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).

Garden Goat Cheese

As mentioned last week, I was looking for a sandwich this week that would allow me to use the rest of the loaf of Pepperidge Farm Sourdough that I had leftover from the Italian Ham and Cheese.  I also mentioned that there are a lot of recipes that feature goat cheese and that maybe I would give one of those a try.  Lucky for me there are actually two recipes that feature BOTH of these ingredients!  I randomly selected the Garden Goat Cheese as this week's lucky winner and was off to get the ingredients.

6 ounces fresh goat cheese, 1 teaspoon milk (or more if needed), 1/4 cup finely chopped green onions (white and light green parts only), 2 teaspoons finely grated lemon peel, 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper, 1/2 cup loosely packed watercress leaves.  Note: Ignore the semi-sweet chocolate morsels in the background-- I was simultaneously doing some baking for a work pot luck.  Additional note: I didn't really know what watercress was prior to working on this sandwich aside from knowing that it's sort of a snooty-pants food.  Oh well, maybe this will be a snooty-pants grilled cheese!

Step one was combining the goat cheese, milk, onions, lemon peel and pepper to form a paste that has a consistency akin to "thick frosting."  I had left out the goat cheese from the time I got home, meaning by the time I was starting to cook (~2 hours later) it was nice and soft and easy to mix with other ingredients.  I recommend doing this because goat cheese takes awhile to warm up to room temperature and if you try to mix up cold goat cheese it won't stir in with the other ingredients as easily.  Chopping up the chives and grating the lemon peel were pretty uneventful, so into the bowl everything went.

This is where you can use your discretion in terms of amount of milk to add.  I opted to throw in an extra splash because the mixture wasn't quite creamy enough after my initial stirring.  Again, though, this is where letting the goat cheese warm up to room temperature before starting will work in your favor.  Were the goat cheese not room temperature it certainly wouldn't have the consistency of a thick frosting.

The resulting mixture looked a heck of a lot like the tasty whipped sour cream and chive cream cheese that I eat on my turkey sandwich for lunch every day (yumm, I'm enjoying some right this very minute as I type these posts up during my lunch break).  This definitely didn't taste like cream cheese, though.  That biting goat cheese taste is unmistakable!

Next it was time to spread the mixture on four slices of bread (buttered on one side, buttered side down).

I was surprised by how much cheese I had for each slice of bread-- the end amount on each sandwich was actually a pretty thick layer.

Next came the watercress leaves.

Obviously these were topped with a second slice of bread and popped in the pan.  GGC advised to cook these on a particularly low heat because it takes so long for fresh goat cheese to warm up.  Luckily I was well on my way having let the goat cheese warm up to room temperature already, but I cooked them low and slow in the name of letting it get even more thoroughly warm and melty.

As usual, the beloved Pepperidge Farm Sourdough did not disappoint!  It grilled up so perfectly golden brown that I couldn't wait to dive in and taste the deliciousness!

In fact, before moving on let me show you a photo that is a pure testament to the glory of Pepperidge Farm Sourdough:

Oh baby!  Yum yum!
(sorry this is sideways, sometimes the blogger photo uploader does that and I have yet to figure out how to fix it)

Taste Review:

Before even tasting the sandwich our initial reaction was that, much like the Italian Ham and Cheese, it seemed kind of light and understated.  But then I reminded Colin that this was made with goat cheese and that there is nothing understated about the bitter/pungent taste of goat cheese.  But in reality the sandwich was pretty light-- it made me think of spring (cheesy, I know, but also true).  The goat cheese wasn't so strong that it made me want to stop eating, it actually blended well with all the other ingredients. 

The lemon flavor is definitely pronounced (it's hard to ever ignore the smell of fresh lemons), but it doesn't overpower the rest of the sandwich, it's more of a background aroma.  The same was true for the onions-- they didn't slap you in the face, but you knew they were there.

I was glad that I heeded the advice of cooking the goat cheese slowly and on low heat because it was nice and soft/creamy.  The sour-ness of the sourdough proved that it could stand up to the sour/bitter flavor of the goat cheese, so there was a good balance there as well.

