Grilled Cheese: there are limits to deluxe

You’d think so, wouldn’t you? You’d think that the simple Grilled Cheese Sandwich, beloved by ketchup-slinging toddlers and truffle-scented gourmets alike, could be appreciated for its own merits, without being tarted up like a four year old beauty pageant contestant, but noooooooooo.

Honestly, if you want to get fancy, make the pickle on the side an artisanal pickle and you’re good. Super-deluxe it by slicing some fresh mushrooms on top of the cheese before frying if you want, and you’ll even find that the enzymes in the mushrooms make melt-resistant cheese as soft and pliable as a wodge of velveeta in the heart of Eyjafjallajökull. Why, the low rent version made with margarine instead of butter may even contain the secret to immortality!

But that’s not enough for some people; indeed, some people never met a food they weren’t capable of enthusiastically ruining, including God’s Own Comfort Food, the glorious grilled cheese sandwich. I’d like to present (very much WITH comment) the world’s most expensive grilled cheese sandwich.

Now, it’s not the simple $50 fontina and truffle version featured on Gossip Girl.

For the Grilled Cheese Sandwich:
• 8 slices of fresh baked white bread; look for a local bakery
• 16 slices of fontina cheese
• 2 tablespoons sweet butter
• 2 oz. fresh shaved black winter truffles
• Salt and pepper

Layer 2 slices of fontina cheese between 2 slices of white bread and shave a couple of slices of truffles in the middle of each sandwich; do the same for all four sandwiches. Heat a large frying pan over medium heat and add the butter. When the butter melts, add the sandwiches and cook until the bread is nice and toasted. Remove and slice sandwiches in half and place onto four plates.

Adding a few extraneous truffles to something is, as we all know, the first resort of the unimaginative trying to make something ostentatiously and purposelessly expensive. Besides, truffles taste like toe jam that’s gone off.

There. I said it. Truffles are to mushrooms as durian is to mangosteen, which is to say, they are the version of that food that is served in HELL.

But I digress. Grilled Cheese Sandwiches. It’s a post about Grilled Cheese Sandwiches.

Right, the world’s most expensive grilled cheese sandwich, other than the $28,000 one with St. Mary of Cracker Barrel on it, is the $170 version made for the Frome Cheese Show and consisting of:

…cheddar cheese blended with white truffles, quail egg, heirloom black tomato, apple, figs, dainty mustard red frills, pea shoots, red amaranth, 100-year-old balsamic vinegar dressing and sourdough bread topped with edible gold dust.

Edible Gold Dust on a grilled cheese sandwich. Edible. Gold. Dust.

Please report on the geographic coordinates of your supreme being at this time.

For this recipe I recommend an unseeded Challah.

I am a big fan of breakfasts, as is the rest of my family. I often skip it, but I love it. Lunch I can pretty much do without. Dinner is the best.

One of my favorites for breakfast is French Toast and a while back I cam across a recipe for for French Toast that I love. It is less eggy than many recipes which look like nothing more than a fried egg with bread in it. The recipe can be made with other breads but Challah (or Hallah), makes it an exceptional breakfast item, as good as virtually any you will find at a restaurant.

As an aside, Challah bread is a traditional Jewish bread generally eaten on the Sabbath and holidays. It is made generally with eggs, sugar, water and fine white flour. It is very rich and eggy which helps make it a perfect bread for this French Toast recipe which omits the egg whites. Another special ingredient makes this even better.

French Toast:

One loaf of good quality Challah

1-1/2 cups room temperature milk (2% or whole)
pinch of salt
a generous 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
0-2 tablespoons melted butter
3 egg yolks
3 tablespoons brown sugar
And, in order of awesomeness, one of the following:
One Tablespoon Pear Eau De Vie (Our present favorite is Kuchan™ Poire Williams / Bartlett Pear Eau De Vie from Old World Spirits . For the LiquorLocusts review of this product, click here.)
or
One Tablespoon Bourbon, of a kindler, gentler nature like Woodford Reserve or Makers Mark.
or
One Tablespoon vanilla.

The Pear Eau De Vie should be tried. It is great. A subtle but rich flavoring. Bourbon versus vanilla is more a matter of personal taste, but everyone should try the pear.

For the bread, preheat the oven to 280 degrees. Slice bread about 1-1/4″ thick. Put on a baking sheet and put in oven for 15 minutes, flipping bread once, half way through. Take it out and let it cool. Alternately, take your bread out of the wrapper and let it get stale for a few days. The baking works better though, but if your bread is already stale, there you are.

Mix milk, salt, cinnamon, egg yolks brown sugar and your choice of the eau de vie, bourbon or vanilla in a medium bowl. Add melted butter by preference. It is not necessary but does add a bit of richness to the flavor. If you use non-fat milk I would definitely add 2 tablespoons, one for 2% and personally I would still add one with whole milk. If you are not using Challah, which is a rich, buttery bread, I would perhaps add 3 tablespoons melted butter and definitely two,.

