Can y’all believe it? This young girl right here did her first Facebook live segment for the Food Network yesterday! In all honesty, it was super stressful but also really fucking awesome at the same time. Yesterday I experienced first hand that there’s a huge difference between shooting a cooking video, editing it down to perfection, and then presenting it in tip top shape to your audience that makes it a breeze. This, on the other hand, was a different beast. Continue reading
Is that it? Is summer really almost over? I feel like it didn’t even exist. Yeah sure, there were a few heat waves that could have probably helped me cook a grilled cheese on the sidewalk (shit, why didn’t I really do that?) but other than that, I just feel like it zoomed by faster than Miley Cyrus’s innocence. I didn’t even get a chance to go on a tropical vacation that I’d been mentally stoking myself up for. All that hope’s not good for a girl, ya know? But obviously there’s no need to complain. Summer’s in NYC are the shit! Every weekend there’s these awesome events going on, the beach is just a quick train ride away, and everyone is down to DAY DRINK all the time – which might just be my favorite thing in the world. And along with my favorite thing in the world, comes one of my favorite things to eat in the world. T’wasted or not.
I crave Mexican food approximately every single day but summer is definitely the season of the torta. Whether you’re at the beach having a picnic, starving at 4 o’clock in the morning in-the-middle-of-nowehre-Bushwick, or trying to eat away your emotions alone on a crappy Thursday – it’s the absolute perfect sandwich next to the GC. Greasy, fatty, and satisfying, this sandwich hits all the perfect notes. But my one issue with tortas are that the quality of the meat is always devastatingly questionable. After a few weird bites, I started noticing that the “pork” that once tasted so good after a few Bud heavies is just cubes of fat. Which I guess is totally cool if I am in the FEED ME OR I’M GOING TO KILL MYSELF phase but I’m not always like that so I wanted to remake it – in veggie form.
That’s where this sandwich comes in – It’s like a torta and a grilled cheese took too many tequila shots, made some questionable decisions, and nine months later had a baby that they were surprisingly very proud of. Spicy chipotle aioli, creamy Cedar Grove Monterey Jack cheese, some avocado, corn relish, and cilantro all pile up on a roll to make one of my favorite Mexican treats. And because it’s still my I’m-obsessed-with-Wisconsin-cheese month, there’s another awesome giveaway from Culture magazine and you can win a whole years subscription. Just enter on my Facebook!
So here we go…
Ingredients:
-Monterey Jack Cheese (I used Cedar Grove)
-1 half avocado
-1-2 tbsp corn relish (I used Trader Joes)
-a few sprigs of cilantro
-1 torta or portuguese roll
-2 tbsp of chipotle mayo
(Just combine regular ole mayo with a little bit of the liquid that comes in the canned chipotle peppers from the store…make sense?)
Because Tortas (or Portuguese rolls) are kind of fluffy and are almost impossible to make into something that can be easilly grilled, you’re going to have to use my all time fav method to fix this problem – the flippity flop. Have no idea what I’m talking about? Didn’t think so because I just made that up so let me explain. It’s basically when you shave off the top of the bread so that you can a nice, even surface. See?
Once you do that, smear it with some chipotle aioli and if no one’s looking lick the knife.
Now add some of Wisconsin’s finest Monterey Jack from Cedar Grove. It’s buttery, creamy, and has a hint of tartness. It melts really nicely too, I think I took about a thousand pictures of it on my phone as it was happening. Obsessed?
Then gently lay on some avocado slices. If you dont like hot avocados, you can add them at the end once the sandwich is done. OK!?
Now it’s time for some corn relish. I got this jar at Trader Joe’s but you can totally make some with this recipe or find some at your local farmer’s market. It’s sweet, tangy, and citrusy and I totally dig it.
And a few sprigs of cilantro on top…
Now add the remaining cheese and the other piece of bread.
Here comes the crazy part – instead of using butter as your fat, smear on some chipotle aioli! Yeah, total fat kid style over here, but believe me it makes it SO good!
Let it cook for a few minutes on each side until (…you know
how this goes) it gets all crispy and perfect. And let it sit for a few minutes before cutting into it so the cheese can glue everything together.
