Laura Werlin - Grilled cheese, please!: 50 scrumptiously cheesy recipes

grilled cheese, please! text copyright 2011 Laura Werlin. Photographs copyright 2011 Maren Caruso.
All rights reserved. Printed in China. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews.
For information, write Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC, an Andrews McMeel Universal company, 1130 Walnut Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64106.

E-ISBN: 978-1-4494-0672-1

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010930550

Design: Ren-Whei Harn and Holly Ogden
Photography: Maren Caruso
Digital/Photo Assistant: Christina Richards
Food Stylist: Kim Kissling
Food Stylist Assistant: Abby Stolfo

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Were it not for the following people, this book would not be. Its that simple, and Im that lucky.

As always, my heartfelt thanks goes to my magnificent agent and friend, Carole Bidnick, without whose persistence this book would have remained just an idea. The Andrews McMeel dream team consisting of my ace editor, Jean Lucas, and incredible publisher, Kirsty Melville, helped take my vision light years beyond my own imagination, and I am over the moon with the results. I thank you both.

Also among dream teams, photographer Maren Caruso, food stylist Kim Kissling, and their assistants Abby Stolfo and Christina Richards once again created the best food photos of anyone in the business. My deepest gratitude also to Heather Porter-Engwall and the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board for supplying the great Wisconsin cheeses for those photos as well.

I shudder to think where I would have been without my amazing recipe tester, Sheri Castle, who brought these recipes from good to great thanks to her dedication and extreme competence. Likewise, my unofficial recipe tester and extraordinary friend, Lynne Devereux, added extra insurance by applying her formidable cooking skills along with her knowledge and passion for cheese to whip a few recipes into shape.

My heartfelt appreciation goes to the following people for reasons too many to count. To Karen Martin, who knows no bounds to friendship and offered research help when her own book needed tending; to Linda and Kelly Hayes, who ate countless grilled cheese sandwiches in the name of experimentation and somehow still managed to smile; to chef Ryan Hardy, who eked out recipes when he had absolutely no time to do so; to Sam Beall and the folks at Blackberry Farm who not only supplied the wonderful recipe for pimento cheese (page 119), but more importantly gave me a safe haven at their incredible property to begin this book; to Kathleen Weber, owner of the unparalleled bakery Della Fattoria in Sonoma County, who handed me loaf after loaf of her amazing bread to play with for my grilled cheese sandwich recipe development; to Tami Parr and Flavio de Castilhos for indulging my need to try the Cheesus Burger at The Grilled Cheese Grill in Portland; and to my cousins Kim and Miles Keilin for happily eating my iteration of same. Thanks also to Valerie Henderson, Anita Ettinger, Joyce Goldstein, Beth Roemer, Faye Keogh, Kevin Donahue, Aggie Skirball, and Dipti Anderson for their great palates and friendships. To Mom and Dad, thank you will never be a sufficient phrase.

Finally, I must thank the following two people who have shaped me professionally and personally forever. The first is my former editor Julie Stillman. Although no longer editing, she is someone who made each author she worked with a little better, and I, for one, will always be grateful for her skill and wisdom. The other is my loyal and incomparably kind sister, Andi, who not only embraces all my projects with enthusiasm but who also contributes to them in ways even she does not know. And so I tell her now.

Even Pavlov didnt know the power of grilled cheese. If he had, he would have gone straight for the sandwich instead of the bell to evoke the cascade of visceral responses, like hunger pangs, salivary glands gone wild, and an irrepressible smile that follow its mere mention.

Say grilled cheese and the memories of a childhood indulgence, the first cooking lesson from Mom or Dad, a bowl of tomato soup, or the aroma of melting cheese comes wafting into consciousness. And it doesnt stop there. The two words strung together also bring to mind seductive images of the sound of bread sizzling and crackling as it makes its transformation from soft and pillowy to butter-crisped and crunchy. These imagined sights and sounds tease with anticipation, because just knowing that as the bread turns golden brown the strands of cheese nestled within are languorously but ever so surely giving way to their melted glory.

Whoever thought that the most basic of sandwiches, the one we all grew up with, the one that was the easy solution for Mom instead of a full meal, the one we all loved but didnt really pay much attention to, the sandwich that combined nondescript bread and even less notable cheese, would today become the subject of recipe contests and blogs, the focal point of entire restaurants, the inspirational fuel that fires up mobile food trucks, and the basic foundation on which Americans build their ideal of the best grilled cheese sandwich? Grilled cheese, the movement, has arrived.

Indeed, it appears that the grilled cheese phenomenon is dovetailing with the entire food movement in America. With natural, local, and artisan now rolling off the tongue the way TV dinners did in the 1960s, the not-so-humble grilled cheese sandwich falls in lockstep with todays way of eating. Sources of farmhouse cheese and artisan bread are more plentiful than ever. Grilled cheese add-ins like bacon, tomatoes, vegetables, ham, and fruit, and a seemingly infinite number of other filling choices, now include details on their labels explaining their provenance, the degree to which the product is natural or possibly even organic, and so on. Because of this, making grilled cheese sandwiches today allows us the guilty pleasure of satisfying our hunger needs while simultaneously appeasing our inner locavore.

Although I already memorialized 50 grilled cheese recipes in another book, grilled cheese has grown up since that book was published. Or at least it has in my house. But thats not the only place: Judging by the fact that national television morning shows devote segments to it during National Grilled Cheese month (April), the blogosphere sports sites dedicated exclusively to it (along with no small amount of reverence for it), and even fast-food restaurants are now in on the act, Id say the new grilled cheese sandwich has arrived. And its decidedly not our mothers version.

When I judged the 1st 8th Annual Grilled Cheese Invitational in Los Angeles in April 2010 (dont ask why its called the 1st 8th), it pretty much rocked my world. Not only was I exposed to more combinations involving cheese between two slices of grilled bread than Id ever imagined (including a few I hope never to see again, alas), I was also blown away by the fervor of the 250 competitors and the 8,000 attendees. All this for grilled cheese? That sealed the deal. I had to craft my own versions of this new/old sandwich as well as incorporate those from some grilled cheesecrazy friends, chefs, and a few from those responsible for fueling the trend by way of their stand-alone restaurants and mobile food trucks. What greater respect for this exalted sandwich than to open a business based on it? And so, this book.