French Grilled Cheese Toast

It’s the first day of one of the tastiest months of the year, and I couldn’t be more ecstatic. Even though I’ve decided to forego the pranking this year, which is borderline shocking if you know my past history, this first day of April still kicked *bum* for one reason. Cheese, gooey, salty, sharp, nutty, buttery, cheese. Get your cheese hats on because it’s National Grilled Cheese Month, peeps!

As it just so happens, grilled cheese is #2 on my “Favorite Comfort Foods Ever” list, with the almighty Elvis sandwich barely edging out the competition at #1. One of my favorite attributes of grilled cheese is its versatility, offering myriad meal possibilities. In its simplest form, the sandwich is a wondrous compliment to a wide array of soups and salads, or it is the shining star of a child’s after school meal. In its most complicated form, vegetables, meats, herbs, spices, and even French fries can all lend an enthusiastic hand in forming some of the tastiest, cheesy sandwiches imaginable.

Because it’s a Lenten Friday, I left the fanfare of meat out in today’s sandwich. But, I still wanted to give the classic a lively twist. That’s when it occurred to me, brunch. I love weekend brunch. I love the array of meal possibilities that combines the sweet and the savory, the familiar and the unique, and syrup with anything. Most of all, I love that it grants me the opportunity to order French toast at 12:30 in the afternoon when everyone else is ordering a steak. So, I’m kicking off this month by further brunch-ifying the simple grilled cheese sandwich. I say further because on its own, grilled cheese can be brunch.

Fresh baked French baguette from La Brea bakery

What resulted was a simple, miniature, open faced sandwich which could be served as a snack, appetizer, or even a mini meal. I went for classic and basic, refrigerator staples and it’s fairly quick to whip up. Now I know I’m not the first to think up this concept, but it’s definitely the first time I’m trying it out.

I love the cinnamon scent that rises during the French toasting process.

The fresh, French baguette was a light and airy alternative to dense, Texas sliced white bread. French toasting the baguette melded extra flavors into an otherwise commonplace sandwich. The tart, Granny apple lent crunchy texture and was a compliment to the cinnamon and nutmeg. Pure, whole American cheese provided the salty gooeyness I had been craving the past couple days.

Just starting to melt

After a few bites, I realized that French toasting the bread provided a definite oomph to the meal, lifting the sandwich to a higher level. In the future I may add more depth by using different cheeses, like Fontina or Gruyere, or even different bread, like Challah. And maybe next time I’ll remember to drizzle a little syrup or honey on top before I devour the entire thing.

Shadows from the sunset.

Gear up your tummies kids, because your grilled cheese is going to get French-ed today.

French Grilled Cheese Toast

Serves 4

• 1 regular or 2 small French baguettes
• 2 slices American cheese
• 1 Granny smith apple
• 1 large egg
• ¼ cup buttermilk, or regular milk
• 1 tsp Cinnamon
• ½ tsp Nutmeg
• ½ - 1 Tb butter, for frying
• Syrup or honey, optional

1. Slice the apple into at least 16 thin slices. Set aside.
2. Beat the egg and milk together. Add the cinnamon and nutmeg. I used more cinnamon and nutmeg than what I wrote in the recipe because I love a strong cinna-meg taste.  
3. Slice the baguette on a bias into 4 thick slices, at least 1 inch. Soak the slices in the egg mixture on both sides.
4. Heat and butter frying pan. Fry the soaked baguette slices on both sides.
5. Add ½ slice of cheese on top of each baguette slice. Cover and let the steam melt the cheese slightly. This step is easier and faster if the cheese is set out early and reaches near room temperature.
6. Top each slice of cheesed French toast with 4 thin slices of apple.
7. Plate and enjoy! If you have a sweet tooth, use syrup or honey as a dip.

- Shortcake

Farewell Chicken

"Anything but Chicken Galantine; anything but the Chicken Galatine," I thought as I reached into the chef's hat for my pick for our final practical exam these past two days.  I reached out and slowly opened a piece of paper that said "Ay" (meaning "A"...the last time we picked out of a hat, we complained how the chef wrote his As).  My heart sank into the deep pits of despair where the spirits of the chickens and ducks we mauled the past few weeks rested. I heaved a sigh at the new chicken I would have to debone.  Letter A on the list of finals foods to prepare matched with Chicken Galantine.

Chicken Galantine is a traditional French dish made of chicken and a forcemeat, highly seasoned ground protein similar to meatloaf. It is then shaped into the bird it originally was or shaped into a roulade, a much simpler form to make.

Traditional Chicken Galantine as featured from My Yummy Buddy

Luckily, I only had to make the roulade for finals and not a ground pork shaped chicken.  A roulade is what it sounds like, a roll!  It's like a jellyroll, but with chicken and ground meat. 