I was enjoying my sandwich as I noticed Colin making a move for his beloved Sriracha.  *sigh*  He noted that he doesn't think that this should count as a "grilled cheese."  I reminded him that according to our recently determined definition of grilled cheeses that this is, in fact, a grilled cheese.  He conceded that point, but said that he felt this cheese was more of a spread than a sandwich filling.  "I could see this on a cracker," he said.

Regardless, we both were satisfied with the sandwich.

FINAL RESULTS:

Sandwich:	Garden Goat Cheese
Gooey-ness:	2.5
Aroma:	2
Appearance:	Looks light, fresh and springy.
Taste:	B

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!

During our grading session we determined that we wish we could revise some of the older grilled cheese grades.  I've found us relative grading more and more lately because sandwiches we've made recently that deserve to out-score some of our less liked older sandwiches have to be given a higher grade so it's not tied with something bad.  I may be explaining this poorly, so let me give you an example.  Colin was thinking a B- for this week, but when I reminded him that we had given a B to one of the salami and cheese sandwiches he agreed to raise the garden goat cheese's grade to a B.  I wanted a B all along, so I was happy, but can see where this relative grading may prove detrimental in the future.  I'll keep my eye on it to see if it becomes a problem that's big enough to warrant being addressed.

Next Week: I'm out of town, so potential field report on the way!  Although I haven't researched any locales yet.  Anyone know of a good grilled cheese spot in Atlanta?  I've also got one other field report related trick up my sleeve that I will hopefully share next week before I go out of town.

Speaking of field reports, I didn't do one while I was in Richmond this past weekend, but my friend Jessi enjoyed a gourmet grilled cheese at 3 Monkeys (a Richmond restaurant). 

From their menu: 3 cheese grilled cheese- brie, swiss & monterey jack with bacon & tomato on rye.  She opted to substitute avocado for the bacon and it looks like that was a good call (and slightly reminiscent of the beloved California Grill.

Smoky Southwestern Grill

Sorry for the delay!  It's been a busy week!  So let's dive right in :-)  I still had some goat cheese left over from awhile back (don't worry, I checked the expiration date, it's still good), so I was perusing the sandwiches that involve goat cheese.  One that caught my eye was the "smoky southwestern grill."  The recipe involved some cooking over an open flame, but I was ready to step up my game and accept the challenge.

The ingredients are pictured above, but in the name of accuracy I'll recite them.  One loaf of ciabatta bread (but when I went to the grocery store they had sold out, so I got some pane Italian bread instead), 4 ounces goat cheese, 12 ounces mozzarella (I mis-read this as 16 oz... oopse!), 3 large strips of bacon, olive oil, a tomato and two Anaheim chiles.  Deelish!

Reading the first few steps left me certain that this would be a labor intensive sandwich, and it had me diving in with the most daunting task of all: grilling the chiles over an open flame (aka one of my gas burners... apparently a broiler is also acceptable, but less fun). 

Ooooh, pretty!  The pyro in me was excited!  The apartment owner without renters insurance in me was worried I would burn the place down (I just narrowly escaped this fate a few weeks ago courtesy of my toaster oven and was not anxious to re-visit that state of panic).

Annnd here we go!  Standing over the stove waiting for the outer skin of the pepper to char completely.  But it was taking forever to start!  I mean 30 seconds later there was still no sign of charring!  (I'm so patient)  That's when I decided to just touch the flame with the pepper.  I heard a scary pop, but I guess that was just air getting released once the skin burned or something, because upon closer examination I saw that I was actually right on track.

A few minutes more the first chile was ready!

Next I placed it in a "re-sealable plastic bag" where it was to sit for 20 minutes (I imagine this is to allow the smoky flavor to really set in).  Once I had both chiles in I started the timer and commenced with other prep work while I waited.

Task 1 was frying the bacon!  The recipe actually calls for 6 strips, but since these strips were so big I went ahead and just got 3.

I let these simmer for awhile (while I went ahead with grating the mozzarella and slicing the tomato).  I was supposed to cook them until they were crispy, but since I never cook bacon apparently to me "crispy" actually means "burned."

