Best Thing I Ever Ate: Comfort Food #2 - Grilled Cheese

This post is the second in a series I'm calling “Best Thing I Ever Ate, after one of my many beloved cooking shows. My first category was comfort food, and I talked about Jenocide's Favorite and gave the recipe. 

When I first started blogging, I wrote an Ode to Grilled Cheese and gave some of my secrets for making the perfect grilled cheese sandwich. Since that post, I've figured out an even easier, quicker and MORE delicious way to grill it. What can I say, I like tinkering in the kitchen. So get comfy and pretend you're watching a cooking show ;-)

Welcome to Tina's Best Thing I Ever Ate! Today the category is still comfort food, and the topic is grilled cheese. We are making a simple grilled cheese sandwich to help you beginners get started on the wonderful road of gourmet grilled cheese.

First I will start browning some butter in my pan while I assemble the sandwich. Today I'm using English muffin bread because it's solid and has a slight sourdough taste, which I love. I'm putting on a slice of provolone, which is a cheese similar to Swiss, but with a bit more of bite and tang, and a slightly nuttier profile. It pairs well with this beautiful roast beef I'm adding. Last is another slice of cheese, and we're ready for the microwave. 45 seconds.

Surprised? Microwave? Buttering the pan and not the bread? Let me tell you why. Cold butter is hard to spread (and as you know from watching my show, we only use real butter, none of that syntho-crap that IS easy to spread), and it takes too long to melt the cheese, on medium low, so as not to burn the outside before the inside is melted. If you already melt the inside, and put it in a hot pan with melted butter, you're done in about ¼ of the normal time.

So as you see my butter is now nicely browned. Smells delicious! A chemical change occurs as it browns and the taste is AMAZING. I now place my melted hot sandwich in the pan. Oh, hear that delightful sizzle.

When your pan starts to look like this around the edges, it's probably time to flip your sandwich. 

(yes, it's already flipped...I didn't decide to make a post until I got to this point and then there was no turning back.  This isn't a REAL cooking show...I'm just an amateur!)

(Don't worry, it's supposed to look just like that. It's called browned butter because it's...brown.)

So we're going to flip, as I was saying, but wait! Just hold it on the spatula and throw just a titch (Technical info: a titch is about a ¼ of a pat of butter. I know you've always wondered!) in the pan, it will melt and sizzle and brown instantly. Now flip and cook the other side.

Slice and serve. Ooey, gooey, cheesy, melty goodness with some perfect roast beast. What could be better? We'll see you next time when I share about another delicious “Best Thing I Ever Ate.”

~Tina

P.S If you want to learn more about my grilled cheese making ideas, read that other post. Just cook it this new way. You'll be amazed how fast it is.

Best Thing I Ever Ate: Comfort Food

We were talking about comfort foods the other day when I was whining about being sick and trying to be comfortable. I mentioned soup, specifically New England clam chowder. I have lots of other comfort foods, and since I've been watching cooking (no surprise there...) a lot lately, I've gotten fixated on a show called, “The Best Thing I Ever Ate”. Celebrity chefs talk about their favorites in various categories, say “with chopsticks”, or “in a deli”, or “wish I'd thought of it”. I'm going to write some posts about my favorites in various categories, and pretend I'm on the show. Today is: comfort foods.

Nothing beats a dish we call Jenocide's Favorite. It's her childhood favorite (see nickname tab if you don't remember who she is) and she and her mother have made it for me when I've had babies, or surgeries, or just been sick. It warms my stomach and my heart.

It's a simple dish. Layer of mashed potatoes, layer of hamburger gravy, corn on top. It's super easy to make, and I can have dinner on the table in under ½ an hour. Or like today, breakfast in 2 microwave minutes!

Jenocide's Favorite (also known around here as Tina's Favorite)

½ onion, chopped

1 pound of hamburger

1 packet Betty Crocker Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes

rosemary

lots of salt and pepper

Flour

water

Kitchen Bouquet Browning and Seasoning Sauce (the secret)

corn, either frozen or canned.

Chop onions and brown with hamburger, and seasonings -being generous with all the spices. Once hamburger is cooked, adjust seasonings. You will need a lot more salt than you think.

Toss in enough flour to coat meat, then add about a cup of water per pound of hamburger. (Now that I have large teenage boys, I make this with 2 pounds hamburger.) Let gravy come to a boil. Add a teaspoon or two, according to taste, of the Kitchen Bouquet. Keep adjusting seasonings.

Cook corn in microwave and mashed potatoes according to box directions while gravy is simmering.

Let people serve themselves in the proportions they prefer. If you've got OYT, then your left-overs will be short on mashed potatoes, as you can see in my bowl. That's OK, I don't do so well with lots of carbs.

It's just so deliciously simple, yet the flavor of rosemary comes through as a nice surprise, and the Kitchen Bouquet adds that “It's been on the stove all day” depth to it. Try it for dinner sometime soon. You'll be comforted.

~Tina

P.S So what's this Kitchen Bouquet thing? It's a little bottle found on the bottom shelf of the store, under the display of all the dry packs of seasoning mixes. 

You know, taco seasoning, brown gravy mix, fajita seasoning, chili seasoning. Those packets you dump in your food with all the MSG and flavor crystals and make it taste so yummy without you having to have a rack of spices like some folks do...

Let's Get Comfortable

Let's get comfortable. I'm not feeling well (big surprise there...) and thought I'd share some of the ways that I try to make myself feel better and/or distract myself from the misery of a nasty respiratory infection (or whatever the ailment du jour might be.)

Pajamas. I have an old, faded set of pj's that I just adore. They were a big splurge on a snowboarding trip with my Amazing Aunt Risky. My favorite color, turquoise, with bears on them. And they came with a TANK TOP and long pants. Perfect for me who's always too hot, but wants the coziness of pants that are too long. I even have matching socks. Aaahh...

Pillows. I'm fairly high maintenance when it comes to pillows. I sleep on a tempurpedic cooling gel pillow, hugging a very old and broken down tempurpedic squishable pillow, with another pillow over my head. It's not really a pillow anymore, it's a bag of tangled rags after having been washed throughout its life, which as far as I can remember goes back to elementary school. But for lazing around in bed when you're sick, nothing beats my sleep number “rest and relax” pillow. On one side, it's just slanted, but on the other, it has a section of those tiny little beads right where your back goes. It's perfect for sitting up in bed and having the exact right back support.

Food. When I'm feeling lousy, I turn to soup. We usually have something homemade in the freezer, in two serving portions. Very convenient for melting when needed. I also have a thing about New England clam chowder. I'm still searching for the perfect store-bought version, but nothing compares to the seafood chowder at my favorite restaurant. Hmm...maybe it's a take-out kinda day...I can also wistfully dream about THE best clam chowder EVER, which was (surprisingly) at a hotel restaurant. OK, it was Seattle, but I've never found airport hotel food all that memorable. Until then.

Entertainment. Nothing comforts like an old movie. Also good for when I inevitably fall asleep watching it. I know how it turns out! Some of my go-to movies include Bull Durham, Devil Wears Prada, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Star Trek (JJ Abrams'), Dangerous Minds, Pretty Woman, Runaway Bride, Love Actually, A Love Song for Bobby Long, The Big Chill, Princess Bride, Big Night, Hunger Games, Miss Congeniality, The Proposal, and Juno. I never get tired of them – it's like playing a favorite album.

Activities. As few as possible. And a nap on the schedule for sure.

What do you do when you're sick or just down and out (or both?) What are your go-to movies?

~Tina