Wegmans, but haven't made use of any yet.  This sandwich definitely gives me the motivation to give them a try! 

I like the fact that, despite the absence of the pesto, the sandwich lives up to its colorful name with the dark green spinach and light green avocado.  Those are two ingredients that I wouldn't have thought to combine, but that probably go together quite nicely. 

Now I can understand why people always tell me that my blog makes them hungry-- I definitely wish I could take a bite of this one! 

As always, any guest submissions-- be they suggested recipes, field reports, or full blown cooking features-- are always welcome!

Spinach and Goat Cheese Croissant

This week's sandwich was infinitely easier to make than last week's, but then I think just about anything would have been.  To set the scene, there are only a select few sandwiches whose photos were deemed worthy of inclusion in GGC, and the spinach and goat cheese croissant is one of them.  As a result, it's one I've been salivating over for awhile!  At long last, its day in the sun has come.

Ingredients:
10 ounces spinach (use frozen chopped spinach, but thaw it and drain most of the liquid in advance)
4 fresh croissants
3 ounces fresh goat cheese
6 ounces hard goat cheese (or Gruyere or Emmenthaler)
1 medium sweet onion (approx 1/2 pound)
And, of course, butter.

Step one was chopping the onion and sauteing it in a pan for about 7 minutes (until the onions were limp).

Once the onions were cooked a bit I added the spinach.  I was extra careful to drain as much of the water as I could without leaving it bone dry (a little liquid is necessary for cooking).  Wringing out the spinach by hand and patting it with a paper towel should be sufficient.

After stirring the spinach and onions together I covered the pan and let it cook for 2 minutes (I guess this is to maintain some of the moisture?)

At the end of two minutes I added the fresh goat cheese and mixed it in with the veggies until it was melted.

Now it was time to assemble the sandwiches.  I had already sliced the croissants in half, so step one was covering the bottom of each croissant with the spinach mixture.  Colin wasn't that hungry, so I was only making three, which meant that each croissant got a little more filling than it usually would, but typically this is enough for four sandwiches.

Then came the grated Gruyere (again, applied quite liberally).

The recipe suggests peppering to taste, but I don't like pepper that much, so my taste told me to add none.  With the addition of the tops of the sandwiches I was ready to grill.  I can't emphasize enough how "low and slow" is the name of the game with this one.  The croissant is so delicate that it burns very easily (also thanks to its high butter content), so GGC makes a point of cautioning you to not rush things.  Covering the sandwich while it's cooking (to facilitate cheese melting) is also crucial with this one.  Luckily, for once, I heeded my own advice and didn't burn anything!

Taste Review:

I'm sick this week (boo), so I didn't really notice a scent, but Colin assures me that there was a strong aroma of freshly toasted croissant and spinach (and I'm sure some onion got in there as well).  My first bite put a smile on my face.  The spinach tastes REALLY GOOD when combined with the sweet onion.  We all know spinach can be a little bitter on its own, and the fact that I was mixing bitter spinach with also bitter fresh goat cheese made me a little nervous; and they did form a bitter mixture, but in a good way.  Part of the reason that the bitterness wasn't bad was the Gruyere.  The sharpness of the cheese took some of the focus away from the more bitter elements of the sandwich.  Overall I'd say there was a perfect balance of bitter (spinach and goat cheese), sharp (Gruyere) and sweet (onion and croissant). (Wow, did I really just use "bitter" 7 times in one paragraph?!)

Speaking of the croissant-- grilled cheese on croissant is an as yet under-utilized but EXCELLENT idea.  The croissant is money in this sandwich.  It makes the sandwich rich, but it's so light and fluffy you don't feel bogged down by the fat and grease that often accompany rich dishes.  It just hit me-- this is sort of like a richer version of spanakopita, and I do love Greek food, so it's no wonder I'm a fan!

FINAL RESULTS:

Sandwich:	Spinach and Goat Cheese Croissant
Gooey-ness:	2
Aroma:	4
Appearance:	Golden outside with green spinach oozing out of the sides.
Taste:	A-

This is another week where Colin and I disagreed on grades.  I think this can be attributed to the fact that our tastes are similar enough to know what we like and don't like in a general sense, but are different enough that we agree on what the best of the best tastes are.  I wanted to give this one an A, but he said if last week's was an A- then this should be too.  In the end I agree (that and I don't want to get a reputation of being too easy of a grader).

Brunch Grilled Cheese

Before I dive in I'd just like to say that this is, without question, the craziest grilled cheese I've made to date.  Reading the recipe I could hardly believe my eyes, which meant I definitely needed to try it!  Once again it comes to us from the Wisconsin Grilled Cheese Academy who you may remember from a certain superstar sandwich known as The Pilgrim.  That sandwich was so good that I had nothing but faith that this one would also prove to be a winner.

Let's start with the ingredients:

Milk, 2 large russet potatoes, white bread, 8 ounces brie, 8 slices of bacon, 6 eggs, vanilla extract, nutmeg, cinnamon, canola oil, butter, salt and pepper and optional maple syrup.  Already these sound like all the necessary ingredients for a tasty breakfast, but the thought that somehow they would all end up on the same sandwich blew my mind!

First came the most labor intensive part of the whole process-- making my own hash browns.  I peeled both potatoes, put them in a pot of cold water and brought that pot to a boil.

Once the water was boiling I reduced the heat and let the potatoes simmer for 5 minutes before turning off the heat and letting them sit undisturbed for 15-20 minutes.

