Lamborghini Grilled Cheese
No one needs a Lamborghini, but people still want them. And since we’ll never have a $200K car, we’re going to eat unreasonable amounts of cheese instead. This golden-brown delight is inspired by the sandwich in John Favreau’s Chef, but with some added flair. Quite the opposite of getting behind the wheel of a Lamborghini, however, this cheese bomb is more likely to slow your heart rate. That being said, we think it’s definitely worth a test drive.
Ingredients:
sourdough bread
white cheddar
yellow cheddar
Gouda
Parmesan
Honeycrisp apple
apricot jam
butter
The Beta:
Preheat your oven to 225, then start by prepping everything that goes into your sandwich--slice the cheese and the apple (we used a mandoline for the apple to produce a perfectly thin slice), and generously butter each piece of sourdough bread on one side. Pro tip for the Kerrygold lovers: If you keep your butter in the fridge like we do, you know softening in the microwave isn’t an option due to the foil wrapper. Our workaround is to set the brick in the cast iron with the lowest possible heat--soft butter in no time.
After prepping, it’s time to build. One side of each sandwich will get two cheeses (we chose the yellow cheddar and Parmesan), and the other side will get, in order: jam, apple, and the remaining two cheeses. Don’t be shy with any of these ingredients--but maybe skip the ice cream tonight. We found the tartness of the apricot jam cut through the fat of the cheese nicely, so give each sandwich a healthy spread like you would a PBJ.
Place all of the jam slices on a baking sheet and begin to warm them in the oven. The idea here is to melt the cheese without burning the bread, so keep an eye on things. With a cast iron or your choice of skillet on medium heat, start browning the other halves (the ones with just cheese). The goal is to cook slow and steady for a golden brown crunch; too fast, and you’ll burn your bread before your cheese even gets close to melting. If you’re using a cast iron, you should expect a certain amount of char, while a non-stick pan or griddle will give you more classic results. After toasting each half, place it in the oven to keep warm.
When you’ve finished toasting the two-cheese side of each sandwich, carefully put the sandwiches together, turning the toasted half on top of the jam and apple half. Now brown each sandwich on the opposite side, keeping the remaining sandwiches in the oven before and after toasting them. We used a lid during this final toast to help retain heat and melt the cheese. If you go this route, make sure to place the lid askew so steam can escape--you don’t want a soggy grilled cheese.
A few tips: 1) Butter is your friend, so don’t be shy. 2) This much cheese needs adequate time to melt—help yourself on the front end by setting the cheese out to bring it to room temperature. 3) Seriously, heat matters. You’ll want your burner on medium or even lower to make sure the cheese melts before the bread has fully browned. 4) Try adding some honey! & 5) Always cut in half before serving. We all know first impressions are everything, and a bite into that gooey center is just the kind of first impression you want to make here.
Ode to a Classic
When Amanda and I were married in 2016, we still had her ‘06 Honda Civic that she’d been given on her 16th birthday ten years prior. Having driven a truck all my life, I loved this car for it’s seemingly endless gas tank and how easily it maneuvered into tight parking spaces. We drove that car on our first trip out to west Texas, loaded down with all our camping gear and a Yeti cooler nestled just so in the trunk. When the Glass Mountains rose around us south of Fort Stockton, I was in awe. Mountains? In Texas? How had it taken 26 years for me to get here? Driving into Chisos Basin was an even more surreal experience, and the views of the Chihuahuan Desert from the top of Emory Peak sealed our love for the place. We stumbled down the Pinnacles Trail from the summit, legs beat with inexperience, water bottles bone dry, and collapsed into the Civic’s cloth seats to shake the dust from our socks and start the seven-hour drive home. It had been Amanda’s convincing that had led us to do the 10-mile hike, even with a late start, and though I grumbled at the outset of the hike, when we rolled up to our apartment at 3 AM, I knew we had just done something special. I couldn’t have told you then, but I look back on that now as the start of an obsession.
Sadly, I totaled that car two years later. Amanda and I were unharmed in the accident, but the Civic was done—the entire passenger side a caved-in mess. There were all kinds of memories wrapped up in that car, even more so for Amanda who had been driving it for six years before she met me—the guy who would eventually kill it. We drove the Civic all over College Station during our last semester, and then to countless weddings, beach trips, state parks, and to bring home our favorite pup from east Texas (I mean eeeeeast Texas). Now, I always take note when we see an old silver Civic. It wakes this comfortable nostalgia inside me—memories of younger, less complicated lives in a less complicated time.
Nostalgia epitomized, at least in sandwich form, is a standard grilled cheese made with plain white bread, American cheese (the good stuff), and of course, copious amounts of salted butter. Done well, this simple grilled cheese is a perfect balance of crunchy, melty goodness. The thing about nostalgia, though, is that those memories you feel so acutely in your bones are never quite true. You loved that sandwich when you were twelve, but your taste buds have grown up a bit. And while you believe that grilled cheese, the one your mom used to serve with a hot mug of Campbell’s tomato soup, to be the pinnacle of toasted goodness, you’ve actually moved on to bigger and better things. Even canned soup isn’t the delicacy it used to be.
