Apple #475: Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

I have slacked off in my Daily Appling lately, for no real reason.  I'll try to make it up to you this week with some good entries.  Hopefully, you'll enjoy this one.

Having already done an entry about bisques, in which I discussed tomato soups and bisques, it seemed only right to follow it up with an entry about grilled cheese sandwiches.  I thought, Since I just did a food entry I'll wait a while on that one, but when three different people mentioned grilled cheese sandwiches to me over the course of two days, it seemed destiny was demanding an entry.  Could destiny be hungry for grilled cheese?


Grilled cheese with pickle and fries.  Boy, that looks good, doesn't it?
(Photo from Yum Sugar)

• People have been eating bread and cheese together for centuries.  Well, duh, that's because the combination is a fantastic one.  But putting them together in a sandwich -- not open-faced -- and grilling it, that's a more modern invention.

• A lot of people say, by the way, that the Romans invented grilled cheese sandwiches, but this is not true.  Wealthy Romans might sometimes have had cheese with their bread and fruit for breakfast, but they probably wouldn't have made a sandwich of the bread and cheese, and they certainly didn't grill it.

• Still others say that the grilled cheese is a descendant of the French sandwich called the Croque Monsieur, which was invented some time in the 1900s.  This is basically a ham and cheese sandwich with bechamel sauce on top.  

The Croque Monsieur, a French ham and cheese sandwich whose name literally means "Mister Crunchy." The bechamel sauce on top, by the way, is made of butter, flour, salt, pepper, Parmesan and Gruyere cheese.  Extra good.
(Photo and recipe for the sandwich from Simply Recipes)

• I am going to argue, though, that if you're going to say that the Croque Monsieur is the father of grilled cheese, then you had better be prepared to allow any sandwich that has cheese and gets grilled to be an ancestor of grilled cheese.  Because by my definition, as soon as you throw meat on that sandwich, it ceases to be a grilled cheese and becomes a Whatever Meat You've Got On There and Cheese Sandwich.

• In fact, the grilled cheese sandwich as we know it came about with the invention of processed cheese, or what we now call Kraft Singles.

• A guy named James L. Kraft started a cheddar wholesaling business in Chicago in 1903.  He wanted to keep his cheddar from spoiling as fast and to make sure that the cheddar was consistently good from one batch to the next.  

• He tried some different ideas, but then in 1916 he hit on what would be the winner:  he shredded "refuse cheddar," re-pasteurized it to sterilize it again, and added sodium phosphate as a preservative.  (Sodium phosphate by itself is a pretty potent laxative, by the way.)

• He advertised the heck out of his cheese, promised that it would last longer and would be consistent from one package to the next, and charged more for it (even though it was made from inferior cheese and a laxative), and it was hugely successful.

Kraft Singles, the sine qua non of grilled cheese sandwiches.  Perhaps it's too small to see, but the packaging says "Pasteurized prepared cheese product."
(Photo from Gravity7)

• Processed cheese might not have been as successful, though, without the influence of two World Wars.  It was much easier to ship overseas than regular cheddar, the Navy loved it because it would last longer on ships, and it was generally easier to carry around in ration packs.

• So it was at least some time after the 1920s or 1930s that the grilled cheese sandwich was born.  It may have been born on a Navy ship, since World War II Navy cookbooks contain recipes for "American cheese filling sandwiches" which were broiled on board.

• But, ah, sharp reader that you are, you noticed I said broiled, not grilled.  Some enterprising Navy cook might have grilled his cheese sandwiches, but we have no record of that. So the grilled cheese may not actually have taken its first breath until some time later.

• After WWII, American school cafeterias served cheese sandwiches using the American cheese.  These may or may not have been grilled; my source is not clear on this point.  But they weren't quite the grilled cheese as we know it, since they were served open-faced.  

• It was during this time, however -- the 1950s, that is -- that the cheese sandwich was first paired with tomato soup.  Tomato soup was thought to be a good source of Vitamin C, and therefore a nutritional addition to a sandwich that didn't offer much in the way of vitamins.

• What is certain is that by the 1960s, people had added the top slice of bread and they were grilling the sandwiches.  How we got from broiling to grilling, and how that second slice of bread got added, history does not tell us.  It may remain forever a culinary mystery.

The original grilled cheese: processed a.k.a. American cheese between two slices of bread, grilled.
(Photo from Food Vixen in NYC's Blog)

• Once born, the love for grilled cheese sandwiches has only grown. 

• April is officially National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Month.  All during April, various TV shows and restaurants host grilled cheese-making contests, Kraft has a tell-us-why-you-love-grilled-cheese contest, and restaurants all over the country offer more or better or fancier grilled cheeses throughout the month.