Oopse!  Oh well, the plan was to coarsely chop them anyway, so they're really supposed to be like bacon bits-- and bacon bits are hard, right?

By the time I finished with the bacon, the chiles were ready to emerge from their plastic bag hideout.  GGC directed me to remove the charred outer skin with a small sharp knife and to cut the chiles into long thin slices.

Chiles and Bacon Bits

*Phew!*  It may not sound like a lot of prep work, but it felt quite arduous.  Good thing I was finally ready to assemble the sandwiches.  I had already sliced the bread horizontally and then split it into four pieces (each about 3"-4" wide) and had pinched out the inside of the bread to create wells (we have a lot of ingredients to squeeze in)!  So, in order, I evenly distributed the mozzarella, bacon bits, chiles and tomato (one large slice for each sandwich).

I got kind of wussy on the bacon and only used maybe half of what I had cooked (and considering that was already half of what the recipe called for I was definitely skimping).  But oh well!  It's my kitchen and I'll alter recipes if I want to!

Next came the goat cheese.  The recipe called for four ounces of crumbled fresh goat cheese (split evenly among the four sandwiches), but this was A LOT!  It barely stayed on the sandwich without falling all over the place.

So I didn't end up using all four ounces, but I got pretty close.  Next came a light coating of olive oil to the outsides of each sandwich before tossing them in the pan.  These required a lot of squishing with the spatula to try to keep them flat and together, but they flipped surprisingly easily!  Maybe that was due in part to the slight bacon grease residue (I emptied out most of the grease, but left a light coating for flavor purposes).

I was pleasantly surprised by two things: 1) that the mozzarella actually melted very well and 2) that the crustiness of the bread helped to prevent it from getting too charred during cooking (as we all know, that's a perpetual problem for me in my constant war with the gas stove).

At long last we were ready to eat!

Taste Review:

As I'm sure you can tell from the picture above, the colors in the sandwich were the first thing that jumped out at us!  Bright red tomato, lime green chiles, bright white goat cheese, brown bacon-- definitely aesthetically appealing.  We could also smell the bacon and, even though I'm not a huge bacon eater, I can't deny that bacon smells amazing!

The first few bites tasted strongly of tomato and cheese.  Goat cheese is just a hard flavor to get past, so that was definitely dominating.  The combination of the melted mozzarella and the goat cheese was VERY creamy, but not in that it was literally gooey, more in that it had a rich and smooth flavor (especially when combined with the cool tomato). 

Although this creaminess was nice, I think it was missing the contrast that the chile and bacon were supposed to provide.  For whatever reason (maybe because I didn't use enough bacon?) I couldn't get a strong enough smoked flavor from these additions.  Again I think this goes back to the fact that the goat cheese has a very pungent taste that is hard to get past.  Towards the end of eating, Colin actually scraped the goat cheese off of his sandwich and said that he enjoyed it much more as a result.  I would agree that the goat cheese is an unnecessary addition to the sandwich and would like to try the sandwich without (or at least with less) goat cheese sometime.

As a random aside, this actually reminded me of the salami and cheese sandwich from a few weeks back-- the one with ricotta, mozzarella, pepperoncini and salami.  This had a similar consistency and flavor profile, but with some minor tweaks to make it more "American."

FINAL RESULTS:

Sandwich:	Smoky Southwestern Grill
Gooey-ness:	3
Aroma:	3
Appearance:	Bright and colorful!
Taste:	B+ Without goat cheese B- With goat cheese

I've said it before and I'll say it again, it was a good place to start, but the recipe could use some tweaks to really make it outstanding.

Next Week: My sous chef is out of town, so if there are more seafood related recipes you can rest assured that I'll be making one!

Field Report: Seattle - Beecher's Handmade Cheese and Icon Bar and Grill

That's right!  Once again I've managed to squeeze two field reports into my out of town adventure :-)  I was in Seattle for work and decided to hit up a spot that I had already visited during my last Seattle adventure (alas this was pre-blog, so it didn't get a full on review), Beecher's Handmade Cheese.  It's located right across from Pike's Place Market, which makes it a fun place to venture to!

