rhapsodic.org is a weblog by Valette Keller

9 Comments

1. brush the skillet with oil right before you place the first slice of bread. Add shredded dry cheese (personal pref: mix of cheddar, monterey jack and provelone . Add second skillet on top to give weight. Cook for about 2 minutes medium heat. flip and repeat, continuing until bread nice and brown. Serve. (Note, cheese fallout on skillet is the tastier bits).

2. don't cook 'em quite as long.

3. much like twice baked potatoes and stuffed mushrooms, Life's too short to make hollandaise sauce.

4. Start with pan drippings. Add beef stock to deglaze the pan (remember to get up the burnt bits. Optionally add a flour rue (remember to thoroughly mix flour and water before adding to pan to avoid lumps). Optionally blend at high speed with a hand mixer. Optionally remember that gravy is just and excuse to make up for bad cooking. Optionally realize that you cook better than that and can totally skip the gravy.

1. It burns. Or the cheese doesn't melt. Or it melts all over the pan leaving nothing left in the sammich. It's better left to Steve.

2. Doesn't work that way, if they are under cooked they just fall apart. One more minute and they are crispy. It has to do something with the butter? I once added four extra tablespoons of flour and they were chewy yummy awesome. I've never been able to duplicate it.

3. Have you ever TRIED hollandaise from a dry mix? No. Just... awful. And don't go talking smack about stuffed mushrooms, which are easy and full of yum.

4. I don't eat gravy anyway (yech), so I'm okay with skipping it. Steve, on the other hand, feels that it's required. And makes a mess of my kitchen when attempting to make it.

Here's what I can't make:

Omelettes- took me YEARS to get good at these, and while I mostly can pull 'em off now, every once in a while they just don't work.

Hard boiled eggs- my mom can make 'em so that the shells just slip off. Every time I try the shells have to be fought with and pull off half the egg white...

It sounds as if some basic cooking lessons are needed by you and a couple of peers. Grilled cheese could be taught by my 11 year old, but the gravy thing - simple as it really is in just a few minutes - I will keep secret to preserve my place at the hot stove. Hollandaise is a time consuming matter and, even though I like it, is not good or filling enough to produce more than once. Fried egg sammich is faster and better (variety enabled).

If it burns, you've got the heat too high. Honestly, most of the time folks have the stove set far higher than they really need to. There's also a few tricks to getting the cheese to melt evenly, including: shredding it first and letting it sit out for a bit while the pan warms up.

You can also cheat a bit and "pre-toast" the bread (like on setting 1 or 2 to get it warm) before you start. The cheese doesn't have to be completely melted before you flip it either. Toasting the other side is usually enough to get it to melt.

The oil (or butter) is there to panfry brown the bread and make it pretty. You can always try browning bread without the cheese if you want to play around with getting the temp right, plus rub a clove of garlic on afterwards and you've got killer garlic bread.

The trick to the perfect grilled cheese sammich is to use medium/low heat and butter the bread with the scarcest amount of butter you can possibly put on it, like molecules thick.

Risotto and sauces that require anything more than bring to a boil and reduce. I have no patience when i am working.

I'm with you on the grilled cheese; it's better left to Suzanne who does an awesome job. I'm getting better (I think lowering the heat might be key) but my success percentage for perfect grilled cheese is pretty low.

Until recently, rice never seemed to come out how i wanted it (unless it was sushi rice); especially spanish/mexican rice. It always came out stickier than I wanted. I think I've finally figured out the key there though:

Heat oil, saute onions, add uncooked rice and let it get hot. Then cook in chicken broth instead of water (or in the case of spanish rice, a can of diced tomatos). Don't use tomato sauce, it' makes it all sticky and dissapointing.

I roasted a chicken last night; it was ok, but tastier and less trouble to just get one of the rotisserie ones from the store.

Oy. Omelettes, for me. I've never mastered the foldover - they always break. Or burn. I think I may need to pour them thinner and try fewer stuffing ingredients.

I've also had trouble broiling thinner cuts of meat, but I think it has to do with getting used to this stove/oven and its curious British markings.

I need to eat a grilled cheese sammich. Right now.