Home of the Grilled Cheese Sandwich
A quesadilla is a Mexican snack food made of cheese (and occasionally other ingredients) wrapped in uncooked masa (cornmeal dough) and fried, or cooked inside a corn, wheat or flour tortilla. The word comes from Spanish, and literally means “little cheesy thing” or “cheesy” (from …
When the mice are away, the cat will play. Let’s pretend for a second that I am a cat and my folks are the mice. Well, the mice are currently away celebrating their 35th anniversary (congrats to them), so the cat decided that he would …
In honor of Memorial Day, I decided that I was going to make a red, white and blue grilled cheese sandwich. The only problem is there really aren’t many blue ingredients in the wild. (There are, however, white ingredients, mozzarella, and red ingredients, red peppers.)
Blue food is a rare occurrence in nature. There are no leafy blue vegetables (blue lettuce?), no blue meats (blueburger, well-done please), and aside from blueberries and a few blue-purple potatoes from remote spots on the globe, blue just doesn’t exist in any significant quantity as a natural food color.
Consequently, we don’t have an automatic appetite response to blue. Furthermore, our primal nature avoids food that are poisonous. A million years ago, when our earliest ancestors were foraging for food, blue, purple and black were “color warning signs” of potentially lethal food. (learn more)
Since we have already learned about Mozzarella cheese, I thought I would do something different for this week’s cheese lesson. I present to you 10 Cheesy Facts About the Mozzarella Cheese That Came From Italy.
#1: Mozzarella cheese is produced from milk obtained through cows or water buffalos. It originated in Italy.
#2: In general, the color of fresh mozzarella cheese is white, but it may occasionally be slightly yellow, depending on the animal’s diet.
#3: Mozzarella cheese contains high amounts of moisture, so it’s important that it’s eaten fairly quickly after it’s made.
#4: The most common use of Mozzarella cheese is on pizzas and lasagna.
#5: Mozzarella cheese is often rolled up into balls of 80 to 100 grams.
#6: One popular variation of Mozzarella cheese is known as “stuffed Mozzarella.” This is a piece of Mozzarella cheese that has been stuffed with olives, ham and tomatoes.
#7: The word “Mozzarella” was first discovered in 1570 in a cookbook by Bartolomeo Scappi.
#8: A 100 gram ball of Mozzarella cheese contains 22 grams of protein and 22 grams of fat.
#9: Mozzarella cheese with a low moisture content can be refrigerated for up to one month before it starts turning bad.
#10: Mozzarella cheese is better for use on lasagna when it has been partially dried.
The Mozzarella cheese used in tonight’s grilled cheese sandwich was a nice, simple cheese that worked well by staying in the background, which let the blueberries and peppers move to the front.
I was able to choose my red ingredient right away, red pepper, and my white ingredient, Mozzarella cheese, but the blue ingredient really caught me off guard. As some of you may know, my favorite color is blue so it was somewhat disheartening to learn that there are only a small amount of blue ingredients.
The main one of course, has the color in its name, so I had to go with that one: blueberries. (Even if they are somewhat purple/black as well.) I have not really indulged in many blueberries in my life so this was an interesting experiment for me. I am all for trying something new, especially when it is something as common as blueberries.
I mixed up the small package of blueberries in a blender and only added a small bit of olive oil and voila, blueberry mixture. I am not sure I even needed the olive oil, but it seemed to turn out great. It was sweet and tasty. The blueberries had a nice tart taste to it that worked well on the grilled cheese. I also grilled the red peppers in a pan of olive oil, salt and pepper until I could see the grill marks. That was really it for the preparation of tonight’s grilled cheese. Simple but good, in my opinion. I did not want to do anything too fancy since I had two main ingredients in the peppers and blueberries. Finally, in order to keep my patriotic theme going, I placed the red peppers on the bread first, followed by the Mozzarella cheese and then finally the blueberry mixture. I could have gone the other way, but putting the sauce on the bottom would not have worked as well, in my opinion.
This grilled cheese reminds me of one of my favorite sandwiches, my Valentine’s Day Strawberry/Mango grilled cheese sandwich, as both grilled cheeses had fruit mixtures (strawberry/mango vs blueberry). That grilled cheese I loved, as it was a great one, while on the other hand, I only liked tonight’s grilled cheese. As seems to be the theme lately, my sandwiches have been good but have not really crossed the threshold of great. Maybe I am being too hard on myself, but as I create more of these wonderful grilled cheese, I have more to compare to.
Depending on the bite, I could really taste the blueberry mixture or really taste the red peppers. Unfortunately, I do not think that the flavors blended well together, they only competed with each other. The bread was great and one that I have used before. And you can never go wrong with Mozzarella cheese. I am just unsure of the combination of red peppers and blueberries. If you have any suggestions on what other red ingredient you might have used, instead of strawberries since I already used them, please leave them in the comment section below. I would love to hear them, especially if I revisit this recipe for July 4th.
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I didn’t say it earlier, but I should definitely it say it here: Thank you veterans, those that are with us and those that are not, for all that you have done to help keep this country and world safe. I greatly admire everything you have done and everything you will do. Thanks!
I am not sure how to transition from that to wrapping up my grilled cheese, so I apologize. Let me just say that tonight’s sandwich might have been better if I went either the red pepper or blueberry route, not both. I just think they didn’t work as well together as I would have hoped. Not bad, just not great. Here is to next week’s sandwich!