One of the coolest things about Beecher's is that they make their signature cheeses in house!  So while you're eating you can try to snag one of the few seats (made of milk jugs) to watch the cheese making action.

Luckily a pane of glass shields you from any flying curds coming your way!  They're actually best known for their "World's Best Mac and Cheese" (I believe this title was bestowed by Oprah, so take it or leave it), but that doesn't mean their signature cheese isn't delicious enough on its own.

OK, I think I've adequately set the scene.  On to the good stuff!

The menu is seen above.  Last time I was here I tried the Flagship Sandwich, but I thought for this visit it would be best to let the cheese speak for itself, so I opted for the standard Grilled Cheese.

They grilled it right up and soon I was ready to roll!

As you can see from the picture, it was pretty straightforward.  When I first pulled the sandwich apart I was excited by how gooey it looked!  The bread was particularly crunchy and toast-like, but it turns out that there wasn't enough cheese to balance out the crunchy bread.  Maybe I've just gotten spoiled by all the deluxe grilled cheeses I've been making with all sorts of additional ingredients, but this seemed a little too simple.  From what I remember of my sandwich from the first time I visited Beecher's, it was really tasty.  So maybe this was just too basic for my current tastes?

This is the Flagship Sandwich from my first visit.

As for the actual tastes, the cheese seemed mild at first, but that might've just been because there wasn't a lot of it in relation to the bread.  I found that the more I ate the more I noticed that sort of twinge in the back of my mouth like you get when you taste something sharp.  I think this was a good simple but high quality sandwich (per the delicious made-in house cheese being the central ingredient).  I've just gotten used to gooey, over the top creations, but this should be appreciated for its classic simplicity.

As an aside, the person I was with got the signature mac and cheese and was kind enough to let me taste.  It was DECADENT!  That definitely had the full rich cheesy flavor that I was expecting.  It was too rich to eat too much, but was an awesome treat!

My next stop was a place across the street from my hotel that I never would've noticed had it not been for one of my co-workers pointing it out and telling me that she saw an "Ultimate Grilled Cheese" on their menu that I needed to go try!  So for dinner that night, off I went.  The Ultimate Grilled Cheese is described as follows:

Ultimate Grilled Cheese Sandwich: Fontina, cheddar, Gruyere and herb goat cheese toasted on sourdough bread with fresh arugula. Served with your choice of sides.

Yum!  Lots of cheeses all of which I like!  And lucky for me, despite the fact that this is listed as a lunch special, the restaurant agreed to give it to me for dinner :-)  I wasn't particularly wowed by the presentation-- I mostly saw the arugula and no gooey cheese oozing out.  Oh well, looks aren't everything, right?

Only taste would tell the true merits of this one.  The bread was perfectly crunchy!  Not too thick, just the right level of brown, and you can't really go wrong with sourdough!  Sadly, even with this many cheeses, you apparently CAN go wrong with the filling :-(  The first bite was much more bitter than I was expecting-- the goat cheese and arugula combined to be very bitter.  I thought as I went on I would start to taste the other cheeses more-- and I definitely could tell they were there, but only because they made the sandwich chewy, not because of their taste.  Since the goat cheese was made more bitter by the arugula the sandwich actually bordered on bland-- it was only when I got little taste snippets of the other cheeses that I got a feel for the fuller flavor.

Apologies for how graphic this photo looks, but my bright flash + dim restaurant lighting = not attractive photo.

I guess goat cheese is just a hard flavor to overcome, even with a combination of three other cheeses.  Luckily I like goat cheese, so once I accepted that this was basically a goat cheese grilled cheese I was fine, but I would be wary of someone choosing this sandwich for its diverse assortment of cheese and only tasting goat cheese.

Anyway, it was a mixed bag in Seattle-- Beecher's showed me that simplicity can be just what the doctor ordered and Icon showed me that overloading on cheese isn't always a recipe for success.  If only I were willing to pay the money to have some flagship cheese mailed out to me to experiment with-- now that could be awesome :-)

Now that I'm back I'm ready to resume my grilled cheesin'.  I've got a quesadilla on tap for this week, so stay tuned!