With the Passover holiday continuing, tonight, I replaced “normal bread” with our lovely friend matzoh. Even with having to eat it for 8 days straight every year, it is starting to grow on me. It seems that most Jews dread this holiday simply because of the lack of food options, but it hasn’t bothered me in awhile. Plus tonight’s grilled cheese added a nice challenge that I was willing to face head on, especially when charoset is included.
ingredients:
- Fresh Apples + Walnuts + Cinnamon + White Wine = Charoset
- Walnuts
- Brie
- Matzoh

the cheese: brie
Starting this week, before writing about the actual grilled cheese, I am going to discuss the cheese of the night. While eating the past 10 sandwiches (yes, 10 sandwiches), I felt like I was learning more about the bread than the cheese. With the help of ILoveCheese.co.uk, (yes, that is a real web site), I will educate both you and me about the featured cheese.
One of the world’s greatest cheeses and the most famous from France, Brie is a soft-ripened cow’s milk cheese named after the historic French region where it originated. The elegant cheese is characterized by a smooth, edible, white downy rind, and a creamy rich, buttery interior. Very soft and savory, Brie practically oozes at the peak of ripeness, displaying earthy mushroom overtones and a slight hint of ammonia…learn more
Prior to creating and eating tonight’s grilled cheese, I took a moment to sample the Brie cheese and write down my thoughts, which are pretty inline with the above description. The kind that was purchased yesterday, because of the holiday (Easter), was very smooth and creamy and had a distinct taste, maybe a nuttiness flavor. Either way, it was delish. It would have been great simply with some crackers as a dessert or even just a snack. I would have been okay with it! Anyway, onto the grilled cheese…

thoughts
As I created tonight’s grilled cheese, I obviously tried to stick with the Passover theme.

The spread/filling of the grilled cheese is a play on charoset, which my mom’s recipe includes for apples, walnuts, cinnamon and red wine mixed together. She makes it chunky but it appears that it can be more of a paste. In my creation, we used a white wine, but only as a liquid, and blended the charoset mixture until it was very fine. I placed this charoset spread on top of the matzoh and Brie cheese. Then I added some larger chunks of walnuts, put the top piece of matzoh on and placed it in the oven. It was as simple as that.

On the surface, I was excited. The Brie cheese was fantastic and so was the charoset mixture. However, something got lost in translation as the grilled cheese was put together and cooked. I did create it twice and in the second version, I added more cheese and cooked it a little while longer but I was still somewhat “eh” to it.

On the other hand, my father thought it was great and ate the whole grilled cheese. In my first version, when I could taste the brie, the sandwich was out of this world, however, I didn’t taste the walnuts too much. Plus, I believe the charoset mixture needed something but I can’t put my finger on exactly what was missing. Then there is the matzoh, which is just a cracker that has no leavening agent in it.
Unfortunately, this grilled cheese and matzoh in general, is not very photogenic so I apologize for the lack of sandwich creation photos.
the grilled cheese:
[metaslider id=8050]
charoset & matzoh grilled cheese: B
If my dad were writing this review, there would definitely be a different slant, a more positive vibe. However he is not, and therefore there is a little hesitation in my “voice.” It was a great try and if there were a few more tweaks, I believe this Passover grilled cheese could have been great. There was just something missing in the charoset and the Brie was not as powerful as I had hoped.
ingredients were purchased at…