Day Eighty - One: A Caffeinated GCF

Coffee is getting big in Manhattan! Coffee culture was always a big deal out west -- go into the little cafes of Seattle or San Francisco and you see home ground, locally sourced coffee beans, the sort of coffee that makes you want a cup even if you aren't the biggest fan of the caffeinated beverage, it just becomes enticing! As of recent, that West Coast coffee culture has definitely moved East in the form of Joe, Ground Support, the Art of Coffee, etc etc, New Yorkers are getting their coffee fix from places apart  from Starbucks! Woohoo! Who is excited? Me!

So I thought for today's GCF, I would do a coffee pairing GCF for those of you who need that extra jolt to get through Friday at the office. I like to pair this sandwich with my favorite coffee beverage, an Iced Black Americano, but please feel free to substitute for your favorite coffee preparation. This certainly, if you ask me is not the sort of GCF you have for breakfast, maybe the sort you have as a dessert  after a satisfying meal though.

This sandwich should be made on Grandaisy bakery's medium sized Ciabatta bread, it certainly will be able to stand up to the melting decadence of its interior ingredients  and won't overwhelm them either. The ingredients are very simple as with most GCF's! Although you all know I don't like cooking with butter, this is the sort of sandwich that  needs a light coating of butter on either side  of the bread, I like to use Plugra, a European style butter or even better, is the French butter, President. So now once you have a light lathering of butter, place a few squares of nice dark chocolate, spread them around the ciabatta so when the chocolate melts, it coats  the entire sandwich but doesn't overwhelm. Careful here, melted chocolate can definitely take the cake should there be too much on the bread and the entire GCF can just become an ode to chocolate, not what you want! On top of the chocolate, put a few slices of Beehive's Barely Buzzed, a cheese rubbed in a special blend of coffee beans courtesy of the cheesemaker's sibling and lavender. I love everything lavender but the nice thing about this particular lavender is that it does not overwhelm, subtle yet delish and calming! Now place the other piece of bread on top and bake this in the oven for about eight to ten minutes on a very low heat at 200, this is not the sort of sandwich you want to put on your George Foreman grill, you only want the sandwich heated not heated and grilled, it will slightly change the taste profile of each delectable morsel of this GCF. Enjoy! Have a good Friday ladies and gents!