This Grilled Cheese does have a distant relationship with this past Passover holiday. Y' see, in this home (as in many others) we end those dietary restrictions with the antithesis to “Kosher for Pesach” ... the pizza!
Some of us, the less devout, may hold to the rules of Kosher for Passover but not, even, keep kosher outside of the holiday. We represent the entire mix of people from the utlra-orthodox to the entirely secular.
In this household we fall in the middle. We are relatively secular. We keep mostly but not entirely kosher style outside of holidays. We don't consume pork (the obvious one – but largely because we've lost the taste for it). We gave up lobster (one of my favourite seafoods) out of respect for my heritage. Outside of this, we eat mostly like everyone else. In our case, we even have exceptions to the “milk 'n meat” rule. We won't eat beef in cream sauce, for example BUT... our weakness is pizza so, on that day, after more than a week of not being permitted to enjoy any bread, let alone pizza... Let's just say, “We had pizza with cheese and beef salami.”
So this pizza left some cheese and I was in a REAL grilled cheese kind of mood ... so I'd made a loaf of light whole wheat bread with cracked wheat kernels... and considering the amount of filling I anticipated stuffing into this prospective ... “snack”, I cut the bread a little thicker than I usually do, and I cut a few grape tomatoes (I like them in a deep dish pizza ;-) ... yes, I spend way too much time thinking “pizza”), and I added some cheddar (since there was a distinct mozzarella slant for the pizza). Of course, this being a pizza mix, it also had parmigiana and a bit of romano – what an amazing sandwich these flavours would make! So, out came the onion keeper and it sat on the counter where it was forgotten (sigh).
I heated up the skillet and buttered the outsides of the bread and in went the first slice – buttered side down
and I put down a nice layer of cheese. Normally, we would use slices but ... this was a “leftovers” sandwich!) and embedded the tomato slices into the cheese and topped up a little more cheese ... so there was “glue” on both sides of the tomato to hold it in place (I don't know how well that worked ... even though it was delish!) and down went the other slice of bread ... Butter Side “UP” (butter on the outside;-) ) ... and down went the weight (with a little push to set the sandwich ingredients together).
Now I've got this beautiful sandwich going at low heat – 'cause it's gonna take time to melt all that cheese in the middle ... and I look around, and open up the onion keeper and shave a few pieces off.
Oops! But I want that flavour in this sandwich so I gently lift the upper slice of bread, lay down the shaved onion (it's thin so it can get hot and soften) and, of course, more cheese 'cause you need “glue” to hold the onion in place!
The top piece goes back on (still buttered side up ;-) ) and the iron goes back and the cheese melts gently under the iron weight. After a few minutes, the sandwich gets “gently” flipped and we let the cheese on the other side of the sandwich melt ... and as it starts to ooze out from between the slices of bread we crank up the heat a bit to toast the bread a little. Eventually the sandwich gets flipped back.
And you let that side go, under the iron weight, until it's nice 'n golden-brown. And look – a cheesy, gooey sandwich ... and there's cheese left over. (I think this is going to happen again.)
OMG ... Juicy, luscious bites of sandwich, dripping with pockets of big tomato flavour and a hint of that sweet, red onion ... and the slightly hardened, fried cheese on the edges. I'm DEFINITELY going to do this again! (But with cheese slices instead :-D )
You can find a recipe for the bread we used at www.foodcult.com/breads.php
This document uses original images from: Galganov Associates\PROJECTS\FoodCult\