Let’s Get Complicated
I’m going to act like I don’t know you for a second. You’re a reader, and I’m some guy you found on the internet. We both know you’re probably my mother, my wife, or a close friend who I promised a beer to in exchange for checking out the blog (is this thing even about food?).
This idea was born out of boredom—the way all good 2020 ideas began. It was more than just boredom, though, because while I’m a writer at heart, I’m actually quite bad at sitting still. Amanda complains often, though usually in good fun, that it’s impossible to get me to watch something. I try to explain to her that I can only watch her home videos so many times, but she insists … When quarantine started, I was spending most of my days flat on my back. Back issues that go back to March of 2019 were all of a sudden responsible for crippling pain I couldn’t overcome. Walking was always possible if I really needed to, but as an example, I often tried to argue with my full bladder for at least an hour before finally getting up to go to the bathroom. I moved less, ate less, and weighed less (by like 20 pounds) all in a matter of two months. Cooking was definitely not an option. I was officially on the back pain diet—hopefully this one doesn’t catch on.
While all of this was happening, Amanda and I were welcoming Tommy into our home after being away from Austin for 10 months. Our house had been his storage unit for the entirety of his trip, and since he still had renters in his home, it only made sense for him to come hang out at our house on his own couches with his own plants (don’t worry—he has a bed). When Tom moved in, I was at my lowest point, and I remained there for what seemed like an eternity (kinda the way this year is feeling in general). Still, we made the most of being stuck together in quarantine. I found that I could sit in a chair with one of my knees pulled to my chest—this decompressed my spine and took pressure off the nerve that ran like fire down my leg. After this realization, it was off to the races for Tom and I in the kitchen. He did most of the heavy lifting, both literally and figuratively, but I could handle anything directly in front of me. I’ve basically become the fry cook in our relationship: from noodles and tofu to french fried potatoes both Idaho and sweet.
Still, more often than not Tom was alone in the kitchen. He made lunch for both of us daily, and on nights when I didn’t want to leave the couch, he’d cook up something and bring it wherever I needed him to—cold beer and all. It was on one of these nights that this grilled cheese was born.
“Whoa, I totally forgot about the grilled cheese!” you think to yourself, wondering why I’ve made this simple recipe/story so complicated. “It is in the title,” I tell you, having read your mind about how complicated things have become (again, the blog—not 2020; we don’t have enough time for that right now).
We had all these ingredients on hand after making the grilled cheese from John Favreau’s Chef, which I still haven’t seen (I know!). Tom took an already great grilled cheese, threw on the apples and jam (and maybe honey; we’ve sort of forgotten the OG recipe), and turned it into heaven on earth. Imagine intense pain, the worst of your life, and then picture all of a sudden someone handing you a sandwich (If you’re thinking back on times you killed a hangover with a greasy burger, know that you’re in a safe space). Not just any sandwich of course: a grilled cheese, the symbol of comfort for sad kids everywhere, and on top of that, the most glorious of grilled cheeses filled with so many unnecessary calories. The back pain is still there, but now your teeth are cracking the seal of that perfectly toasted sourdough. Inside you find warm, salty cheese, a familiar friend—but wait! What’s this other flavor? Something sweet and acidic—a tartness you weren’t expecting. We’ve moved past the comfort of familiar and into new, euphoric territory. If you’ve ever listened to LCD Soundsystem’s “Dance Yrself Clean” and experienced the way the bottom falls out of the world around you at about the three-minute mark, then you know the feeling I’m talking about. And if you haven’t, lucky you—crank it up, and let your mind be blown for the very first time. That grilled cheese came out of nowhere, and it was all I needed to tell my back pain to shut the hell up for the night.
This is why Casual Beta was started—to help other people experience moments where all you can do is talk about how good the food is. This is not an invitation to be a food snob—no one is too good for a 7-Eleven hot dog on occasion. Instead, I hope the recipes and stories we share will inspire you to get creative with the food you cook and sit at the table more often. I know very little, if anything, about the right way to cook, as far as the critics are concerned. And while Tommy has more finesse in the kitchen than I’ve personally witnessed elsewhere, he doesn’t have a Michelin star either. We’re just two dudes who love to cook, drink beer, and blah blah blah; and if you’re into even one of those things, you’ll probably like where things are headed from here.
P.S. I found this quote on Reddit about the aforementioned LCD Soundsystem song, and I found it incredibly true.
“The first time I heard the beginning of Dance Yrself Clean I turned the volume all the way up because I didn't know what was about to happen. The next time I heard the beginning of Dance Yrself Clean I turned the volume all the way up because I knew exactly what was about to happen.”
Let this be our goal in the kitchen: to find recipes that give us the feels every time—food so good that someone dances in their chair until the last blissful bite.
