It was 8 o'clock on a Friday night and it was time to put something in the belly. But what? Given the lack of options, I had resigned myself to some sort of sandwich....but what kind? Tuna? PB&J? Lunch meat? The griddle opined that a warm, grilled cheese sandwich would be quite tasty, and I nodded in agreement.
But a regular grilled cheese sandwich just didn't seem like...enough. So, lessee...I have some shaved smoked ham, some provolone cheese, bread. If I'm going to grill a sammich, I need some fat. All of my butter was cold and as lazy as I was feeling, I really didn't want to go through the effort of warming some up. Then I heard the voice of Alton, patron saint of clueless male chefs. His voice said "What about the olive oil in the pantry?" What about that oil indeed!
Saint Alton had previously imparted sacred wisdom concerning cooking with oils. Namely, that a lot of oils have a low smoking point, which is the temperature at which they start to burn. Olive oil falls into this category. So if I was going to use olive oil, I needed to keep the temperature low enough to not burn the oil. So here's what I did:
The slightly fancy grilled cheese sandwich
- 1 Serving shaved smoked ham
- Bread of choice
- slice of provolone cheese
- a shmear of a favorite stone ground mustard
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- garlic powder
The resulting sandwich was drier than a normal sandwich due to the lack of butter, but it browned very nicely and the olive oil and garlic powder imparted a very nice, light flavor that complimented the smoked ham and provolone very well. It more than made up for the fact that all I had was some wheat bread. ;)
I will be making this again.
