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 pepperLayer 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.
Well, at least they’re using real cheese and not Velveeta.
Comment by aurumgirl — January 19, 2011 @ 6:11 am
And yet it sounds worse than a velveeta grilled sandwich. That sounds horrible.
Comment by Erik Nabler — January 19, 2011 @ 10:26 am
I don’t think grilling a Velveeta sandwich is even possible. It’d all bleed out the sides in a synthetic tsunami like the tears of Charo.
Comment by raincoaster — January 20, 2011 @ 5:36 pm
Good Metaphor. I, however, feasted on Velveeta sandwiches during a misguided youth. I think the key was using Wonderbread, made with some petro-chemical, that bonded to the Velveeta like epoxy.
Comment by Erik Nabler — January 20, 2011 @ 5:57 pm
But…grilled? Really? Maybe Velveeta is sort of like Flubber, and the more heat you apply to it the solider it gets?
Comment by raincoaster — January 20, 2011 @ 8:06 pm
Actually, having been raised on Velveeta Grilled Cheese sandwiches… The entire idea is to get as much butter as possible involved. The outer surfaces should be buttered thickly. If the butter is too hard then just apply pats of butter to the bread, the heat will melt them eventually. Cut the Velveeta around 3/8’s inch thick and grill. The processed cheese food product does melt and the butter adds just the right amount of additional oil to the sandwich. (NEVER margarine!) Make sure your supply of Pro-Active is adequate.
Comment by Jennie — January 23, 2011 @ 11:52 pm