It’s funny how just the sound of something can trigger a Pavlovian response. On this day off I was in bed doing my normal morning scan of Facebook (i.e. my social media curated RSS feed) when I see an article from April about Chef the Movie. While everyone was mesmerized by the by the Cubano, I was intent on recreating the grilled sandwich that Carl makes for his son.
Somehow I ended up on this youtube video salivating at the sounds of Jon Favreau crunching into the bread of the lust worthy grilled cheese sandwich. The brilliant crunching sound triggered a second quest to find the recipe. Shortly after originally watching the movie, I had worked myself into a fever pitch trying to find the Chef recipe, but the movie was too new, and I was only ever able to find the recipe for the Cubano. On this day, I was able to find a recipe that might do this hunt justice.
Walked across the street to the store to buy all the ingredients.
Ingredients
- 2 slices of white bread, sourdough or ciabatta work nicely
- 1/4 cup grated Parmigiano Reggiano
- 1/4 cup grated aged Cheddar (white or orange)
- 1/2 cup grated Swiss Gruyere
- 1 tablespoon of unsalted butter
- 1 tablespoon of olive oil
Method
- Butter one side of each slice of bread
- Heat the olive oil in frying pan until hot, swirling it to cover the surface of thepan
- Place into the pan buttered side down one slice of bread, turning the heat to medium
- Pile up grated cheeses on the bread
- Place second slice of bread on top of cheese, buttered side up
- Cook over medium heat until the bottom slice of bread is golden
- Flip sandwich over and cook until other side is golden
Butter makes everything better.
It’s getting hot in hurr.
Butter side down.
Stack ’em.
If you have it I would add a little truffle salt, since my sandwich wasn’t as salty as I would have liked it to be. Or you could also serve this with tomato soup. The real test was biting into the bread, and the anticipation of the Pavlovian crunch. Ended up using a loaf of ciabatta, which I made slices about half an inch thick. It was absolutely perfect.
En fin.
