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.

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