Feeding You

I think if I could feed you all, I would. I love cooking for people -- it doesn't even have to be cake, though cake is very dear to me. Have you met me? Hi, I'm Elise and I adore cake.

Food plans for this year: eat more veggies, eat more whole food, challenge myself with some tricky cakes, and share the madness with YOU.

Last Christmas, I was gifted with the Smitten Kitchen Cookbook. Deb is one of my favorite cooks (from her, I learned to make yeasty doughs!), and if you haven't been to her site, you should go directly after you read this entry. All manner of wonders await you there, no matter what you like to eat. THIS Christmas, I was gifted with Modern Art Desserts (Caitlin Freeman) and well. We are totally making some cake from that and reporting back here, yes.

But let's start with grilled cheese from the SK Cookbook. Of course it's not JUST grilled cheese, it's grilled cheese with sweet and sour onions. I didn't intend to make this, so we went off the recipe a little bit. But that's always okay, y'know. The kitchen is all about science!

1 medium onion (recipe says red, I reckon any kind will do)
1 tbsp. butter
drizzle of olive oil2 tsp. brown sugar
1 tbsp. balsamic vinegar

Slice your onion thin and toss it into the oil and melted butter. Ponder the wonder of onions in oil and butter.

onions

Cook them for 5ish minutes. Then add your sugar. Cook this another 5-7 minutes, and add your vinegar. This is where science happens, because it's going to DEGLAZE your pan. That's a fancy way of saying it's going to let all the crusty sugar bits loose like a herd of kittens into your onions. Oh, yes. Stir that all up. Stare at the glory. Try not to eat all the glory. Ponder your sandwich.

Deb suggests rye bread, which I think would be outstanding. I had some grainy seed bread so used that. My suggestion: use what you have and/or what you like best.

Deb also suggested Emmentaler cheese, a kind of Swiss. This is not my favorite, so I went with what I had on hand, white American. Assemble your sandwich as you do, add your onions, and then grill it up in a pan or a press (I have a press, which is a pretty excellent thing to have in one's kitchen).

sammich

My cheese didn't even leak out! Gaze upon my imperfect grilled cheese photograph. The sandwich, on the other hand, was outstanding--the onions are a thing of beauty.

This year, I'm going to try to be better about sharing food with you here. I hope you'll come back, because there's going to be cake. (Hi, have you met me? HI. ♥)