• One restaurant in Cincinnati called Lavomatic reportedly makes a different grilled cheese sandwich every day, whether it's April or not.  When I checked their menu, the grilled cheese of the day was boursin, mild cheddar, and sharp white cheddar.  (Notice: no meat.)  They were also serving a tomato bisque.

• Another restaurant called Campanile in Los Angeles serves only grilled cheese sandwiches as their main courses.  But their grilled cheeses are fancy -- with marinated onion and whole grain mustard -- and they often include other ingredients like beer-battered soft shell crab, or braised lamb and artichokes, or -- I must confess this one sounds really good -- bacon, avocado, and tomato.

• Yet another restaurant, this one a diner called The Pop Shop in Collingswood, NJ, regularly serves over 30 varieties of grilled cheese sandwiches.  They have won awards for their grilled cheese sandwiches, and one day Bobby Flay showed up for a grilled cheese throwdown.  Bobby Flay won with his brie, goat cheese, and bacon sandwich.  But once again, in my book, as soon as you put meat on it, it's not a grilled cheese anymore, so I don't know how authentic I'd call that victory.

Even this psycho girl loves grilled cheese sandwiches.
(Image from Adland.TV)

• There is also the Grilled Cheese Invitational, held each April in Los Angeles.  250 amateurs and 50 professionals can compete.  Contestants can enter one sandwich per category.  The categories are Missionary, Kama Sutra, and Honey Pot. Missionary is the standard grilled cheese with no extra ingredients (oh dear, what does this say about me), Kama Sutra can have extra ingredients but the interior must be 60% cheese, and the Honey Pot is like the Kama Sutra except suitable for dessert.

• Winning sandwiches include the "I'd Tell You What's In It (but I'd have to kill you)," "A Dessert so delicious is was not meant for Man Ding Dong," "Foe Cheesy!" and "The DaVinCheese."

They're serious -- mostly -- about grilled cheese sandwiches at the Grilled Cheese Invitational.
(Photo from the Grilled Cheese Invitational)

• There's also a guy in New York's East Village who started a facebook page offering to make a grilled cheese sandwich for anyone who asks for $5 to $7. He grills the sandwiches in a pan, wraps them in foil, then puts them in a 500 degree oven to maximize crispness.  He'll then ride his bike to meet customers on a specified nearby street corner and hand off the sandwich in exchange for the cash.  It's all conducted as an underground service because he's not an official restaurant with health code inspections or anything.  His page is called bread.butter.cheese.

I don't know how much longer I want to do it because I'm living in fear.  It would be such a stupid thing to get in trouble for. . . . I kind of want to quit, it's getting too big, but I want to feed these people.

• Perhaps the best indication of the popularity of the grilled cheese sandwich is the visions people have had while eating them.

• The most famous, of course, is the woman who saw the Virgin Mary in her grilled cheese sandwich.  She sold the sandwich on eBay to an internet casino called Golden Palace for $28,000.  Then she got the sandwich with the likeness of the Virgin Mary tattooed on her breast.

Diana Duyser with her famous grilled cheese sandwich, packaged in the plastic case with cotton balls where she kept it for 10 years before selling it on eBay.
(Photo from Atheist Point)

• Other grilled cheese-lovers have found Hello Kitty and Howard Stern on their sandwiches.  Those were also sold on eBay.

• What makes the grilled cheese so popular, in my opinion, is not all the public hoopla but the fact that it remains a great at-home, comfort food.

• My favorite way to make grilled cheese is thusly:

• Whole wheat bread
• Cheddar cheese (not the processed stuff)
• Yellow mustard

• Squirt the mustard on the bread, slice enough pieces of cheese to cover one slice, close the sandwich, butter the outside, place it in a hot pan.  Turn down the heat slightly as the sandwich cooks.  Check it once in a while and when the bread is getting browned, flip.  It'll take less time to cook the other side.  When you hear the melted cheese hit the pan with a sizzle, it's done.  Crunchy on the outside, gooey on the inside: excellent.

• In spite of the excellence of my grilled cheese sandwiches, I have been engaged in a heated debate for several years with a friend of mine, Mercutio, about the best way to make one.  The details of this debate are far too extensive to get into here.

• I will say this much, though.  In defense of my methodology, here are the instructions from the official National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Month page:

It is most common for the assembled sandwich to be buttered on the outside and placed on a griddle, pan, cast iron skillet, or rarely, in a dedicated sandwich maker to be heated. Once the bread on the bottom half of the sandwich has reached a toast-like texture, the sandwich is flipped and continues cooking until the other side has toasted and the cheese has melted. 

Another method is to butter one slice of bread on both sides, grill the bottom side until the butter melts, then flip. Wait for the inside to be grilled, flip and add the cheese. Then butter the other slice of bread and grill, then place the slices of bread together.

• Do you see anything in those instructions about putting a lid over the sandwich?  Noooo.  Mercutio, I rest my case.

