Thursday, March 10, 2011

Grilled Cheese and Oak Aged Beer

A coworker of mine has been making grilled cheese for dinner for it's cheap and nutritious quality, but I think mostly for the comforting gooey goodness aspect of it.  This gave me the idea to make a gourmet grilled cheese.  I decided to try to invent my own sandwich trying to use mostly ingredients we already had on hand.  Here's what I came up with:

Ezekial 4:9 sesame bread- If you've ever had sprouted grain bread, you'll know it's quite a mouthful, for me a little too much for a basic pb and j but perfect for grilled cheese due to it's sturdiness.  Initially I thought of getting a sourdough loaf, but the Ezekial was surprisingly perfect.

Jarlsberg-Basically swiss, not expensive but an upgrade than your deli counter garden variety. 

Carmelized onions

Bacon-no brainer

Arugula-next time I would put this on the side with a little oil and vinegar, it got soggy on the sandwich and didn't add a lot of flavor

Pears-I sliced them and baked them in the oven at 400 for 20 minutes or so.  I sliced them a bit too thick so that they weren't evenly distributed throughout the sandwich.

Honey-I used a creamy type honey, just a spoonful.  There may be a bit too much sweet on this sandwich for some people, with the carmelized onions, but I thought it pulled together quite nicely.  Next time I might salt the ingredients or trial a different cheese.

And of course, butter for the grilling.

The end result was an extremely satisfying meal.  I served it with some roasted red pepper and tomato soup, the type you could get at Trader Joe's or many grocery stores.

For the beer pairing I choose an oak aged imperial stout, Dragon's Milk from New Holland Brewing in Michigan.  It's a high ABV, richly flavored beer that stood up well to the buttery cheesy bacony goodness of the sandwich.  The roasted aspect of the stout matched up nicely with the carmelized onions.  My coworker also loves this beer, so I guess she should get a lot of credit for this meal.

Just another Tuesday night in our gourmet househould. 

3 comments:

  1. this thing sounds great, i'm gonna show sarah this so she can make something similar for me.
    there is a gourmet grilled cheese place called Grilled cheese & co. they have a couple locations in maryland. they were on some show on the food network one time, sarah has been wanting to go there for a while. heres the website if youre interested
    http://www.ilovegrilledcheese.com/

    ReplyDelete
  2. Pears on a grilled cheese? You are brilliant.

    ReplyDelete