Alright, so what you're going to need is this...

Ingredients!

- 2 slices of sourdough bread
- 2 pads of real salted butter
- 1 tbs caramelized onions
- 4 roasted asparagus tops (or more, depending
    on how big your bread is)
- a few slices of laguiole affine cheese!




So to avoid any controversy about linking other people's recipes to my site, I'll tell you how I made the roasted asparagus.  First snap the bottoms off the asparagus and turn the oven up to 350 degrees.  Now lay down your asparagus and drizzle about a tablespoon of olive oil on top, then sprinkle a pinch of salt, a pinch of pepper, and the juice of one lemon slice.  Roll em, and pat em, and mark em with a G, put it in the oven for Gussy and me! (sorry, i had to put that in there for him) Ok, anyways, it'll take about 8 minutes to cook then take it out and you're ready to go.

So now that you've got all your ingredients ready, (refer back to the "midnight soldiers" post if you need the caramelized onions recipe, or google it, whatevs) place a few slices of the laguiole on the bread.  This cheese was super melty and delicious and kind of reminded me of a softer, creamier parmigiano-reggiano.


Ooohh la la, next put down some of the asparagus, or as Gus would say BAY BAY BAY BAY!!!


Now it's time for the caramelized onions.


Then top it off with some more laguiole. MEEP!


Almost done, now just put on the top slice of bread and get your mind ready to be blown.  seriously. get ready.


Once it's all put together, butter the bread and turn the heat up to medium. 


Then when the skillet's hot, put it in the pan and flip it when it gets golden brown.  If the cheese isn't melting as quick as it's browning, just turn down the heat and it'll happen.  My cheese was room temperature so it worked perfectly for me, but I thought I'd throw that out there in case yours was cooooold.


When it's nice and pretty on both sides, take it off the stove and slice it immediately!!


Little Gussy isn't eating grilled cheese yet, but his mommy, daddy and I really dug this little GC and I'm sure he will too... one day...  AHHH! can't wait.

Oh and this post is "Rated PG"
in honor of my special little friend, Mr. Augustus Chi

Bay Bay Bay Bay ---> that means xoxo in Gus talk,

GCS

About a month ago I moved out of the city to Williamsburg.  Although I miss the convenience of being close to whole foods (specifically my cute cheese guy) and a million other little gourmet markets, I found one of the best cutest cheese shops EVER.  Bedford Cheese Shop is super amazing and the staff is lovely and helpful and adorable.  Yes, adorable omg i melt. Oh and they let me bring my lil pup Olly in while i'm shopping around and I love that!  The cheese they recommended was amazing and i just so happened to make a grilled cheese out of it. Weird right? HA.

So this is what I used!


 Ingredients

- Sharfe Maxx cheese!
- 1 cooked chicken apple sausage
- 4 pieces sliced french bread
- 2 pads of real salted butter





So this cheese def has a really funky ripe smell.  Some of you might be turned off from eating this because it smells like ass but i'm not kidding when i say this stuff is delicious.  It is super rich but, very smooth and cream cream CREAMY. It melts like a snowman in july (but not as watery if you didn't figure that out already).  Back to the recipe! It's not that complicated, but we'll begin by lying the cheese on the bread!


Now isn't that pretty? Now lay some of the chicken apple sausage down on two of the pieces.  Don't forget to cook it though, i don't want anyone dying from this extreme GC...


Ahh!! it just keeps getting better (that may also be because my friend Liam is staying with us and he has a super dope camera).  After that, put the ones without the sausage onto the ones with the sausage  and add some butter (not pictured - sorry when i'm hungry i can't really think straight).


So this cheese melts wonderfully but I wasn't sure how fast it would melt so I had my burner set to a medium heat. It worked pretty good. After they were buttered on one side I put them butter side down into the hot skillet.



You know that beutiful brown that always happens and that I've mentioned on every.single.post? yeah that one... well once it gets there, flip it!


So melty and good so far.  I wish I had more cheese to make one right now but i don't. WaAaahHHHH! Enough of the cry baby bit though, once it's browned on both sides take it off the skillet it and eat it immediately!


If you live in the NYC area you should def check out this store.  I am in love, it's official.  Oh and if you don't, you can buy a cheese subscription and they'll mail you cheese each month! WHAT A GREAT GIFT IDEA! hint hint....

