Side Bets FAREWAYS
Grilled Cheese GOAT The ABC’s of elevating the comfort favorite to sandwich glory By John Lehndorff I’VE GOT A snapshot memory of me sitting at the Formica kitchen table in my childhood home. Mom is serving me American cheese on Wonder Bread griddled in butter. The crusts are cut off. I’m dipping the gooey grilled triangles in a cup of pinkish Campbell’s Cream of Tomato Soup. Life is pretty good. While that flavor combination still pushes my comfort button, my grilled cheese sandwiches have evolved. For one thing, now I crave the crust and the crunch. Andy Clark grew up on the good stuff in New England and went on to become one of Colorado’s most celebrated bread bakers. “We always used great bread and sharp Vermont cheddar, the white cheese. The orange cheese freaked me out. We kept it simple,” he says. Clark owns the James Beard Awardnominated Moxie Bread Company in Louisville, producing artisan breads that are slowly fermented using flour milled in-house from locally grown heirloom grain. The grilled cheese sandwich is among the first dishes our parents teach us to make. The recipe is just two bread slices, 2 to 4 ounces of cheese and oil or butter, but the delight is in the details, Clark insists.
CRAFTING A GREATER GRILLED CHEESE Becoming a grilled cheese GOAT—Greatest of All Time—means choosing the right loaf, great cheeses and proper technique, says Clark. “You want a moist, open and airy bread—not incredibly dense—because when you’re pan-frying, the air holes will get nice and crunchy. They also let the heat get through to the cheese,” he says. On Moxie Bread Co.’s menu is a popular grilled cheese on fluffy crispy ciabatta with aged Raclette, house-pickled onions and garlic-infused olive oil. I like using chewy sourdough bread with substantial slices about ¾-inch thick so they hold together after griddling. Finely textured spongy breads like brioche are ideal for French toast, but too dense for grilled cheese. Good loaves are widely available, but the very best get baked by Clark’s fellow independent bread artisans along the Front Range. Check out the Denver Bread Company (thedenverbreadcompany.com), Raleigh Street Bakery (raleighstreetbakery.com), Reunion Bread Co (reunionbread.square.site), Izzio Bakery & Cafe (izziobakery.com) and Sourdough Boulangerie (thesourdoughboulangerie.com). You may say “Doh!” but a grilled cheese sandwich needs to taste mainly like cheese, so it
should be good cheese. Clark likes Raclette and other aged cheeses. I use Cheddar and Swiss a lot because they’re always in my refrigerator. If I have aged Gouda or Gruyere, I’m happy to include them. Given the choice, I layer in soft ripened cheeses because they melt so beautifully. Colorado cheeses that fill the bill include MouCo ColoRouge (mouco.com), Fruition Farms Shepherd’s Halo (fruitionfarmscreamery.com) and Moon Hill Dairy Alpenbert (moonhilldairy.com). A schmear of Haystack Mountain Chevre goat cheese can add a little tart tang. FAT PLUS TIME EQUALS FLAVOR Grilled cheese crafting requires a griddle and the perfect pan is a heavy cast-iron skillet. “Cast iron is still the best because it holds the heat evenly. Preheat it to medium high heat,” Clark says. If the heat is too low, the bread will never get crisp. If it’s too high, the bread will char before the heat gets through to the cheese. The sandwich works out better if you griddle the two slices of bread at the same time before flipping one on top of the other into a unit and cooking it a bit more. Homemade grilled cheese sandwiches lack the pizzazz of their restaurant cousins because, frankly, home cooks are scared to use to use PHOTOGRAPH ©MARC PISCOTTY
THE GREAT DEBATE: To fill or not to fill? The fillings of the King Kong sandwich from Grilled Cheese Society include sautéed mushrooms, Sambuca cream sauce, grilled onions, pepper jack and American cheeses.
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Fall 2020 | COLORADO AVIDGOLFER