The first step was to grind up some pork butt (not really its butt, but the butt of the shoulder of a pig) with some extra pork fat.  We usually use a meat grinder to grind up the pork, but today it was not available and we had to use the food processor.  The ground pork and fat was mixed with some cooking sherry for flavor, some blanched pistachios, diced, boiled ham for garnish and color, and an egg to bind everything together.

Next was the part I dreaded: deboning the chicken.

Side note: Just to let you know, I've chosen the baking/pastry path of the culinary field because I not only love making cakes, pastries, and all that sweetness, but I really don't like touching raw meat.  I think my mother, the nurse, instilled in me as a child a constant fear of raw meat's tendency to attract microbial organisms that cause sickness and disease and even death.  Having all this reinforced in my Food Microbiology and other Food Science courses worsened my fear of raw meat.  The other reason I don't like working with meat is because when the chef gets to the meat, it still has an awfully close resemblance to what it was before.

Now back to our regular program!

There was no getting around it.  I just had to bite the bullet and do it.  The first step at deboning poultry is to pop the joints of the bird so they become easier to chop off.  Sure, the chickens are beheaded, defeathered, and cleaned before we get to them as chefs, but it just tears my heart out to make the little wing flap and see where I should cut it off. 

After shaking off the shock of chopping off a chicken's wing, you have to make a cut down it's back and dig out the wishbone, which is basically the bird's collar bone.  Next, you make a long cut down its back so you can start pulling off the meat from the skeletal carcass. When you get to the thighs, you have to cut at the tendons so you can pull the bones out.  It takes some practice to cut up the tendons without tearing out too much meat, or even your hand for that matter.  Hold the thigh up like a lollipop and cut all the way around.  It is difficult to describe in words.

After you pull out all the bones and the carcass, you're left with a rectangular-ish flesh and skin of the chicken.  Hold the chicken with the one wing and leg on the top border of your rectangle with the other set on the bottom border.  Place a line of your forcemeat on the upper half, then start to roll up like an eggroll, burrito, jellyroll, or whichever food analogy you like.Wrap up the log of meat in plastic wrap, like a piece of candy or saltwater taffy, and tie the ends with butcher's string.  You have just made the roulade form of a galantine! Poach the galantine in chicken stock or water until it reaches an internal temperature of 165 F.  Once it reaches this temperature, you need to hold it there for at least 15 seconds, for sanitation reasons. Set aside and let cool.

Chicken galantine is traditionally served cold.  Here is my final product, sliced down and presented to see the pretty garnish inside.  I plated the slices on a bed of radicchio leaves, with apple chutney and three carrot blossoms (Super easy to make; I'll write about vegetable florals in a future post).

After all the headache and heartache of turning this bird into a chicken log stuffed with meat, I ended up scoring extremely well (100!) for my final.  Hooray!  This chicken died with a purpose of helping me get a perfect score.  Yeah, that's pretty selfish of me; but hey, at least it was made into something beautiful and not mixed with other chickens to make a boatload of processed nuggets.

"If it bothers you so much, why do you eat meat?" you ask. After having to chop up a chicken incredibly close to its original, wing flapping form, I have had thoughts of converting to vegetarianism. But, I'm not going to lie, I still love poultry and meat as much as the next guy.  Seeing it as a prepared food makes me forget it was once flapping around, laying eggs, leading little chicklets to safety...oh man, here I go...

- Sandwich

Lazy Man's Tuscany Bread

In late 2009, I happened to catch an episode of "David Rocco's Dolce Vita" in which he made what was called the lazy man's lasagna.  Intrigued, I wrote down a note to myself to get the recipe online in order to try it out for myself.  The recipe wasn't exactly "lazy" to me, I actually spent more time making the bechamel sauce than I did the rest of the lasagna!  Then again, I never made lasagna before and so everything took longer than it probably should have. Still, compared to other lasagna recipes I've come across, David Rocco's lazy man was indeed a lazy way to do it.  However, this isn't about lasagna (that can be for a future post!).  It's about another "lazy man" recipe that I decided to improvise this afternoon in a fit of hunger: Tuscany Bread.

Pizzeria Uno offers the Tuscany Bread as an appetizer, and the recipe itself is fairly simple.  Cut a loaf of garlic bread lengthwise, spread garlic butter and pesto sauce, top with spinach, diced tomatoes, and muenster cheese, and let it toast for a few minutes.  So how could I lazy-man it up?  Easy!  Get rid of half the ingredients in order to do it all in half the time!  Here's all the ingredients I used, easily found in the kitchen:

A small loaf of garlic bread

A handful of fresh spinach

A handful of cheese (any works, I used mozzarella)

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

I actually had tomatoes in the refrigerator, along with some pesto sauce.  But pesto sauce has a lot more oil than I'd prefer, and so using olive oil directly allows me to proportion it just as I'd like.  In addition, I don't like chopping tomatoes, ha!


