What to eat with your friendly, neighborhood, Fontina cheese.

I've heard a lot about Fontina cheese, but never actually had it. To put it simply, this made me sad. So, while I was in San Francisco, I stopped by an Italian shop and got some.

Wiki said "Fontina has a mild, somewhat nutty flavor, while rich, herbaceous and fruity," so I decided to try making a sandwich with red grapes and, later while peering through the fridge, a red onion.

It was pretty darn good. It was/is also fantastically simple.
You will need:

• 2 pieces of bread sliced
• enough red grapes to cover a piece of bread while still leaving holes for cheese to melt through - sliced in half
• red onion slices enough to probably twice cover the bread, because onions shrink in heat and lose their kick to sweetness
• thinly sliced Fontina, amount depends on the strength of your cheese. The first Fontina I had was very mild, so I piled it on. The second Fontina I got was really strong, as in one of those cheeses whose smell is still on your fingers after several washings and hours later.

Pile everything on as shown in the picture and grill your Fontina grilled cheese according to previous post, Grilled Cheese! With an Iron!.

After working with Fontina, I've decided it's not a bad cheese and is great for grilled cheese especially since it melts really easily.

Omnom!

Pastrami! (Not quite a recipe, but interesting re-creation possibilities.)

I promise, the recipe is coming. However, until then try re-creating this incredible sandwich that I found at Lulu Petite at the San Francisco Ferry Building (I will be asap).

So, from what I saw preparation was pretty easy. Here's the MiniFridge conversion method: Take two pieces of good crusty bread and iron one side of each for about 20 seconds until nice and crunchy. Build your sandwich from bottom to top like so: piece of bread, browned side in, spread a mix of olive oil, the teeniest bit of lemon juice, and dried sage. Stack pastrami slices, chopped romaine lettuce, and lastly some thinly sliced Gruyere cheese (my favorite). Put on the second piece of bread, browned side in. Iron according to Grilled Cheese! With an iron! Omnom! This was seriously one of the best sandwiches I had ever had. I will say, in the one I had at Lulu's the marinade was named a "Lulu's Preserved Meyer Lemon, Fennel, and Sage Marinade." However, I don't think an exact replica is required because the pastrami and Gruyere were very dominating, if fantastic flavors. However, it is why I suggest only a small amount of lemon juice; Meyer lemons are milder, and preserved-ness lessens the acidity. San Francisco really does have great food =) Oh, and because Moxie tagged me on favorite 6, I'll list my favorite 6 food blogs: Hot Knives No Recipes Foodie at Fifteen Closet Cooking Bitchin Camero The Jewels of New York

Grilled Cheese! With an Iron!

Whether one is a gourmet or ragtag taster, I cannot think of a reason why one would not like grilled cheese; Crunchy, buttery outside, lightly gold and shimmering, while the inside pools with melted cheese, perfectly salty. My friends can tell you that I LOVE grilled cheese and went through a phase/am going through a phase of trying a new recipe almost daily. It's a recent fascination, sparked when I discovered the GCI, or the infamous Grilled Cheese Invitational.

Anyway, based on recipes I've found from GCI champions (Hot Knives? Coolest kids ever in the world of grilled cheese, not to mention food), the web, and general experimentation, I should have a pretty regular update of new grilled cheeses to try in your dorm. So, following, are the basic instructions.

INSTRUCTIONS
Get two slices of bread and two slices of cheese, American is, of course, the classic option here.

• Note on the bread: I used a Light variety by Pepperidge Farm, moral of the story? DON'T USE LIGHT BREAD! Seriously, it's too flimsy. If it happens to get stuck to the foil it will just fall apart. You may have noticed the gaping hole in the bread of my picture. It got stuck to the foil and proved to contain no structural integrity, regardless of how much extra fiber it claims to have.
  

Next, butter the outside face of each slice of bread. I had a picture showing this, but I trust you to understand. =)

Now, to cook a grilled cheese with an iron you need: an Iron, a piece of Aluminum Foil (large enough to wrap around your sandwich), a towel folded at least twice, and a text book (Introduction to the Practice of Statistics ftw).

Wrap your sandwich in the foil and stack all items as shown. Your iron should be set to the highest level. Apply the iron on one side of the sandwich packet for about 30-40 seconds, then flip the packet and iron that side for 30-40 seconds.


Turn the iron off, open the foil, and Voila! Una belleza grilled cheese =).

Oh, right! Now, Onomnom.