Guest Blogger Alert! Wooooooo!! I've never done this before so I'm super stoked to introduce my first guest blogger - Jordan Kinley.  I met Jordan a few weeks ago through my good buddy Andrew.  Although Jordan lives in Portland, he was in New York working with his film company Into The Woods. Within the first five minutes of meeting, we started talking about grilled cheese sandwiches (typical, i know) and Jordan proceeded to blow my mind with a little concoction he invented one late and bent night. I knew this ridiculous GC needed to be on my blog so Jordan and his friend Miliken (both of Into the Woods) came over and taught me how to make it.  Watch the magic happen...

When explaining the sandwich, Jordan said "i don't know what else to say except that i first made it at 2am one night and it was one of those things that was either going to be really good or really bad. The first prototype was just Pop-Tarts and bacon. and that was good but i thought it was a little bit white-trash so i decided to class it up with brie and pear. The first few people i made it for were totally disgusted by the idea of it and laughed at me up until the first bite"

Class it up, was right.



Ingredients

- 2 cinnamon sugar Pop-Tarts
- 2 slices of pear
- 4 pieces of organic maple bacon
- 4 slices of brie






The way you make this grilled cheese is just as unique as the ingredients he chose.  The first thing you'll want to do is to start to pan-fry the bacon.  Put your heat on medium-low and lay the bacon in there. 


You'll want to crisp the bacon up on both sides but right before it' done you'll want to lay the Pop-Tarts on top (frosting side up) of the cooked bacon.  Jordan recommends flipping the Pop-Tarts onto the frosting side at the very last moment and grilling it for about 30 seconds because of how quickly it melts. 


After you've grilled both sides, you'll want to add the sliced brie onto the frosting side of the Pop-Tarts.  Because brie is such a soft cheese, it melts pretty quickly so it should only take about another minute or two before you'll need to take everything out of the pan.


After you've scooped out the 'tarts, it'll be time to add the sliced pear to one side of the sandwich. 

Look here's Jordan!

I had candied bacon for the first time at Egg in Williamsburg a few months ago. It was the most delicious and orgasmic meat I've ever had and I couldn't get enough of this stuff! So obvs I've been thinking about it ever since then. Finally, enough was enough, I couldn't take it any longer - I just haaaddddd to make a grilled cheese with this stuff.  This morning I ended up going to the Union Square Greenmarket and went crazy!  Here's the nom nom nom nom resultzzz.

Here's what I used!



Ingredients
 
-2 tabs salted butter
-1 tbs pickled jalapeno's
-a few slices of cave-aged cheddar cheese
-3 slices of organic candied bacon
-1 whole grain croissant sliced in half






This was the first time I made candied bacon but it was super easy.  I followed Paula Deen's recipe and I was very impressed!  It takes about twenty-five minutes to make this stuff so make sure you give yourself some time before you start to make this sweet and spicy grilled cheese.

So while I was at the Union Square Greenmarket I found this awesome cheese vendor - Bobolink Dairy & Bakehouse. They handcraft their cheese right out of New Jersey and they were super helpful.  I was talking to them about their cheese and I learned something interesting about white cheddar vs. orange cheddar.  I had no idea orange cheddar was just colored that way to mock the natural color of the cheese that's made in warm months. What it boils down to is that in the spring and summer months the animals have a diet that contains more beta-carotene and it makes the cheese a more orange-y color.  I guess that people started to color their cheddar in order to make it appear that it was produced during the tastiest months.  Crazy, HUH!?

Anyways, get yourself some local cheddar and slice it up and put it on your croissant!


After you get that done, try not to snack to much - break up your bacon and lay it on top! Try to lay it evenly so the sandwich will grill nice and pretty once it's all put together.


Now it's time for the pickled jalapeno's!  I love these things but I've had a hard time finding some at Whole Foods that I was really impressed with, so I  made my own sorta made my own.

I am absolutely obsessed with McClure's Pickles and they are made out of my lovely borough - Brooklyn!  I know they're expensive and every time I throw down $12 for a jar of 'em I sort of die a little inside, then I eat one and I'm totally revitalized (thank god for my mom, who buys them when she visits!)!  Whatevs though, they're so good, I think it's worth spending that much money because you can use the brine to pickle other things once you've devoured everything in the jar!

If you check their website they give you some recipe's. Once I read their McClure's Round Two I decided I had to do it. Wayyy, wayy, way too easy not to. So I threw in some pre-sliced jarred jalapeno's into the brine and two weeks later I had these little beaut's! And of course, I threw em on the GC.


Eeeek! I only added a few jalapeno's because I'm kind of a baby about the spiciness of these little suckers, but feel free to add however many you can eat!  Now put on some more cheese and you're almost done!


After that, you're going to want to slice off the top of the croissant top so you can eat an evenly grilled sandwich.


Now lay it on top!



You'll want to turn your stovetop to a very low heat and melt 1/2 tab of butter in your pan and put the sandwich in.  As it's heating up, take this time to butter the top slice.  I know the croissant is already super buttery, but this is still necessary to get that crispy golden goodness.


Golden brown yet?? Flip it!


Then when it's like that on both sides, take it out and serve it immediately!



