CEiMB – Sweet and Spicy Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

When I make grilled cheese, this is how I start:

Then I add a whole mess of shredded cheese (usually Ementhaller) to some whole wheat bread. I cook the sandwich until the bread is crisp and the cheese melts over the sides and onto the pan.

I always knew this wasn’t an optimal meal for my cholesterol, but that didn’t stop me from eating grilled cheese sandwiches a lot. And when they’re made with butter in a screaming hot cast iron pan, something magical happens.

Well, unless you have a heart attack and don’t get to savor your sandwich. Which is why, when it was my turn to pick the recipe for Craving Ellie in My Belly, I jumped for this one. I LOVE grilled cheese, but I have to find a way to make it healthier so I can continue to enjoy it without feeling like I’m gambling with my health. Ellie is one step ahead of me.

Ellie’s recipe includes caramelized red onions (the sweet) and Cheddar and pepper Jack cheese (the spicy).

I learned (again) a lesson with this one. Read the recipe completely before starting. Don’t think “I’ve made a zillion (actual number) grilled cheese sandwiches and I know how they go so I’m going to bypass the instructions.” No. Ellie gives key pieces of information (turn the heat to LOW) that will keep you from burning the bread and not melting the cheese.

I like a little more sweet and spicy in mine, so I added some jalapeno jelly. You could also add spicy mustard or honey mustard. If I had any in the house, I would have tucked in a few cilantro leaves as a nod to my favorite grilled cheese sandwich at Big Sky Cafe. It’s no longer on the menu but that used to be the quintessential grilled cheese for me. Ellie’s comes close, very close. In fact, it is way better than my butter laden go-to version. Give it a try…your arteries will thank you!

Sweet and Spicy Grilled Cheese Sandwiches (serves 4)

2 teaspoons canola oil
1 large red onion, finely diced
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
3 ounces sharp Cheddar, thinly sliced, divided
8 slices whole-wheat bread
3 ounces pepper Jack cheese, thinly sliced, divided
1 large or 2 medium beefsteak or hothouse tomatoes, sliced
Cooking spray

Heat oil in a non-stick skillet over medium-high heat. Lower heat to medium. Add onions and saute, stirring, until edges are browned, about 10-12 minutes. Season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Place 3/4 ounce Cheddar on one slice of bread. Spread 1 tablespoon caramelized onions on top of cheese and top with 3/4 ounce of pepper Jack. Top with 1 large or 2 medium tomato slices and other slice of bread. Repeat with 3 other sandwiches.

Spray a non-stick skillet or griddle with cooking spray and heat until hot. Place sandwich on griddle and weigh down with a heavy skillet or plate. Lower heat to medium-low and grill until underside is a deep brown but not burnt, and cheese is partially melted, about 5-6 minutes. Flip sandwich and grill other side an additional 4-5 minutes. Slice in half and serve hot.

Barefoot Bloggers – White Pizza with Arugula

I heart pizza. A lot. I could eat it every day, twice a day, and never get tired of it. But I have never made it at home. Until now. It took Andrea of Nummy Kitchen to pick Ina Garten’s White Pizza with Arugula for this week’s Barefoot Bloggers recipe for me to realize that pizza, like most everything, is better when you make it yourself. I bought a pizza stone for my Bread Baker’s Apprentice baking, so I baked our pizzas directly on the stone. It made the crust nice and crisp.

Ina’s crust is super easy. I substituted about 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour for some of the all-purpose flour, and it gave the dough a wonderful flavor and texture. Ina calls for fontina, fresh mozzarella and goat cheese, but I skipped the fontina. Even though we love garlic, I left it out of the oil this time as we were going out for the evening.

This pizza was incredible. It was good with the arugula salad, but I could be just as happy leaving it off.

Give this one a try, you won’t be disappointed! You’ll find the recipe here.