Anyway, to get this lazy man's Tuscany Bread started, simply cut the loaf lengthwise into three pieces.  This will give you two pieces of bread that are equal length and height, and a baby stub that you can eat while preparing, or turn into a baby Tuscany Bread.  Spread some extra virgin olive oil on top of the two larger pieces.  Use the baby stub to blot the bread, as well as have it get some olive oil of its own.

Then, layer the spinach onto the loaves, either with or without the stems.  It's easier to layer without the stems, or you can simply later the stems first, with the spinach on atop of it.  This is followed by the sprinkling of cheese.  You'll have extra of both, which again, can go on the little stub.  Put it in a toaster oven, directly on the center rack.

Let it toast at 425 degrees for five minutes, or until the cheese melts.  I prefer when the cheese is just about to brown, but your mileage may vary.  When it's done, it'll look like this delicious cheesy goodness.

You can let it cool for a couple minutes whilst writing a blog about it, or immediately bite into the bread and let the roof of your mouth burn in a satisfying heat.  Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to eat my lazy man creation and finish watching The Notebook (shut up).  Have a Happy Sunday!

- Sonic

Chicken Cacciatore

Some of the tastiest Filipino entrees all have one thing in common: a tomato based sauce. Beef Kaldereta, Beef Mechado, Chicken Afritada, and Pork Menudo rely on tomatoes as a foundation to the delicious sauce that many Filipinos love to drench their rice in. That’s probably why my fondness for Italian food is so immense; there’s just something about a great tomato sauce that I can’t get enough of.

Chicken Cacciatore is incredibly similar to Chicken Afritada. The differences lie in the spices and condiments used, as well as the vegetables thrown in. While the Italian entrée relies on fresh basil, parsely, oregano, and a bit of mushroom, the Filipino dish calls for patis (fish sauce), potatoes, and sometimes peas. Since I didn’t have anymore patis in the pantry, I decided to go Italian. I used my friend’s family recipe, but this recipe is just as delicious.

Like with anything I cook, I changed my friend's recipe up a bit. I love potatoes drenched in tomato sauce, so I decided to add it in the pot, along with some spinach, since its life span was waning, and a nice dash of sweet hot sauce. With the crazy amount of ingredients, the pot looked like a symphony of vegetables having a party.

The result was tastier than I remembered, considering I hadn’t cooked the dish in a couple years. I’m glad that instead of pasta, I went Asian and ate it with, in my opinion, the best sauce absorbing starch: white rice. And because of the addition of chicken broth, a plethora of vegetables, and spices all stewing together, this tomato sauce is a far cry from the marinara sauce you can buy in a supermarket aisle.

The best part about this dish? Creating an amazing, scrumptious sandwich with the leftovers! I nestled the reheated, tomato bathed veggies and chicken within a soft, sweet molasses loaf, and then broiled a slice of American cheese on top. Cheese does wonders to any meal, and this sandwich was no exception. As if there was any doubt, considering that dishes like pizza and pastas include the marrying of cheese and tomatoes. I just wish I had more leftovers so I could have another Cheese Cacciatore Sandwich.  
- Shortcake

Pump Up Your Shrimp

A few days ago in culinary school, we took the simple appetizer of shrimp, and dressed it up for a French Restaurant.  I felt like Remy in Ratatouille, deconstructing a dish and presenting it in a whole new way (watch the movie to the end if you don't know what I'm talking about).  That's when I discovered my favorite part about school: taking something familiar and recreating it in new ways.  This concept of deconstruction is the latest trend in the food world and I'm sure glad to be in culinary school to learn all about it. 


I present to you Shrimp Mousse.  This savory mousse was made like the dessert version. We pureed cooked and cooled shrimp, mixed in a little gelatin, folded it into seasoned whipped cream, then molded it in a small round mold called a timbale.  The mousse was topped with a poached shrimp and a sprig of dill.  The top was then filled with aspic, a type of gelatin, for preservation as well as presentation.  The plate was completed with a bed of cucumber slices and a healthy drizzle of hand whisked, balsamic vinaigrette dressing.

Out of all the things we've cooked so far in this culinary class, I really liked this dish the most, since it was basically doing pastry again. Having finished all my baking/pastry courses, it was awesome to temporarily dive back into the pastry tricks of the trade. In my baking classes we've made little mousse molds, so this mousse was a nice visit down pastry lane. The shrimp mousse was made in Garde Manger, the cold foods kitchen; we make a myriad of cold foods such as salads, cold soups,and hors d'oeuvre. In a sense, this dish was basically an application of the pastry world into the culinary world. It's awesome how different tricks can transform the familiar into the unfamiliar.


- Sandwich