When I had been out of college for several months, but before I got really into cooking, I made this sandwich a lot. It was kind of the bridge between making hot pot ramen and roasting a chicken– the missing link between incidental cooking and deliberate, ‘I spend a lot of time reading cookbooks and planning meals in my head’ cookery.
Grilled Ham & Cheese with the Works:
Buttered Wheat Bread, Ham, thin-sliced swiss cheese, slices of red or sweet white onion if available, avocado if available, tomato.
Heat up a skillet, and butter one side of each slice of bread. Lay them in the skillet and lay a slice or two of cheese on them. You want the bread to toast up nicely and the cheese to get all melty. In another, smaller skillet, grill up the slices of tomato, the pieces of ham, the onions. The key is to get them warm so that the whole sandwich sings with heat and grilled goodness. The onions should be translucent and the ham and tomato slices should be just a little charred. So many grilled sandwiches, when they have several layers to them, are not heated all the way through by the time the cheese is melted and the bread is toasted. This sandwich fights the power.
(You can also toast the bread separately in a toaster oven, adding the cheese halfway though so that it melts but doesn’t drip off the bread. But since you’re using one skillet, why not use two?)
Layer some avocado slices over the cheese, and assemble the sandwich– you can do this on the grill, and give it an extra flip before serving, or, really, on a plate. The impact is pretty much the same. Mmm.
-Molly
