Grilled cheese on steroids

My mum always told me that I loved cheese as a toddler. By the time my working memory kicks in, I had eschewed cheese as a nasty piece of food. I don't remember when I started eating it again, but it may have had something to do with my discovery of pizza when I was about eighteen. From then on, melted cheese became a regular part of my culinary vocabulary, but never again have I eaten cheese in the raw.

A few years into marriage and with three children, I visited a friend who lived in Eugene. She made grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. I still wasn't that much into cheese, but, to be polite, I tried it and liked it. "Cheese on toast", as I had known it growing up, meant sliced cheese on an open piece of bread and grilled in the oven, and this was how I always fixed it for Jeff and the kids. Grilled cheese in a frying pan, with two pieces of bread and buttered on the outside, somehow made it much more delightful, so it became part of my dinner repertoire. It was almost always paired with a can or two of Campbell's tomato soup, made with milk, of course. 

And there it stayed for almost thirty years. Sometimes with ham as well as cheese, and, lately, with mustard for Jeff. 

I have been trying to embrace my inner condiment child.

I am lying.

I will never eat condiments, but I am trying to be more open to the concept for Jeff's sake.

Jeff loves condiments.

I was perusing Smitten Kitchen's recipes the other day. That girl knows how to ramp up a recipe like none other. And I happened to run across this recent recipe on grilled cheese. I filed it away in my culinary memory for future reference. When I arrived at the Ranch on Thursday, I was toting a loaf of potato rosemary bread that I found with the free bread at the Senior Centre. It occurred to me that it would make a mean grilled cheese sandwich, so I tried the technique, slightly altered to fit my needs.

I used Tillamook medium cheddar and the results were spectacular. We ate them for lunch and dinner on Friday and I am still dreaming about them.

If you want to try this, go to the Smitten Kitchen link, because I am lazy and didn't take enough photos she did it first. But here is a photo of the sandwiches before being flipped.

And, the finished product.
Butter and cheese on the outside might seem like overkill, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

Try it. 

You'll like it.

Let me know what you think.