HWGGCC

It is time for the Fifth Annual Harry W. Greene Grilled Cheese Challenge (HWGGCC)! This annual competition pits grads, post-docs, faculty and staff against each other in a battle of cheesiness, bad puns, and culinary delights. Last year our international cuisine entry of Brazilian pao de queijo with prosciutto failed to win the peoples choice award by a single vote, and it has been a bit of a sore spot ever since. This year we went back to basics to construct a classic grilled cheese with the best ingredients we could find and a couple unexpected flavors to spice things up. My main focus of course was the bread.

For this event I wanted a pan loaf that would hold up well to grilling & not get soggy when covered with melty cheese, but would also be more than just a vehicle for other toppings. I wanted it to stand alone as an ingredient, bring some real flavor to the sandwich & compliment the cheezy goodness inside. To find the right flavor combination my colleagues and I tested the spectrum of flavors from sweet and salty, to savory & spicy. Test loaves included multigrain-sourdough, walnut-raisin, sundried-tomato & rosemary, and apricot-gorgonzola. All of these cocktails resulted in pretty great bread, but was it the winning combination? The apricot- gorgonzola came close. It made a pretty amazing grilled blue-cheese sandwich, but we thought that might be a bit too far from the classics for the judges panel. So in the end we decided on one of my all time favorite foundations for a kick-ass grilled cheese: Jalapeno-Cheddar.

The idea for this bread comes from my friends at "All You Knead" bakery in Beacon, NY, who bake this incredible stuff on a regular basis. I didn't have their exact recipe (and I wont be posting a recipe here bc I wouldn't want to share their secrets with the whole internet) but do I think I was able to make a reasonable approximation in my home kitchen. I was especially happy with my jerry rigged steam oven technique, illustrated below.

 Scaled loaves (1300g - a bit too large) studded with sharp NY cheddar and spicy jalapenos

 Shaped loaves going into the steam pans

Topped with some more shredded cheese and awaiting the final rise

 

My oven within an oven. 

The trick for trapping steam when baking multiple (in this case 3) pan loaves.

 The final product. Look at those pockets of melted cheese!

Update 3/11/15:  The HWGGCC was today and we swept the top awards of peoples choice and first prize from the panel of judges! We could barely keep up with demand as we were grilling these up. There were some technical difficulties with power going out to our electric griddle, so some of them came out a bit more soggy than intended, but they were still pretty great.

For anyone interested in recreating this masterpiece at home:

On the inside of 2 slices of jalapeno cheddar bread

- shredded sharp cheddar & fontina cheese  (enough to cover the bread)
- spread the inside of one slice with about 1/2 tsp of dinosaur BBQ sauce
- about 1 tbsp of marinated pulled venison (I suppose pulled pork would be an acceptable substitute - or leave off for the vegetarian version)

On the outside:

- spread a very thin layer of ancho chile aioli (plain mayo will work in a pinch)
- sprinkle with a touch of shredded cheddar or pecorino

grill on a hot griddle until golden & toasty

Enjoy!