Pour the liquid in a 9×13 baking dish. Put slices of challah in and let soak 15-20 seconds per side (both sides) and move to another sheet to sit. Let the bread sit for 2-3 minutes before putting on griddle.

Cook the french toast on a griddle or non-stick pan until golden brown.

Serve with a simple

blueberry compote:

2 cups fresh blueberrys or 1-3/4 cups frozen Wyman’s Wild blueberries.
1/3 cup water
1 teaspoon corn starch
3-4 tablespoons of Sugar in the Raw (Turbinado) or plain sugar
cook in heavy saucepan. Bring to a simmer over medium heat and cook approximately 10 minutes, until blueberries break down somewhat. Allow to cool to just warm.

Finally, a bit of ham, a half a grapefruit, and to kill your day,

Diamond Gin Fizzes.

Recipe is here at LiquorLocusts.

Anyway, I think you will find this an excellent and enjoyable recipe.

I know! I thought they all did, too!

This one comes from Twitter:

And, yeah, if you need a Sandra Lee fix today (remember, that Christmas episode is coming up!) here you go. Watch it and weep. Weep for our culture.

I love Thanksgiving turkey. It’s the only time in Los Angeles that you see natural breasts.

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Paula Deen on Dancing with Butter!!!

Happy Holidays, y’all! Here is a lovely little interview from Vanity Fair, in which that li’l pat of sunshine Paula Deen holds forth on Thanksgiving etiquette, doggy bowel movements and their relation to the Survival Principle, and the infamous butter scene in Last Tango in Paris. You must read it. No, you MUST, y’all.

A snippet:

Do you have a Thanksgiving recipe that’s made entirely out of butter?

Just butter? I don’t know. I guess you could unwrap a stick of butter and pour a bottle of jam over it. That might be tasty. But I wouldn’t want to serve it to my family at Thanksgiving.

You are the Butter Queen, right?

Yeah, I have been called that. I do love butter. I don’t care what you’re fixin’, butter makes everything taste better.

I’m assuming your butter enthusiasm has nothing to do with the movie Last Tango in Paris.

I don’t think so. Do they eat a lot of butter in that film?

Well, they don’t eat it exactly.

What did they do with it?

[Long pause.] Uh… I don’t think I know how to explain it without embarrassing both of us.

Is it something dirty? [Laughs.]

You could say that, sure.

Does it have something to do with how your wife got pregnant?

Actually, no. You have the wrong … It’s a different, you know… It’s lower down on the … [Long pause.] Wow, this is amazing. You’ve actually turned the tables on me. I’m flummoxed!

Well honey, you’re the one who brought it up.

Here’s what I can tell you. Marlon Brando used butter in a slightly more intimate way than you do on your Food Network shows.

Ooooh. Well I will definitely check that out.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to awkwardly change the subject.

If you need to.

I think that poor interviewer has the vapors!

Like buttah

Hip Hop Turkey is pardoned.

Let me ask you seriously: what would your Thanksgiving turkey have to do to win a pardon from you? I mean, NO TURKEY FOR YOU THIS YEAR. You’ll make do with sliders, or Filet o’ Fish sandwiches, or tofurkey instead of that lovely, lovely bird with the tasty, tasty drumsticks. You still get the stuffing (dressing, technically), the mashed potatoes, the rest of the holiday hooplah, but no turkey.

For me to go without turkey, that bird would have to…get this man to call me. And not collect, either.

Well, this just does not look good.

ZOMG, this means one of two things. Either cases upon cases of Spam were airlifted to the grounded cruise ship and NOT fed to people, or the crew ate it and substituted something else pink, glistening, and meat-like. Which reminds me, has anyone seen the navigator?

These days it seems like everybody, no matter how unqualified, has a diet plan nowadays, but frankly, this Andy Warhol New York City diet sounds like a winner to me. You could always count on Andy to get to the heart of the American experience while simultaneously hovering outside of the mainstream.

…he explained in his 1975 book The Philosophy of Andy Warhol that he stayed thin by ordering things he disliked in restaurants — even fashionable and expensive ones such as La Grenouille. While his companions ate, he picked at his plate and then had the food wrapped up so he could leave it somewhere for a homeless person to find.

Nowadays, of course, he could just hand it to the two or three people sitting on the sidewalk directly outside the restaurant, or call FoodRunners or the NYC equivalent. Then Andy would go off to Chock Full O’ Nuts and order a cream cheese and nut sandwich on date-nut bread just like he always did, and which is, if you think about it, quite respectable and delicious as long as you steer clear of cheap Chinese walnuts. I’ll take mine with hazelnuts, please, to go.

“Progress is very important and exciting in everything except food.”
Andy Warhol