So as we bid adieu to our favorite white cutoffs, let’s all just get really excited that we can finally be in our kitchens without going into a heat stroke. And don’t forget to “like” Culture Cheese‘s FB page to enter the contest!!
xoxo,
GCS
And if you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, you might know that I’ve been in Thailand for the last week. So I’m about to blow your mind with even more crazy spicy Thai-inspired sandwiches. If I can only figure out what cheese to use. So in the meantime, here’s a nice little breakfast grilled cheese that I eat on the reg when I’m hungover. Now that I’m thinking about it, whenever I eat a grilled cheese for brekkie it’s usually when I’m hungover. Yikes. Maybe i need to cool down with that, Errrrrr. But yeah, this has become a staple with some of my buddies at Mast Brothers Chocolate. I make it for them when they’re hungover, too. See, I’m not the only one, Mom.
Oh, and I might just be listening to some weird, poppy, bass-saturated, glitch hop ‘ish so things might get a little weird. I feel weird. I don’t know why I’m listening to this, I can’t stop, I’m stuck. Help.
Here’s what you’ll need, yo.
Ingredients:
-1/2 ripe avocado, sliced
– 2 slices of multi grain bread
– 1 medium boiled egg
– 1/2 tbs of sriracha
– 1 cup of Casa Bolo Melange cheese
or any other Wisconsin Gouda
– 2 pats of butter (not pictured)
Before I left for Thailand, I represented Wisconsin Cheese at this year’s IACP convention. To show off their tasty cheeses, I grilled up about a million little grilled cheese sandwiches for all the convention goers and at the end of the day they gave me a cooler full of their finest cheeses. Yes, an entire cooler full of cheese. Just looking at it made me gain 10 pounds. Or maybe it was that I ate about half of it before I left. I don’t know, but anyway, that’s how I got this Caso Bolo Melange.
This cheese is totally cray. It’s made using three different types of milk – goat, cow, and sheep. Yes, all this goodness is mixed into one lovely, wax-sealed wedge of complex goodness. And best of all, it’s from Wisconsin. If you can’t find this type of cheese, I think Gouda would work really nicely or a mild cheddar such as Otter Creek’s Spring blend from Wisconsin. Whichever fromage you decide to use, make sure to grate it up and lay a nice hefty handful on top of one slice of bread.
Then pile on half an avocado and eat the rest. Salt it. Right now.
The avocado is important though. For some reason I think its got ultimate healing powers. It’s like nature’s butter, ya know? Creamy, soft, green, HEALTHY. Imagine Old Greg saying that but with a ripe little avocado instead of a bottle of Bailey’s.
Eggy, eggy, eggy time. Crumble up one medium boiled egg and lay it on top. If you’ve never had an egg like this before, it’s just like a hard boiled one but with a runnier center. You can do it by gently boiling the eggs for around 8 minutes. I like them better this way. Trust me, I think you will, too.
Drizzle some sriracha all over it. Bathe it in sriracha. Do it.
Did you know that the red rooster sauce you normally think of as sriracha isn’t the real stuff? Apparently a Vietnamese company took over the Thai recipe and mass produced it to the states. The rooster sauce is not what Thai people traditionally use, it’s actually this stuff – Sriraja Panich. I brought back a bottle but I haven’t opened it yet. I’ll tell you all about it in a new post soonsies!
Slap on the rest of the cheese and lay a slice of bread on top and get ready for grilling.
If your butter is soft then smear it on the bread and if it’s not, then just put a dab in your grill pan and turn it to medium heat. Let it melt for a hot second and then add your sammie in. Wait ’til it gets all golden and crispy-looking and wait for the cheese to get gooey and then flip it! Remember to butter both sides, though. Duh. You know that. Why did I even mention it?
Let it rest for a second, chug a glass of water, pop some advils, and put your sunglasses on. Maybe even put on some makeup. I don’t know, whatever makes you feel better. When you come back, the sandwich should be cool enough to eat and the cheese should be the perfect temperature. Chow down my friends.
So I hope my long break of not posting won’t deter any of you from checking the website more often. I’ve got three more sandwiches in the vault so it should be one post a week from now on. That is unless I get sucked into the computer or some West Coast electronic version of Hackers from the nintendo generation. Wait, what did I just say?
xoxo,
GCS