A couple weeks ago I requested that people email and let me know which restaurants serve the best grilled cheese sandwiches. What local eatery serves a grilled cheese that they could eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. What I was expecting was fans of restaurants …
Before discussing tonight’s sandwich, I must first explain tonight’s subject and why in fact I love white, square dishes. Ever since I have started creating a new grilled cheese each and every Sunday night, I have been using coral dishes that can be seen in …
NPR recently posted a new blog entry for their Kitchen Window series and it just happens to feature the wonderful grilled cheese sandwich. Yum!
This blog post would have been great when I was writing my History of Grilled Cheese Sandwich entry, but oh well. Besides the wonderful recipes that NPR and Susan Russo suggest, and they are wonderful, I just had to post this wonderfully amazing stat.
The love affair continues. Americans eat a whopping 2.2 billion grilled cheese sandwiches per year, according to the NDP Group Inc., a consumer research firm.
Wow! I think I account for 1 billion of those! Keep cooking and keep eating America. (And then send me the recipe!)
I hear that today is Mother’s Day and as a son, I should be doing something special for my mother. That is the yearly ritual, right? As if I don’t appreciate my mom the other 364 days of the year, today I am supposed to …
When I started the I Love Grilled Cheese feature, I thought there would be tons of people to interview, and tons of restuarants doing amazing things with the simple but awesome grilled cheese sandwich. Well, I still think that, I just can’t find them. Googling …
Breakfast and by extension hash browns, is a meal that I love. The same can be said for grilled cheese sandwiches. Therefore, I thought why not combine a part of breakfast (hash browns) with my favorite sandwich? It was a no-brainer…
ingredients:
As I write this, I am eating one more slice of cheese, simply because it was that good by itself. On the hash brown grilled cheese, it was great as well. Very yummy!
Also known as Monterey Jack, California Jack, or Sonoma Jack, this buttery, semi-soft cheese was created by 19th century cheese maker David Jacks. It can be made from whole, skimmed, or partially skimmed cow’s milk, and its texture and flavor varies with maturity. Unaged Jack, ripened from one week to one month, is mild and high in moisture, with excellent melting qualities. Aged or dry Jack, ripened for about 10 months, is hard, rich, nutty and fruity. It’s most often used as a grating cheese atop pasta and salads…learn more about American cheeses.
This cheese was on sale at my local market and so I said okay, I will try it. I am very glad that I did. It is a very soft, and creamy cheese that has a distinct taste that I just can’t put my finger on. If it weren’t for the fact that I might get sick, I would eat the rest of the block. Maybe I just found a great variety, or I just never knew that I liked Monterey Jack cheese. I am glad I know now.
When I was trying to think of a title for this blog, I realized that my good ol’ friend The Daily Spud would probably have loved this grilled cheese. I mean, spuds are the base for all good hash browns, right? (The old blog title was Spuds Are Great.)
A quick note about the bread courtesy The Cook’s Thesaurus.
Pugliese bread = pan Pugliese Pronunciation: pool-yee-AY-zee Notes: This simple, crusty bread hails from Puglia, Italy, and is great for making sandwiches or dipping into olive oil. Some producers flavor it with olives or cheese. Substitutes: Italian bread
I am not much a whole wheat/multigrain bread person, but the taste was not overpowering and worked perfectly for tonight’s grilled cheese. I might even eat the leftover bread by itself.
I have a done a breakfast sandwich with a fried egg, so tonight I thought I would try another breakfast food: hash browns. Let me say, my idea was ingenious. If I felt like cutting some more red peppers/green peppers/white onions and shredding more potatoes I would have made a second sandwich, but I was not that motivated.
The star of tonight’s grilled cheese, the hash browns, not me, included red/green peppers, white onion, garlic, salt/pepper to taste and Idaho potatoes. They smelled great even before putting them in a wok pan and frying them up with a mix of olive and canola oil. I cooked them in two batches just so that I could make sure that they were cooked perfectly. It worked out very well. We used two medium sized Idaho potatoes for two people and that made the correct amount although some may like more. It seemed like the potatoes shrunk, which makes sense since they are very watery, so keep that in mind if you decide to make this recipe for yourself.
It may be odd, but the sous chef and I did debate as to the order of the ingredients on the sandwich: bread > cheese > hash browns or bread > hash browns > cheese. I am not sure if there is a true difference between the two, but we sure thought so, so we went bread > hash browns > cheese and that seemed to taste great.
After completely cooking the hash browns, we did pat them down with a paper towel to absorb most of the grease. This did help, but we could have possibly done more. However, when that is the biggest complaint of the evening, I think the grilled cheese was pretty great!
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I like breakfast and all foods associated with it, at least all breakfast foods I can eat, so maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise that I liked tonight’s hash brown grilled cheese. Either way, I would highly recommend that you try this one on your own. It was a great mix of taste and flavor stuffed between two slices of great bread. All of the ingredients worked very well together and created one great grilled cheese.
Let me start off by saying that if you haven’t read the first installment of I Love Grilled Cheese, I would definitely recommend you read it now! One of the first times I googled “grilled cheese,” I noticed a result for a restaurant specializing in …