Day Thirteen - A grilled cheese recipe on honor of TGIF!

Phew, it certainly has been one of those weeks at work where you cannot wait for Friday afternoon to be over! I think Friday afternoon might be made a little more exciting if I did not have the prospect of coming back into the gallery tomorrow. I don't think I would mind having to come into working for between a half and a full day's worth of work if I could magically change one key factor in the equation: the fact the New York City subways are simply a disaster on weekends these days! You never know if a train is actually going to run on its prescribed line or skip stations or even be running at all. And if they are running, you can pretty much bet on having to wait for a significant amount of time for that train to come, that's for sure!

Enough moaning about tomorrow's train trajectory, it will make it worse tonight and during my run before work if I am already dreading the train trip from the Upper West Side to Soho.

Moving right along, at the end of a long week of work, most people, myself included, could go for a nice aaaadult beverage. Right now, the idea of a nice glass of Pinot Noir sounds like just the ticket.
And what goes better with that glass of wine than a Friday Afternoon Happy Hour Grilled Cheese?!!? Nothing if you ask me! Now now guys, I'm not suggesting you go to the local pub and order a grilled cheese...unless that's what you feel like. If you do that, you will probably end up with some form of white bread, maybe a nicer than Wonderbread sort, but not necessarily, slathered in butter with a cheddar or even kraft singles sandwiched between those two pieces of bread. Don't get me wrong, there's a time and a place for a classic American grilled cheese in certain people's minds, but in case you haven't learned anything about me from the past twelve posts, that sort of grilled cheese is not exactly what I was thinking of.

I was thinking you would start with two nice slices of Sullivan Street's Pullman bread, a dressed up version of your beloved Wonderbread. Then you'd grab the best Friday Afternoon Happy Hour cheese -- Drunken Goat. This Spanish semi-soft goat cheese has been soaked for anywhere between forty eight and seventy two hours in Doble Pasta red wine creating a nice burgundy rind with the white paste-y goat interior that we all know and love of many semi soft goat cheeses. The cheese adopts a delicate grape like finish and is perfect for our sandwich. I hope I didn't disappoint by the cheese's name, it is not as though the cheese tastes of wine specifically, but with its between two and three day wine bath, the cheese adopts a faint but definitely noticeable wine/grape finish.

Ok now you have the two main ingredients and there are only a few more to go...to enhance the grape flavor, grab a few (not too many so they overwhelm, I'd recommend four or five) red grapes and cut them in half. Put those to the side. Next, take a handful of arugula and toss it into a pan with olive oil, a third of a shallot, and some salt and pepper. At a low to medium heat, saute, just so the greens are  wilted but aren't overly soggy, so for, depending on your stove anywhere between two and four minutes. Now, grab your two slices of pullman, lightly spread a drizzle of olive oil on the interior side of each slice of bread then pile your cheese, wilted greens, and grapes and you are ready to melt your sandwich on your panini press, in your oven, or on your George Foreman grill -- anyway you choose, I am sure it will work.

Pull out your Friday Afternoon Happy Hour grilled cheese and enjoy with your preferred beverage of choice after a long week at work. No pairings here guys, its your call! It depends on your mood. Sometimes Friday afternoons, I'm feeling a nice Hendricks and Tonic, others I'm feeling a glass of wine or port or even something sparkling if there's something to celebrate, others, a dirty martini, and on the occasional Friday, a beer. 

Enjoy! Check back tomorrow for more musings..