******PLEASE NOTE: Lethally Delicious is on hiatus for the month of Ramadan. While I have a couple of posts that I completed in advance (like this one), I will be staying away from active blogging. If you leave me a comment, I will try to stop by and visit you. I’ll be back around Sept. 20th, reenergized and ready to make bigger and better messes in the kitchen. Peace.

CEiMB – Ellie Krieger’s Thai Mushroom Salad

Our Craving Ellie in My Belly selection for the week was Grilled Thai Beef Salad. I’m not a huge fan of beef, and I’m chickened out, so I decided to take this one vegetarian and make it with portobello mushrooms. I also had some corn on the cob in the fridge so I grilled that up with the mushrooms.

The marinade/dressing was incredibly flavorful, combining lime juice, soy sauce, red chili paste, garlic and ginger. This is the second Ellie dressing in the last few weeks that I have completely flipped over (the other one was the dressing for the cobb salad, and I mixed up another batch of that one just the other night). I had a huge bunch of Thai basil from my CSA box, and it added an incredibly fragrant hit of flavor to this salad.

This salad was yet another Ellie recipe that I looked at and thought it sounded rather pedestrian, but oh my, the flavor combination was amazing! This one is going into the rotation. I encourage you to try it with the mushrooms or different grilled veggies in addition to or instead of meat (or even a nice piece of swordfish). But if you like steak, try that as it sounds like it would be great.

If you’d like the recipe, check out Jen B’s Cooking Carveout as Jen will have it, or you can find it on the Food Network site here.

This will likely be my last CEiMB post as I will be taking a break from active blogging for the month of Ramadan. I’m trying to get a few posts up before Saturday but arrrggghhhh I’m so behind! If you leave a comment here I’ll stop by and visit, but this is a good opportunity to get my rampant blog addiction under control! I’ll be back after Sept. 20th.

Peace.

CEiMB – Aromatic Noodles with Lime Peanut Sauce

Whew! I barely made this one.

My internal calendar broke this week. I knew without a doubt that the recipe this week was the onion rings, and I had made peace with skipping them since it’s kinda hot and we don’t have air conditioning (so turning on the oven isn’t so appealing). Then Peggy posted about these noodles last night and I thought “Peggy’s confused about what the recipe is this week.” Never occurred to me that I could be confused (which is ironic since I’m confused most of the time).

A quick check of the Craving Ellie in My Belly website confirmed that there’s nothing wrong with Peggy’s memory. Mine however, not so good.

Since everyone raves so much about this recipe, I wanted to make it, but I was out of peanut butter, snap peas, snow peas, fresh ginger, limes, peanuts… And I was DETERMINED to make the actual recipe this week, not some hybrid aberration that is food on a plate but that’s where the similarity to the recipe ends. So, even though I am beyond busy at work this week, at lunchtime I left the office, left campus and headed to Whole Foods. I’m sure people who saw me there thought I had won one of those contests where you get to run through the store and grab everything you can in five minutes. I resisted the urge to run all of the red lights and stopped by the house (wouldn’t you know practically everything I bought had to be refrigerated), waking the cat from her nap with the same take-no-prisoners ninja attack technique that had startled so many at Whole Foods. Rush back to work and settle in my office as if I had been there all along.

When I got home from work, I decided that I would nix the steaming of the vegetables and would instead boil them briefly in the pasta water. Otherwise, I made the recipe EXACTLY as Ellie wrote it. I know, I was shocked too. Well, I did double the sauce and use fusilli instead of spaghetti and use a full pound of pasta (the bag ripped and it all fell in the pot) and add lime zest but it was EXACTLY the same as the recipe.

Things were going well until I turned on the food processor and somehow, soy sauce and peanut butter sprayed out of it ON TO THE CAMERA. Primal scream, drop everything, clean clean clean. Cooking is so relaxing.

M. walked in the door just as I had plated the serving for the photo and was thrilled that we weren’t eating leftover lentil chili again. Really, I could have given him cereal and I think he would have been happy. But he loved this, and even had seconds. In fact he ate so much, he turned down chocolates after dinner. That’s how good it was. It made a ton of leftovers, and I’m glad, because you can dress this one up with grilled portobello mushrooms, chicken, fish, shrimp, or tofu.