For your Health!

xoxo,

GCS

If you had to guess my second favorite food what do you think it would be? I'll give you a little hint, it's almost exactly like a grilled cheese but a wee bit different..... give up? Ok, alright, yeah fine i'll tell ya. The answer is mac n cheese! Surprised? haha I didn't think so but whatever.  Because I'm such a freak about cheese being melted on anything (and because my friends were wondering what the fuck i was thinking for not having posted this yet) I've combined my loves to create one special meal.  I know it's sexy but please don't do anything weird. k thanks.

So this sexy sammie is loaded with some serious goodness.


Ingredients:

-2 slices of brioche loaf
-2 pads real salted butter
-2 velveeta cheese singles
-1/2 cup left over cold mac n cheese (I used penne bc i thought it would be prettier for the sammie)
-1 tsp garlic salt



So you know how mac n cheese always gets gross after it gets cold? Well this sammie is a great solution to that problem. The first thing you'll do is to open the velveeta singles and lay one on a piece of bread.


After that you'll want to pile on the mac n cheese.  Make sure to make it sort of level so it can all cook evenly.  I, of course, was snacking on the penne the whole time but I managed to make it through with a one noodle high level and it worked perfectly.  If you were using different pasta I'm sure that it would work out just fine as well.


Super pretty right?! I'm getting hungry just making this post.  Anyway, back to the recipe.  Put the other piece of velveeta on top and eat the rest of the mac n cheese!


Almost done! Put the other piece of bread on top and turn the heat to medium and put on your pan to let it warm up.


Now that you've got it together and your skillet is heated up butter one side of the brioche and sprinkle half the garlic salt on top.  Then put it butter side down in the pan.


So I let mine cook for about a minute and a half on each side which allowed the cheese to melt, the mac n cheese to warm back up, and created a beautiful golden crust to encase this delicious gooeyness.

Because this bread is so high in fat (lots of eggs and butter) content it will brown really quickly so be careful and check it every once in a while.  After it gets nice and crusty on both sides remove it from the stove top and cut it immediately!


I hope that you're saturday night is just as exciting as mine.  You, the GC, and the mac n cheese will definitely make one hell of a threesome.  Enjoy and use protection.

xoxo,

GCS

Wow it's been a long time! This month has been crazy, not only did i accidently eat sea urchin (I'm allergic to shellfish...yikes!) on my 24th birthday but I also moved to Williamsburg to a super cute apartment with a lot more room and a waaayyyyy cuter kitchen.  In addition to this, some of my best friends came into the city to help me cope celebrate.  Along with them they brought me some super special grilled cheese ingredients which will be featured in this lovely sammie.

These ingredients were picked out by my besties Whitney and Sarah from thier local farmers market in the Hamptons.

 Ingredients:
- 2 tbs extra virgin hot pepper infused olive oil
- 2 slices sourdough
- 3/4 cup of sag harbor's finest mecox cheddar
- 1/2 cup of roasted artichokes hearts
  (to do this i got a bag of frozen artichoke hearts, sprinkled them with the hot pepper olive oil,  some salt, pepper and garlic powder then tossed them all together and put them in the oven for 40 minutes on 400 degrees)



I began by grating the cheddar and then sprinkled half of the cheese onto one side of the bread.


Then I evenly lined up the roasted artichokes hearts on top of the cheese.


Next I sprinkled the remaining cheddar on top of the artichoke hearts.


After all the ingredients were stacked upon each other, I put the last piece of bread on top and heated up my skillet to medium high.


Now that the sammie was complete and the burner's hot, i drizzled 1 tbs of the  olive oil into the pan and put the GC in.  Then I drizzled the other tbs of olive oil on top of the GC.


I let it cook for about 2 minutes on each side until it was that nice golden beautiful brown that makes these sammie's oh so delicious.


Once the color was even on both sides I took it off the skillet and served it immediately!


Thanks Whit and Sarah for coming to the city and bringing me these super sweet ingredients.  Oh, and don't forget to have some water on hand because this GC has a kick from that hot pepper oil.  Enjoy!


xoxo,

GCS

When I see figs start to arrive at the grocery I get super excited, not just normal excited, but more of a OMG FIG TIME!! excitement.  I don't know what it is about these little succulent fruits but something about them makes me finally believe and feel like summer is here!  To my amusement I found my first carton of figs this week and had to involve them in a GC.
Here is the summer lovin'.


