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Monday, April 13, 2015

Mackenzie (a grilled cheese sandwich)

In Brooklyn there is a fantastic bar called Noorman's Kil. They serve whiskey and grilled cheese.  I could not recommend this place enough.  If you ever go to NYC with me, I will probably drag you there.  I won their first annual Grilled Cheese competition last year and was granted an automatic entry into this year's competition.  Here is the 2015 recipe!

Ingredients:
  • Bread*
  • Fontina
  • Asiago
  • Gorgonzola
  • Mozzarella**
  • Garlic
  • Sun Dried Tomatoes (in oil)
  • Basil
Directions:
  1. The garlic and sun dried tomatoes get made into a spread.  I use an 8.5 oz jar of tomatoes for about three large cloves of garlic.  This will make enough for about 4-6 sandwiches.  Pulse the garlic in the food processor until it is minced.  Drain the oil off the tomatoes, squeezing a bit (some left is ok but you don't want them dripping), then add them to the food processor for a few seconds  You are looking for them to be blended into tiny bits but it does not need to be smooth.  Extra spread goes great on crackers and stores fairly well in the fridge too.
  2. Spread a thin layer of this on one slice of bread
  3. Layer the cheeses.  I did them in the order listed above because that was the easiest structurally with the cheese formats I used.  The gorgonzola is a strong cheese so you probably want to use about half as much as any of the other cheeses.  I had the other ones roughly equal, but you don't need to be exact.
  4. Snip one large or two medium leaves of basil into little bits and sprinkle atop the cheeses. If you do not have fresh basil, a generous sprinkle of the dried stuff is just fine.  Plop the other bread slice on top.
  5. Press that sandwich on a panini press.  If you don't have one, you can try cooking it the regular way in a pan but it's going to be very tricky with the amount of cheese you've crammed in.
  6. Slice in half and enjoy.

In case you were wondering, I came in first place (again). I don't have the official dates yet for the sandwich but it will probably be on the menu for May.

* For the competition it was required that we use Orwashers bread so I used their Cabernet Rustica. For testing I used Trader Joe's Tuscan Pane Loaf.  You can use anything similar.  This sandwich would go great on ciabatta, which is probably what they will serve it on at the bar.
** I used the bag of pre-shredded mozzarella.  The fresh stuff is quite delicious but it does not melt the same.