If you really want to get fancy with your grilled cheese, here's one with Monterey Jack cheese, sliced jalapeños, and butter.
(Photo from Asylum.com, which has a list of 5 fancy grilled cheeses)



Sources
The Food Timeline, FAQs: sandwiches, grilled cheese
Irulan Serena, AllExperts.com,  Ancient/Classical History, grilled cheese sandwich, April 2, 2008
Sherri Granato, The Grilled Cheese Sandwich, America's Favorite Comfort Food, Associated Content, September 5, 2007
David Clark, "A Brief History of 'American Cheese,' from Colonial Cheddar to Kraft Singles," Mental Floss, January 7, 2009
Medline Plus, sodium phosphate
Erin Zimmer, Serious Eats, April is National Grilled Cheese Month, April 7, 2009
Yelp, Pop Shop
Amber Sutherland and Jeremy Olshan, He's making a gouda livin', New York Post, August 2, 2010
Gone-ta-Pott.com, National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Month
Brendan I. Koerner, The $28K Sandwich That Grew No Mold, Slate.com, November 23, 2004
Surfer Sam, Famous EBay Auctions 

Apple #140: Feta Cheese

So I was eating a Greek salad for dinner tonight, and I said, "Mmm, feta." Then I said, "Thank you, goats." But the person I was with said, "Doesn't it come from sheep?" We looked at each other, blinking, and realized we weren't sure.

This picture (from a recipe site in Spanish) looks pretty similar to the Greek salad I had for dinner. Except at the place I got mine, they slice off a hunk of feta and lay it on top in a solid brick that you then crumble with your fork as you please. I say it again, mmm, feta.

• Feta can be made from sheep's milk or a blend of 70% sheep's and 30% goat's milk. Thus, even though goat's milk is involved, the sheep win over the goats.

• Non-Greek or large producers may make feta from cow's milk. The problem with this is that cow's milk has proteins of enormous size that are responsible for giving a lot of people problems digesting the lactose. Goat's milk and sheep's milk both have lactose in them, but the proteins are shaped differently, so people have less trouble digesting them.

• Another problem with using cow's milk is that it makes the cheese turn a yellowish color, so the producers then dye the cheese to make it white like the traditional feta.
  

• Feta is made by curdling it first with rennet (rennet-free varieties are available in some areas). It is then separated and drained in a bag or special mold. Then it's cut into large slices -- and here's where the word feta comes from, for it means "slice." The slices are salted and then packed into brine-filled barrels. It soaks in this salty brine for two months.

• If the cheese you've gotten has aged for less than two months, it's not considered to be fully matured, and it may not taste as excellent as it could.

• After you've bought a package of feta and brought it home and opened it and eaten some but not all of it, you'll want to keep the remaining feta in the brine; otherwise, it'll dry out.

• If you want to make your own feta (and I've considered doing this many times), here's a recipe.

Feta, the star.
(Photo from SheKnows)

• The Greeks love their feta, too, obviously. One of my sources notes that people in other European countries restrict their cheese-eating to particular meals of the day, or specific parts of a meal, such as appetizers only or evening desserts only. The Greeks, however, "consume cheese at all times." They even have a cheese pie, tyropita, that can be eaten any time of day. So it is safe to say, "For the Greeks, cheese is not a food supplement, it is food."
  

• In the Odyssey, the cyclops is making a cheese in his cave out of sheep's milk. It's thought that this is one of the earliest forms of feta. The story of how he made his cheese (or discovered that his milk had become cheese) sounds an awful lot like the story people tell about the origin of all cheese in general.

• The Greeks' strong attachment to their cheese and their pride in the history of their cheese may account for the politicization of feta.

FETA GETS POLITICAL

• With the formation of the EU, many European countries started making products that were traditionally available from just one European country. For example, for years and years you could only get feta from Greece, but then everybody started making feta and saying it was as good as feta from Greece, even though it might be made differently.

• So then the "home" countries got protective of their original products. And now, the only feta that can be labeled feta is that which was made in Greece. Feta that comes from Bulgaria, for example, should be called "Bulgarian sheep's milk cheese."

• The Greek restaurant here in town, where I got the Greek salad, has a display case with several cheeses in it. Only one cheese is labeled "Feta." The rest are labeled various forms of "sheep's milk cheese."

• If you buy a hunk of feta and the packaging calls it feta but doesn't include the acronym PDO (for protected designation of origin), you've bought non-Greek, imposter feta. It could also mean that the cheese you've bought may contain extra chemical substances for maturing or coloring, or the milk may contain antibiotics.

The coveted PDO label, from the European Commission's Agriculture division. Some versions of this label I found online had slightly different colors, but they all had the same image in the middle of two hills, one in front of the other, and circled by stars. Lots of products from lots of European countries are now carrying this label, including things like parmesan, gorgonzola, Cornish clotted cream, Newcastle brown ale, and Capocollo di Calabria.

