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 saw something somewhere about a danklicious smashed meatball grilled cheese and I thought it was an awesome idea.  I totally forgot about it for a little while until yesterday when I was at Trader Joe's.  They had this amazing looking Asiago that's flavored with rosemary and olive oil. YUM, right? So anyways, I had to buy it and make this little meatwad baby for you guys.  I would normally give a shout out here to the recipe that inspired it, but I can't remember :( meep.

So to make this little baby you're going to use :

Ingredients

-2 slices of Eli's onion bread
-2 pads of real salted butter
-1/2 cup of shredded rosemary and olive oil Asiago
-2 cheese stuffed meatballs







I guess I should begin by telling you about the meatballs.  I used trader joe's grass fed beef, an egg, some panko, finely diced onions, garlic, and basil, salt, pepper, and this awesome seasoning that I use on about everything.... and it's called Instant Gourmet.  I combined everything and rolled 'em into little balls and shoved a small chunk of the asiago in the middle.  Once they were shaped, I sprayed some pam into the pan and cooked the meatballs, turning occasionally until the cheese started to ooze out.

Oh, and if you don't wanna try to wing it with my vague recipe, use this cute little recipe from my good friend Ashley at Lovely Little Vices.

But once you have them on hand, go ahead and pile half of the cheese onto one slice of bread.



NOW SMASH YOUR MEATWAD!


Then center it on top of the cheese.


Now pile on the remaining bit of Asiago.


And put on the top piece of bread.


BUTTER.


At this point you'll want to melt the other pad of butter in the pan because it's way tooooo hard to try and flip it before it's melted.  Once it's creamy go ahead and put the sammie on the butter and put the press on top.  If you don't have a metal press, you can use a heavy pan or a tinfoil wrapped brick or something.


Once it gets nice and puuuuuurdy, flip it and put the press back on top!


When it' equally golden on both sides, take it out of the skillet and slice it!


Although this is a really flavorful grilled cheese, I thought it would be even better dipped in some marinara sauce... and i was right! So pair it with some delicious sauce and have a super fun party time and gobble up this meatwad of a grilled cheese.

Oh, and keep livin' large, boy, keep living large.

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!

About a month ago I got a ton of emails about some mystery man who was doing a super secret underground grilled cheese delivery service.  I was instantly intrigued and thought it was one of the most awesome things i had ever heard of.  Well guess what?! I finally got his number and today my pup and I met him and swapped sammie's in the east village.  It was a lot of fun to meet another grilled cheese enthusiast and his GC was fucking delicious (and he wasn't too hard on the eyes either)!  Anyways, this is what I made in return!

Here's what I used:

Ingredients

- 1 cup of shredded gouda
- 3 pieces of cooked bacon, crumbled
- 2 tbs sauteed butternut squash
- 2 pads real butter
- 2 slices of lard bread (if you can't find it, any fatty bread will work beautifully)






After you've gathered all your ingredients, put half the cheese on one of the slices of bread.


Now put some of the cooked butternut squash on there!


Pretty, right?! Ok now if you didn't eat all the bacon, put the rest on top.


It gets kind of tall at this point, but be brave and sprinkle the remaining cheese on top.


Now it's time for the topper!


After about a minute or two it should be a nice golden brown.  At this point you'll want to pick it up with your spatula and toss in the remaining pad of butter.  Let it melt like before then flip the GC and put it back into the butter.


Then when it's like that on both sides take it off, slice it and eat it as quickly as you can.


Be sure to check out bread.butter.cheese on twitter and good ole' facebook.  You can find his number on either of the sites and if you live in the area I def recommend hitting him up for dank-licious sammie. Thanks Ronnie! yay!

xoxo,

GCS

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