Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
For party pizazz, try cheese toast
Chef’s fancy baked version will add crunch to holidays
With 2018 quickly bleeding out, let’s take a moment to reflect on what a year it’s been. Wild-eyed “Prep School” cultists such as yourselves will recall that in January we recommitted ourselves to preparing our own meals, thereby reducing our dependence on jarred and boxed foods of convenience. Followers of my Twitter account (@jimdewan) remember fondly the unprovoked attack by a Russian bot regarding April’s paean to the beloved sandwich:
“This was the most stupid article I ever read! Who doesn’t know how to make a good sandwich? Da?”
Apparently, “Da” is Russian for “Am I right, folks?”
Join me, then, as we exit 2018 reaffirming our obeisance to the — dare I say it — conservative notion of providing for ourselves. And we’ll set the bar even lower than that lowly sandwich. My friends, for your delectation, I give you cheese toast.
Why you need to learn this
In a dozen years, I haven’t played this card, but by God, I’m playing it today. Why do you need to learn this? Because I said so, that’s why.
The steps you take
Did you even know that cheese toast is a thing? I didn’t. My mother never made it. And I guess I never went to a Sizzler steakhouse, where their cheese toast seems to be as much of a draw as their bloody beef.
In fact, the first I ever encountered those two words together, “cheese” and “toast,” was just a few months back, in the kitchen of my colleague, chef Belinda Brooks, who does a very delicious version of it for the bread basket at The Dining Room at Kendall College.
Ever since that happy introduction, I’ve been obsessed.
Think of cheese toast as an open-faced grilled cheese, only better. While grilled cheese is pretty much just bread and cheese, cheese toast combines grated cheese with additional fat, like butter or
— and I know this sounds gross — mayonnaise, along with other flavoring ingredients.
Some poor souls sear it in a dry saute pan, face down, like a grilled cheese or a mob hit. I prefer broiling face up, just for a couple of minutes, until the cheese melts and turns a glorious George Hamilton brown. I also toast my bread a bit beforehand because I like a little crunch to complement the luscious goo. Other folks eschew this step, preferring their cheese toast’s undercarriage
to be soft and yielding. You choose.
Chef Brooks’ upscale cheese toast starts from scratch and is more like a cracker than a grilled cheese. As such, the chilled dough is stiff as an Arctic wind. You have to literally pound it maniacally with a rolling pin, flattening it to a thin disc, before rolling it thin with a pasta machine.
Got it? Now, go make us some cheese toast.