Sources
Food Reference, Feta Cheese
Wikipedia, Feta (cheese)
Greek Products.com, About Feta Cheese and Feta Cheese - a protected product of Name of Origin
American University, The Mandala Projects, Trade & Environment Database Case Studies, Feta Cheese
American University, The Mandala Projects, Trade & Environment Database Case Studies, Feta 2: The Feta Cheese Wars, by Georgia Economou
European Commission, Agriculture division, Protected Designation of Origin

Apple #39: Potpourri

POTPOURRI (In the Jeopardy! sense of the word)

Rather than doing one entry on one subject, I thought today I would note a few little factoids I have uncovered recently, on miscellaneous subjects:

• While one can be "ruthless" (devoid of pity or compassion), one can no longer have "ruth" or be "ruthful." Those words did exist and were in use at one time, but they are now archaic. "Ruth," by the way, was the quality of being compassionate; or pity or sorrow. If you were "ruthful" you had compassion for others, or you could inspire pity in others. But you can't do that anymore.

• The true origins of feta cheese are difficult to discern. While it came from the Balkan countries at some point in the 12th century, both Greece and Bulgaria claim to have made it first. The word "feta" seems to have been derived from the Italian fetta, meaning "slice." Now, with the help of the EU, only Greek feta will be allowed to use the name "feta" when exporting its cheese.

• Tiger paw prints are called "pug marks." Tigers can eat up to 80 pounds of meat at one time. The sandpaper-like roughness of their tongue helps to take the meat off the bone. They like water and often swim to cool themselves in the hottest parts of the day. Tigers do not purr, but they do chuff, which is something like a small sneeze and is accompanied by a shake of the head. It means hello and all is well.

• In Steely Dan's "Deacon Blues," they never say "our Pamela," as I'd thought. The chorus actually goes like this:

I'll learn to work the saxophone
I'll play just what I feel
Drink Scotch whiskey all night long
And die behind the wheel
They got a name for the winners in the world
I want a name when I lose
They call Alabama the Crimson Tide
Call me Deacon Blues

Sources
My copy of the Oxford English Dictionary
"Feta Cheese Rich in History," San Francisco Chronicle, republished in the Cincinnati Post, 8/18/2004
In-Sync Exotics Wildlife Rescue and Education Center, Education page on big cats, especially Tigers
Steely Dan's official website, lyrics by song, Deacon Blues

Apple #33: Swiss Cheese

So I was eating some Swiss cheese yesterday, and I wondered, what makes the holes in this cheese? The answer, it turns out, is "gassy bacteria."

• Making cheese requires bacteria. Different kinds of cheese use different kinds of bacteria as well as different kinds of milk.

• Swiss cheese uses three types of bacteria, but the one that makes the holes is called Propionibacter shermani. When a cheesemaker adds this bacteria to the mix, it makes bubbles of carbon dioxide. The cheesemaker can control the size of the bubbles by changing the acidity, temperature, and curing time of the mix.

• The holes in Swiss cheese are technically called "eyes."

• Swiss cheese made in the US is aged only four months. Swiss cheese made in Switzerland is aged four to fourteen months.

• The Swiss make two types of Swiss cheese, Emmentaler and Gruyere, named for the places where they were first made. It is believed that the first Emmentaler was made as long ago as 50 B.C. The holes in Gruyere cheese may be considerably smaller than Emmentaler.

Emmentaler

Gruyere

About cheese in general:

• Cheese was the result of an accidental discovery. It is presumed that people put milk in a bag made from the stomach of a cow and discovered that the next day, it had cured into chunks (curds) and liquid (whey). They took out the curds and ate it and thought it was pretty tasty. Then they added salt to it and found that the curds would last even longer.

• The recipe for cheese basically goes like this: milk + starting culture (bacteria + rennet for coagulation) = soft curd. The curd is then manipulated in various ways: the whey is removed, it gets salted, then it gets molded and pressed, sometimes salted some more, it gets "bandaged," and then it's allowed to mature.

• Interestingly, when a calf drinks milk, its four stomachs supply various kinds of bacteria at the various stages of digestion, turning the milk into a soft curd. The curd passes into the intestine, and now that the milk is in curd form, its passage to the exit is slowed long enough that the nutrients can be absorbed into the calf's body. So the production of cheese kind of mimics what happens to milk in a cow's stomach.

Sources
Why Does Swiss Cheese Have Holes in It? Ask Yahoo, June 10, 2002
Swiss Cheese Recipes and Cooking Tips, by Peggy Trowbridge
The Basics of Making Cheese, Early Cheesemaking in Scotland, part of a course taught through the Edinburgh Business School
Rennet for Making Cheese, David B. Fankhauser PhD, Professor of Biology and Chemistry, University of Cincinnati Clermont
Photos from a cheese website in German and The Cook's Thesaurus