Thanks go out to Beth at Supplicious for choosing this wonderful recipe for us. And of course to Peggy, for being my reminder of what week it is.

Barefoot Bloggers – Pasta with Sun Dried Tomatoes

Brace yourselves, taste buds. We have liftoff.

This is one of the best Ina Garten recipes that I’ve tried. I know I’ve said that before, but they’re all so good. Not this one.

It’s great. Absolutely delicious, fresh and bursting with flavor. Laziness made me serve it as a hot pasta dish. I cut out the salt, used less olive oil, and added the basil, garlic and parmesan cheese to the food processor to become part of the sauce. Adding the basil to the sauce made the sauce a funny color, but it was easy and the flavor was fabulous. I put the chopped olives, tomatoes and mozzarella in the bottom of a medium bowl and put the hot pasta and sauce on top, mixing the ingredients together. The pasta melted the fresh mozzarella slightly. Oh baby, was it good. It’s in the rotation, perfect for quick summer meals.

I have Cat at Delta Whiskey to thank for this amazing pick. If you’d like the recipe, be sure to check out Cat’s blog. Or you can get it on the Food Network site here.

Ellie’s Energy Bars

Inspired by the success of the breakfast cookies we made for Craving Ellie in My Belly this week, I decided to throw together these quick and easy Energy Bars. It was either make these or clean the house. Cooking and baking always trump cleaning the house. Not a good thing.

I loved how easy the prep was…throw the ingredients in the food processor, pulse, put in a pan coated with cooking spray and bake. That’s it. Truly, if Ellie came to my house and made them for me, they still wouldn’t be easier because I’d have to clean the house before she got here.

They smell amazing while they bake. Let them cool 15 minutes before slicing into them. Served warm, they are delicious. The apricots, maple syrup and dates make them chewy and delicious, while the oats, wheat germ and sunflower seeds give them whole grain staying power. I added about 1/8 teaspoon of salt and 1/3 cup of toasted flax seeds.

Give this one a try! It’s easy and the bars keep well in the freezer…if they last that long! You can find the recipe here.

Ellie’s Energy Bars

Inspired by the success of the breakfast cookies we made for Craving Ellie in My Belly this week, I decided to throw together these quick and easy Energy Bars. It was either make these or clean the house. Cooking and baking always trump cleaning the house. Not a good thing.

I loved how easy the prep was…throw the ingredients in the food processor, pulse, put in a pan coated with cooking spray and bake. That’s it. Truly, if Ellie came to my house and made them for me, they still wouldn’t be easier because I’d have to clean the house before she got here.

They smell amazing while they bake. Let them cool 15 minutes before slicing into them. Served warm, they are delicious. The apricots, maple syrup and dates make them chewy and delicious, while the oats, wheat germ and sunflower seeds give them whole grain staying power. I added about 1/8 teaspoon of salt and 1/3 cup of toasted flax seeds.

Give this one a try! It’s easy and the bars keep well in the freezer…if they last that long! You can find the recipe here.

Cauliflower Pickles

The last few weeks, my CSA box has included a head of cauliflower. I like cauliflower, but I don’t love it. Except when it’s made into Alton Brown’s Hurry Curry Cauliflower.

Start with a head of cauliflower cut in florets (I used two heads, and not all of it fit in the jar, so I put the rest in the fridge to add as we eat the pickles). Saute the cauliflower with a couple of cloves of smashed garlic, minced ginger and a variety of spices, when slightly tender put it in a glass jar and add rice and cider vinegars (I double the amount of vinegar the recipe calls for–I never have enough to cover all my cauliflower), salt and sugar. Saute until it softens slightly (not tender or mushy!), adding one or two tablespoons of water if the spices are on the verge of burning, and refrigerate for a week to let it cure.

