sandwich

Vermont’s Crowley Cheese an American original

Posted on by Pat and David
Cheesemakers always seem like magicians, using a straightforward process and a few ingredients to transform perishable milk into tasty blocks that improve with age. Here in the U.S., the folks at Crowley Cheese in Vermont (802-259-2340, www.crowleycheese.com) have been doing it longer than anyone else on record, or so they say. The Crowley family started selling their own cheese in 1824. In 1882, Winfield Crowley built the current factory to expand on his family’s farmhouse kitchen cheesemaking operation that used milk from their dairy herd. The factory still produces cheese with raw milk from several local herds. In the world of cheeseheads, Crowley is an “American Original.” It is a cheese with a North American pedigree that owes nothing to the old country. Never big...Read More

Exploring KY cooking with top Lex chef Phil Dunn

Posted on by Pat and David
When England's horse-loving Queen Elizabeth first visited Lexington, her personal chef was Phil Dunn. We don't know what dishes he served to the Queen, but we do know that Dunn favors gourmet meals and enjoys exploring international flavors. He's particularly fond of making European pastries—and anything with pasta. A gorgeous display kitchen at Architectural Kitchens & Baths (345 Lafayette Ave., www.akandb.com) is the perfect setting for Dunn's popular half-day cooking classes. We attended a recent session and learned that Dunn is equally comfortable with down-home Kentucky cooking. He makes familiar dishes his own through refined technique and a penchant for turning larger plates into finger food—perfect for parties in this most social of cities. Dunn makes a spicy version of Kentucky Beer Cheese (a cracker...Read More

Even more decadent grilled cheese and truffle sandwich

Posted on by David
Some foodies love to play the “last supper” game: What would you want to eat for your last meal on earth? Pat and I are in accord on this one. It would probably be this elegantly simple grilled cheese sandwich with Comté, prosciutto, ripe tomato and truffle. Cooked just enough to brown the bread in butter (an omelet pan is perfect for the task), the Comté brings out all the high, resinous notes in the black truffle. You could die happy just biting into the sandwich, which gives you a strong whiff of truffle just before you actually taste it. In the interest of research, we tried this sandwich in the purist form—just Comté and truffle—before adding the prosciutto and tomato. The basic sandwich shown...Read More

Red Arrow big burger grabs headlines

Posted on by Pat and David
Old-fashioned diners certainly love their giant burgers. We wrote about the Miss Washington Diner in New Britain a few weeks back, marveling at the monstrous burger called The Monument. In a piece in today's Boston Globe about the 24-hour Red Arrow Diner (61 Lowell Street, Manchester, N.H. 603-626-1118, www.redarrowdiner.com), we came face to face with the Newton Burger, presented above by general manager Herb Hartwell. In all fairness, the Red Arrow does serve salads, Jell-O, and other low-fat options, but the main clientele seems to gravitate to some of the heavier entrées. The place is known for its mugs of chili and its baked mac and cheese. And its burgers. A burger on toast was on the menu when the Red Arrow opened in 1922,...Read More

Tomatoes meet their match in bacon & basil

Posted on by Pat and David
Faced yet again with an abundance of tomatoes, we didn't have to travel far for inspiration. The inventive cooks of the Catered Affair prepare the food for the Courtyard Restaurant at the Boston Public Library, including a lovely afternoon tea. Last year when we visited during harvest season, the chefs served a dainty version of a BLT. They placed a mixture of chopped bacon and chopped tomato between two small slices of bread with the crusts cut off. It was a lovely variation on a classic. This year we decided to use some of those prolific garden tomatoes to scale up the sandwich for a hearty lunch. We used English muffins and spread them with homemade basil mayonnaise, since basil is growing far more profusely...Read More

PEI folks give new meaning to foodies

Posted on by David
I can't say I've ever see an island where so many people make or gather or process wonderful food. Between judging duties at the International Shellfish Festival I had the chance yesterday to drive around the island a bit, heading up to the north shore to see a mussel processing operation (more on that later on), pay a visit to a potato farm, catch a picnic in the fields, and visit Raspberry Point oysters. That's Scott Linkletter at the top of this post, hauling a cage of oysters to show how they're grown using an Australian system of posts driven into the soft bottom of shallow waters. The cages are suspended on lines that hang on the posts. Every few days he and his staff...Read More

Italy #6 – Grilled Montasio, prosciutto, and fig

Posted on by David
All good things must come to an end, and so too our cache of world-class cheese and ham from the Legends from Europe consortium. We had one 4-ounce piece of Montasio cheese remaining, along with four slices of prosciutto di Parma. And it was time for lunch. We found a jar of fig jam and some slices of whole wheat sandwich bread in the pantry. Drawing on inspiration closer to home (the fig, prosciutto, and Gorgonzola pizza from Todd English's original Olives, now Figs), we had the makings of a terrific grilled sandwich. If it were Italy and we had a panini press, it would have been a prosciutto and cheese panino and we might have skipped the fig jam. Whatever you want to call...Read More

Say cheese in Montreal

Posted on by Pat and David
The graffito above pretty much says it all. Montrealers love their cheese. We've been in Montreal for most of the last month doing the research for Food Lovers' Guide to Montreal, to be published next spring from Globe Pequot Press. (See our first volume in the series, Food Lovers' Guide to Massachusetts, under the tab ''Some Books.'') We have to admit that we are staggered by the explosion in artisanal cheese-making in Quebec. La Belle Province is beginning to rival La France when it comes to great fromage. Many of Quebec's best cheeses are made from raw milk, but thanks to NAFTA, all Quebec cheeses are allowed into the United States, even though similar cheeses from France might be banned. Gilles Jourdenais, owner of La...Read More

Cold turkey warms to the Hot Brown

Posted on by Pat and David
[caption id="attachment_459" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Hot Brown sandwich"][/caption] The chefs at the Brown Hotel, which has been one of Louisville’s social centers since it opened in 1923, probably didn’t have Thanksgiving leftovers in mind when they created the Hot Brown Sandwich. But it’s one of our favorite ways to use up excess turkey. Chef Fred Schmidt dreamed up the open-faced turkey and bacon sandwich in 1926 as a treat for up to 1,000 hungry dancers at the hotel’s swanky soirees. Schmidt’s solution to the light-night rush on the kitchen used ingredients readily at hand: toast, roast turkey, Mornay sauce, and bacon strips. With the unbeatable combination of bacon and cheese sauce, it’s no surprise that the popularity of the Hot Brown has spread well beyond the...Read More