This sandwich is not only buttery, creamy, smooth and crunchy BUT it's also sweet and spicy!  I think this grilled cheese is perfect for when you can't decide what you want because it's EVERYTHING YOU COULD EVER WANT! haha seriously though.

xoxo,

GCS

Halloween is right around the corner and i've been trying to come up with some spooky concoctions for a creepy new Halloween Grilled Cheese. Luckily for me, some of my amazing followers (thanks Susan and Mark!) hooked me up with some crazy green pesto gouda from Amsterdam.  It was really tasty and it works wonderfully for any late night munchie sesh's and/or Halloween parties!

You gotta see this cheese before we start.... When I was handed this, I was like "WHAT!".  I thought it was some weed laced cheese from some coffee shop that they smuggled in, but nah, it's just some serious dank cheese that is colored from the pesto.  Coulda been a good story though.


Anyways, now it's time for the other spooktacular ingredients:



- 4 large slices of gouda pesto verde
- 2 tabs of salted butter
- 4 sliced cloves of garlic (sauteed in olive oil)
- 1 tablespoon of julienned sun-dried tomatoes
- 2 slices of organic miche bread
- 2 ts garlic salt




Once you have everything out, go ahead and put on two slices of the cheese on top of a slice of bread.  Once it melts, it'll look like some goopy slimy mess. YAY!

When one of my readers asked for an Asian themed GC, it was all I could think about.  I was doing some research on Asian cheeses and didn't really find a whole lot because I was thinking that the sammie had be Southeast Asian. But alas, I found a loophole.  It's still considered Asian even if it's Indian themed(in my geographically challenged mind, at least) so I decided to use the one and only Indian cheese i knew.  Paneer. Oh and by the way I officially have no idea how to cook Indian food.  I really like it, but for one reason or another I've never really tried to make anything outside the realm of curry. So here's my take...

And here's what I used!

 Ingredients

- 2 pieces of garlic flavored naan
- 1/2 tbs garlic salt
- 2 pads real butter
- 6 slices of paneer
-1 tbs yellow curry sauce
-3 tbs marinated veggies
 (finely chop 2 carrots, 1 small cucumber,1 half      medium red onion, and combine with 4 tbs ricewine vinegar,1 tbs fresh mint, 1 ts fresh cilantro, 1 ts ground cumin, and 1 ts salt. let sit for 30 minutes)
 

 After you've got your salad marinating, go ahead and slice the cheese so it will fit onto the naan. 


Next, smear on the curry sauce.  The only reason I used yellow curry was because it was already in my fridge! I'm sure that it would be delicious with any type of curry and I really wished I had some peanut curry sauce hanging around in there. oh well.


Time for those marinated veggies!


Then another layer of the paneer.


Almost done! put the top piece of naan on top.


Now butter me up and call me a biscuit grilled cheese. oh, and add some garlic salt.


Now crank up the stove to a high heat.  Why a high heat you ask?! Well let me explain!  Paneer doesn't melt.  Because paneer is never aged it doesn't have the opportunity for the fat structure and proteins to change which is why it never melts!  I had to google this because I was a little concerned about how this was going to work.  Anyways, if you just blast the heat on this sucker, it will brown the bread and also heat up the cheese so it's nice and warm.  There's no need to let it sit for a while because no matter how long it sits on your stove, it ain't meltin'.


After about a minute the naan should get crispy and golden, like this:


Once it's like that on both sides, take it off and eat it immediately!


So although this cheese isn't melty and gorgeous like the other sandwiches, I guarantee you that there are a lot of delicious flavors going on in here AND my roomies thought it was $$$.  And i hope you will too!

xoxo,

GCS


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I just spent four dollars on ONE tomato.  Yep, I have a problem.  I think I could have probably gotten this entire sandwich for that much money somewhere else, but nope, I had to get the biggest, most beautiful heirloom tomato from union square. And it was totally worth it.  So basically after buying this tomato I decided I had to do a grilled cheese around it and I thought what better than the all time Italian classic - the caprese.

So there's a lot of ingredients that go into this one, but I promise it makes it reeeealllly good.

Ingredients:

- 2 tbs hot pepper infused olive oil
- 1 ts garlic salt
- 2 pieces of olive oil & garlic ciabatta
- 1 clove of garlic
- mozerella (amount dependent on bread size)
- 1/2 tbs balsamic glaze
- 3 big basil leaves
- 1 heirloom tomato (or more)




So the first thing you'll want to do is to sprinkle the garlic salt onto the mozzarella.  I think it makes the mozzarella much tastier and my mom did it when I was little so I think it's the right way.


Now you can lay half the cheese onto one of the slices of bread.  Make sure to slice the cheese so it fits onto the bread without any of it hanging off.


Then slice that beaut of a tomato and lay it down on top of that.  Eat the rest of the tomato with salt and pepper and enjoy.


Next drizzle some balsamic glaze on the tomato. The balsamic not only tastes delcious and balances out the saltiness of the cheese, but it also functions as a glue for the basil, which is the next step.


At this point you'll want to julienne the basil and sprinkle it on top of the mater.


Now put the remaining cheese on top!


Almost done, almost done, almost done!  bread time!

After about a minute and a half it should be golden brown.  When it gets all pretty like that, drizzle the remaining olive oil and flip it. Be careful because when mozzarella melts, it's that not sticky and there's a lot of stuff on this guy so stuff might fall out. If it does, REMAIN CALM, just take everything back to your cutting board and reassemble, but don't burn yourself.