The beauty of this dish is that it’s quick to put together and delivers big flavor. You can substitute or supplement it with other vegetables (I’ve used carrots in the past) and increase or decrease the amount of curry, and still get great pickles. They’re a wonderful addition to salads or as a vegetable with dinner after a 100 degree day (like today!)

So the next time you have a head of cauliflower and you want something cool and refreshing, call on this simple and delicious recipe. Mine’s in the fridge, and I’m counting down the days until I can pop open the lid and grab a few for a snack.

Cauliflower Pickles

The last few weeks, my CSA box has included a head of cauliflower. I like cauliflower, but I don’t love it. Except when it’s made into Alton Brown’s Hurry Curry Cauliflower.

Start with a head of cauliflower cut in florets (I used two heads, and not all of it fit in the jar, so I put the rest in the fridge to add as we eat the pickles). Saute the cauliflower with a couple of cloves of smashed garlic, minced ginger and a variety of spices, when slightly tender put it in a glass jar and add rice and cider vinegars (I double the amount of vinegar the recipe calls for–I never have enough to cover all my cauliflower), salt and sugar. Saute until it softens slightly (not tender or mushy!), adding one or two tablespoons of water if the spices are on the verge of burning, and refrigerate for a week to let it cure.

The beauty of this dish is that it’s quick to put together and delivers big flavor. You can substitute or supplement it with other vegetables (I’ve used carrots in the past) and increase or decrease the amount of curry, and still get great pickles. They’re a wonderful addition to salads or as a vegetable with dinner after a 100 degree day (like today!)

So the next time you have a head of cauliflower and you want something cool and refreshing, call on this simple and delicious recipe. Mine’s in the fridge, and I’m counting down the days until I can pop open the lid and grab a few for a snack.

CEiMB – Vegetable Cheese Stratta and Barefoot Bloggers make Ina Garten’s Gazpacho

This week’s Craving Ellie in My Belly selection is Vegetable Cheese Stratta, selected by Jenn of A Mid-Life Culinary Adventure (gee, that’s what I feel like I’m having!)

This one was such a pleasure to make and eat. It had loads of veggies (a great use of my CSA goodies) and was very flexible (I didn’t have an onion, so I substituted scallions; I felt like adding spinach, so I did). It was a great make-ahead, and I ate it for lunch rather than for breakfast. It would even be great for dinner. Since I’m still on my own this week, I made 1/8th of the recipe so I wouldn’t have to eat it for 8 meals.

I added some crushed red pepper flakes for a little kick and I used the last of an olive oil rosemary bread. It wasn’t whole grain, but it worked well with the flavors, and it was what I had on hand.

After having this for lunch the next day, I regretted making 1/8th of the recipe. It was fantastic! So cheesy and flavorful from the garlic and nutmeg. This one is going into the rotation.

*******

Meryl of My Bit of Earth chose this week’s Barefoot Bloggers recipe and it was perfect timing, as summer officially began in the northern hemisphere and many Barefoot Bloggers live in parts of the US and Canada that are already sweltering. We’re finally heating up in northern California, so this was still a great option to use summer’s bounty.

Thankfully, this one didn’t dirty a kitchen full of dishes, just the food processor, a measuring cup and a large bowl. I used some of my Nudo olive oil (which I learned about thanks to Nancy), but I reduced the vinegar and olive oil by half. The only ingredient that came from my CSA was the red onion, although later I realized I could have added diced yellow squash and it would have been perfect. I used orange peppers because that was what I had, and I added a diced small avocado. I ate the first bowl after I made it, and it was good and fresh, but needed more salt (I used low sodium vegetable juice, so I wasn’t surprised). I’m thinking about adding hot sauce or cilantro, or maybe both. Ina says this is better after it sits for a few hours, so I’m really looking forward to enjoying it after it cures.

Many thanks to Meryl for a great pick! If you’d like to join us as we cook and blog our way through Ina’s cookbooks (and why wouldn’t you, her recipes are easy and great!), check out how to join here.