Adventures in cookery

[osprey_archer]

I went to visit a couple of friends the other day, and left their house loaded down with cherry tomatoes and all their carbs (they are on one of their periodic low-carb diets again), which of course inspired me to exciting heights of cookery. I made roasted tomatoes! I have always wanted to roast tomatoes!

Perhaps next time I will roast them with garlic cloves so I can spread the sweet soft-baked cloves on toast. Hmmm.

Part of my haul included little pre-made Melba toasts, so I also made a sort of caprese appetizer thing with goat cheese and basil and cherry tomato halves. Delicious!



I have tomorrow off, and now that I've been bitten by the cooking bug I want to make something new & exciting. I have some bread that really needs to be used up, so I'm thinking fancy grilled cheese of some kind - I read a really interesting recipe once for grilled cheese with caramelized onions, and I've always wanted to caramelize an onion...

On the other hand, grilled cheese is so good and classic just like it is, maybe I shouldn't fuss with it? I went to a restaurant - this was such a disappointment; I'd been looking forward to this restaurant so much - and I got a grilled cheese sandwich with brie and blackberries, and the blackberries were still cool, and the brie was all runny (which is probably inevitable with a grilled cheese sandwich with brie; I should have realized beforehand) and in short it was a decidedly inferior grilled cheese.

On the other hand, if I've just caramelized the onions they will be hot and delicious. And they would go so well with sharp cheddar, don't you think?

And if I'm caramelizing onions in the first place, I really ought to do some extra and use them for dinner. I have all that goat cheese - I bought a big log - and we have basil and rosemary in the backyard - and I do have a bunch of apples... I'm sure I can manage something good.

Comments

[inspirethoughts.livejournal.com]

Yummy dish by tomatoes. All your talk about cheese and bread, is making me ravenously hungry now. :) Time to go attack my dinner.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Go forth and eat dinner!

[evelyn-b.livejournal.com]

That looks delicious! I might have to buy myself some goat cheese now. :\

A simple grilled cheese sandwich is a thing of beauty. Grilled cheese with extras like onions and tomatoes? Sure, still good. Brie grilled cheese with blackberries, though; that doesn't even sound like a good idea. Was it supposed to be sweet?

All you need for a good grilled cheese sandwich is good cheese + any bread + GRILL IT UP. But onions can be a valuable citizen of Cheeseville. I say go for it!

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I don't understand this :\, goat cheese is AMAZING and any excuse to buy it is obviously a good excuse.

Now that I've had it in all its disappointing non-glory, I don't remember why I thought the brie and blackberry sandwich sounded like it might be delicious. I think maybe I was like "I like brie! And blackberries! Clearly two great tastes that will taste great together!" And in fairness, I think in a non-grilled-cheese context they would taste pretty good together - brie is good with compotes and things like that - so maybe I just didn't think it through to the part where brie is too soft for grilled cheese?

I still think they could have done a better job with the blackberries. They were still cold! No part of a grilled cheese sandwich should be cold!

[evelyn-b.livejournal.com]

Goat cheese is delicious, but my food budget is smaller than my capacity to eat huge quantities of cheese. But I might go for it anyway.

Brie and blackberries on crackers sounds like it could be good! But on grilled cheese, no no. I mean, maybe! But there are so many other more suitable cheeses! So many!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I think caramelized onions would definitely go *excellently* with sharp cheddar. (And your pretty cherry tomato appetizers are beautiful)

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I am pretty excited about this sandwich. Hopefully I can caramelize the onions properly!

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Cheddar and carmelized onions sound delicious to me!

My tip for making caramelized onions (if you haven't already done it): it's fairly easy, but always takes way, way longer than you would expect. Slow and steady is the way to onion bliss.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

The recipe I found said it will take 45 minutes to an hour. Does that sound about right to you, or are you thinking that's an underestimate?

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

That sounds right! I'm just forever thinking, "man, caramelized onions would go great with dinner! I'll just whip some up real quick!" and it is not a real quick recipe – or at least it doesn't feel that way when I'm hungry, ha.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Ha, yeah, and the scent of onions fills the WHOLE KITCHEN as they cook. It would be a completely torturous recipe to make when you're hungry.

They taste soooooo good, though. I have put the extras in my fridge and I am thinking about ways to use them up. So many possibilities!

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Yessss, onions cooking is the very best smell.