Grilled Cheese And Creamy Tomato Soup (p56 Bon Appetit October 2012)

So I find myself after Thanksgiving, with a number of cheeses left, but not enough to make mac and cheese (and that would be a very super excessive mac and cheese), so I thought that would work too.  I also had some of the La Quercia Speck Americano and Tamworth Prosciutto.  So what better to do then to combine the two to make a sandwich.  My original thought was to have the Shropshire Blue in the mix, but, I uh, ate it all, so I picked up a bit more at the Cheese Shop.

I cut up some of the Shropshire Blue, Rupert and 4 year old Boerenkaas Gouda.  Combined it with a pile of both kinds of prosciutto, and grilled them off in a pan (was going to try the oven method talked about in Bon Appetit, but didn't).

This was an absolute stunner.  The combination of the savory flavors, a bit of the unmelted cheese with some of the crystals left and the sharpness of the blue and the complete meaty savoriness of the Prosciutto.  I wonder if it would be better on some bread that is better then just decent.

The soup was pretty good too, though it made a lot, though paired with the method of doing large amounts of grilled cheese, does make sense.  Took a while, but better then Campbells any day of the week.

Spicy Brown Rice Salad with Chicken and Peanuts (Weeknight Kitchen)

So the recipe says use 1 to 2 teaspoons of red pepper flakes (2 if you want it hotter).  This was great for me, but way to hot for Shannon.  It came together in the time that the rice took to cook.  Which was perfect.  I skipped the mushrooms.  I found black mushrooms, but not the mushrooms that were mentioned in the recipe.  So after soaking them, tasting them, I well, didn't use them.  We've had a bad experience or two with mushrooms recently, so this seemed like the choice to make.

Shannon ended up having some peanut butter on english muffins.  I finished off her plate.

Buttermilk Pancakes

I has just enough buttermilk left to make the pancakes.  It worked, I added some cream to the mix (was about to expire) and we ate them.

Steak Sandwiches with Spicy Horseradish Mayo

You take a big ole chunk of flank steak, spice it a bit, sear it off, slice it up, eat it up.  This was a nice combination on ciabatta roles, the steak, Some of the last of my Spinach from Larry.  Good stuffs.

Ham Steak w/ Mashed Potatoes

So I intended to use the last of the gravy from Thanksgiving for the mashed potatoes, that didn't work out (some got used, some got dumped out).  But it was pretty good, the ham tasted pretty good and had a nice sear, and the mashed potatoes had a nice flavor too.

Sloppy Sammys

Never the same twice, used a lot of the spices I bought for chili to try to bring out some of that fresh pepper taste that is in the non-smoked dried peppers.  It worked out pretty well.  I thought Shannon would complain about the heat about on this...but to my surprise, she didn't.  Good stuffs.