Ok so besides the obvious set up for figs as the main ingredient - here's what else was involved.



Ingredients:

- 2 sliced figs!
- 2 tbs tupelo honey
- 1/6 wheel of brie
- 2 pads real butter
- one small loaf of fresh french bread
- 2 tbs pinenuts
- tinfoil (unless you're brave)



The first thing I did was to cut the bread down the middle and line the brie on both sides.  This cheese was room temperture which worked out perfectly bc it sort of melted to the bread.


After that I lined the figs down one side of the bread.  Depending on the width of your bread you can line them or just randomly put them down.



Then I drizzled the honey on top of the figs so that the pine nuts would stick and not fall off.


Then it was pine nut time!


Once all the ingredients were on, I went ahead and closed up my sammie!


At this point I was a little hesitant to put it straight on to the pan because it was really big and I thought it would be impossible to flip so I wrapped it in tinfoil.  Then I turned on the burners and got my press hot and the skillet hot using medium heat.


I let it cook for about a minute and a half on each side to melt the cheese. I also put the press on the sammie to help bond the cheese to everything.


After this step I opened up the GC and it looked great.  I could have probably left it as is because it was nice and melty and crisp, but I went ahead and applied butter to each side to get it extra crisp.


Then I set it on the skillet and let it brown for about a minute on each side.  Nothing fell out because the tin foil helped everything melt and stay in place! Yay!


Once it was a pretty golden brown I took it off the skillet and let it sit for about a minute.  The figs kind of fell apart from the heat but it ended up looking like this...



Although it's not the prettiest of the GC"s on this blog, this sammie will please your pallet and is light enough to enjoy in the sun! Happy summer!!

xoxo,

GCS

One of my good friends and fellow grilled cheese enthusiasts, Christian Torres, came and visited the city last week.  Torres is an amazing photographer who resides in Atlanta, Georgia... AND he just so happened to make a nifty exchange with me.  I agreed to make him lots of GC's if he agreed to use his photography skills to make my blog look a little prettier.  He agreed and these are the lip-smacking results!

We got really creative when we were thinking of new concoctions. After hours days of debating we finally settled on the following ingredients:


- 2 slices of french bread
- 1 tbs olive oil
- 1 handful of shredded gruyere
- 1 handful of shredded swiss
- a few fresh basil leaves
- however much calabrese salami you like :)




This one begins like most of the other sammie's on my site... Gather ingredients and sprinkle half of the cheese on one slice of bread.  Remember to try and center it around the middle so it won't ooze out and burn the cheese.


Next, place the salami on top of the cheese. Oh and don't be shy, feel free to stack it as high as you like!



 Ok, now sprinkle the remaining cheese on top of the pile.  Remember to keep that cheese centered because this is turning into a big boy.


Done?? K, now put his top hat on.  Isn't that a good lookin'?


Now here's the tricky part:  Because this is so big you're going to want to be really careful when transfering this pup to the the skillet.  If you're confident enough, go ahead and heat the skillet to medium and drizzle some olive oil in the pan.  You'll also want to use a weight if you have one on hand to try and smush the sammie and help it all stick together.



 If any of the cheese falls out, don't worry, just scoop it up with your spatula to avoid that nasty burnt taste. Once it starts to heat up, put the press on top of this baby and wait a few minutes until it turns golden brown on the bottom.


Hot and crusty like the one below? Flip it over and try to equal out the color.  If not, you can put the press back on top to lend a helping hand.


After it's nice and golden on both sides, take the GC off the stove top and slice it immediately! You're going to want to do this because gruyere and swiss are firmer cheeses. Unlike softer cheeses like brie or tallegio, once these cheeses melt, they create a glue rather than a cheesey ooze.


Also, if you're a dipper like I am,  try this sammie with some yellow mustard and enjoy!


So if you end up making this delicious GC and/or enjoy these badass photo's you should really check out Christian's blog.  You can find it at http://tuckedintanktop.blogspot.com.  Thanks again Torres! You da bombbbbbbb <3

xoxo,

GCS