While this was going on I whipped up (literally) a dipping mixture that was clearly intended for making French toast.  The recipe called for 1 cup of milk, 2 eggs, 1 tsp. vanilla extract and a pinch of cinnamon and nutmeg.  I had some heavy cream that I've been meaning to use, so I went with that instead of milk.  Also, my "pinch" of cinnamon got a little out of control, but I wasn't worried as cinnamon french toast is tasty!

Once this was mixed I put it in the fridge to hang out until I was ready for it (I also used this down time to remove the rind from the brie and cut it into slices).  Then it was back to making hash browns.  Once the potatoes had finished sitting in the water I rinsed them with cold water and was supposed to wait for them to fully cool, but I'm not the most patient person in the world, so after a cursory rinse with cold water I barrelled on to the next step-- grating the potatoes with the large side of my box grater.

Not letting the potatoes cool fully came back to haunt me here as I grated towards the center of the potatoes and found them to be increasingly hot.  No problem, I would just re-rinse with cold water when it got too hot to handle (I'll leave out any cheesy reference to playing hot potato).

I didn't end up using all of both potatoes because I deemed my pile of potato shavings to be pretty massive well before I had finished grating both potatoes (after all, there are only two of us).  So when I felt like I had a good amount I put an even layer in the bottom of my skillet (where I had been heating 4 Tbsp of oil-- I was using vegetable instead of canola).

I was instructed to let this cook for 5 minutes on one side (or until browned) and then flip the whole thing with a wide spatula.  Well, that didn't happen.  Despite explicit instructions to not disturb the potatoes while cooking I made quite a mess of flipping the potatoes and ended up with several different clumps of potatoes rather than one big potato pancake.  Oh well, as long as all the clumps were browned on both sides I felt OK.

Next came cooking the bacon.  Nothing special to note here, just fry it up and drain it on a paper towel.

This was followed by frying 4 eggs.  I opted to drain the pan of the bacon grease prior to cooking the eggs and to use a spritz of cooking spray to make sure the eggs didn't stick to the pan.  At this point I had concluded that making 2 sandwiches for each of us would be WAY too much food, so I decided to cut back to three, meaning I fried 3 eggs instead of 4.

Next up I retrieved the dipping mixture from the fridge and re-whisked it to make sure the cinnamon and nutmeg were evenly distributed.  I think we can all see where this is headed.  I dipped one slice of bread at a time in the dipping mixture and fried it up in the frying pan (that had been primed with butter prior to).  Once both sides were nicely browned I would remove the bread and move on to the next piece until I had 6 slices of fully executed French toast.

Now it was time to build the sandwiches! 

First came three slices of french toast with 1 ounce of brie spread evenly on each slice (although I think this layer really equated to more than an ounce each).

This was followed by the hash browns...

... the eggs...

... the bacon...

... the rest of the brie...

and the remaining French toast slices!  Eek!  So much food!  Into the pan each sandwich went for one more quick fry to help melt the brie (but not so long as to burn the French toast).  And so, one and a half hours of labor intensive cooking later, the sandwiches were ready for consumption!

Taste Review:

Perhaps one of my favorite kitchen aromas is that of cooking cinnamon, which is exactly the aroma given off by this sandwich.  Yum!  Biting into the sandwich the first thing I really tasted was the bacon, mostly because it's so salty, but the more I chewed the more the other flavors started to make their presence known.  I guess the best way to describe this is telling you to think of what it would taste like if you took a bite of all of your breakfast at once and added a slice of brie cheese.

I was worried that using French toast as the bread would mean that the sandwich didn't have a crunch to it at all, but the fried potatoes and, more notably, the bacon both provided a crunchy element to contrast the soft eggs, cheese and bread (if the potatoes had been even crunchier that would've been great).  I also worried about the French toast being the lone sweet element to the sandwich-- would the sandwich taste too sweet despite the savory ingredients?  No.  The savory ingredients are actually really salty, so the French toast was noticeable, but was just the right level of sweet (and the hint of vanilla was just perfect).  The recipe suggests optional maple syrup on the side and I tried it on one bite, but that did make things too sweet.  Colin opted for some ketchup and was pleased with that decision.

I also wasn't sure about the decision to use a milder cheese for this sandwich.  With the number of different flavors going on I was wondering if something like Gruyere might have been more appropriate.  But really, the level of sharpness provided via the salty ingredients would've been too intense with a sharp cheese.  The brie was a good choice because it was just strong enough-- something like mozzarella would've been too weak and Gruyere would've been too strong.  The only change I might've made would've been to get a creamier brie instead of the buttery brie (but alas that was $4 more per pound and I'm cheap) because after eating the sandwich for awhile you do start to get a little overwhelmed by the brie (that could've been because I opted to take the bacon off of my sandwiches and that had been part of what balanced the brie out).

This really is everything you could want in a brunch distilled into one sandwich.  If you don't drop dead from a heart attack immediately after eating one then you'll be one happy camper!

FINAL RESULTS:

Sandwich:	Brunch Grilled Cheese
Gooey-ness:	2.5
Aroma:	4
Appearance:	Over stuffed, but ultimately has very bland colors.
Taste:	A-

This would've been an A, but I took some points off for how labor intensive it was.  A good way to avoid that in the future would be to not make your own hash browns.  I could've saved some time by just using frozen.