Hokey smoke! National Grilled Cheese Month is already more than half over, and I only just heard

Grilled Cheese With Dates and Prosciutto: Dates give a touch of sweetness to this otherwise deliciously salty Monterey jack cheese sandwich. (From FoodNetwork.com's "New Takes on Classic Grilled Cheese")

by Ken

How did I not know about this? National Grilled Cheese Month? With half the month already gone? (More now, but actually I found out about this a couple of days ago, when it was closer to half.) As it happens, I'd already had a couple of grilled-cheese sandwiches this month without even knowing, or taking advantage of Food Network's April grilled-cheese celebration.

As a matter of fact, I might possibly have guessed that something was up, when I deglued the booklet of 50 Grilled Cheeses from my very first issue of Food Network Magazine. I'm not sure what took me so long to finally check the magazine out. (I see they're already up to Volume 5.) After all, I've been watching the network since way back when -- when in fact we New York City cable subscribers didn't get Food Network until the New Jersey Public TV channel signed off for the broadcast day at midnight.

(As a matter of fact, during that time my mother paid one of her infrequent visits to NYC -- possibly her last, as I think back -- and got hooked, then returned home to South Florida to find that her cable system didn't get it at all. Eventually we both had the channel full-time on our cable systems, and for some years it was something we could always talk about. We were both especially fond of David Rosengarten's nightly Taste show, a much straigher, more primitive precursor of Alton Brown's Good Eats, and for as long as they lasted of that great baker Nick Malgieri's Friday-night editton of Sarah Moulton's Cooking Live.)

Anyway, I finally subscribed to the magazine, and then finally got my first issue, and was surprised to find that I really liked it. Now that I've gotten my second issue, I like it too.

I sort of figured out that those little pull-out booklets are a monthly feature, and a neat one, I thought. I pulled the grilled-cheese pull-out out, in the interest of magazine manageability (bound-in inserts make a magazine awfully hard to handle, especially on the subway), and I'm sure I've got it somewhere, even if I couldn't tell you exactly where at this exact moment. Probably I intended to riffle through the 50 Grilled Cheeses at some point, just to see if there are any ideas there that I might want to think about doing.

I have to say, though, that I can't help thinking the grilled-cheese updaters are overthinking the subject. I mean, it's not exactly a secret that you could play with different cheeses and of course different kinds of bread, or that adding bacon or ham and a couple of slices of tomato -- if you happen to have lucked into a tomato that has some vaguely tomatolike taste -- can be a neat upgrade. But really, now . . . . As I say, I don't actually have the booklet at hand, but the magazine spread onto which it was glued features three of the 50:

No. 14, Avocado Grilled Cheese
No. 34, Egg in a Hole Grilled Cheese
No. 46, BBQ Roast Beef Grilled Cheese
[UPDATE: See recipes below]

Okay, those don't sound as loopy as I was expecting they would, though perhaps someone can tell me, has avocado become the new chocolate, or bacon -- an ingredient now dumped into just about every known edible food combination? So let me just skip to the point: It never occurred to me that there was an occasion that occasioned Food Network Magazine's grilled-cheese extravaganza.

This month's pull-out is 50 tacos, which I've also pulled out and put . . . er, somewhere. You never know, someday I might want to get into tacos. Now I'm concerned that I may miss out on National Taco Month if I don't check it out, which I've added to my "to do" list. It's a very long list, though, and I don't often go to it for inspiration for things to do. They seem to find me well enough without my going looking for them.

The blurb under the title in the 50 Grilled Cheeses magazine spread, by the way, reads: "Make a sandwich for any meal of the day -- even dessert!" Um, I don't think so.

Meanwhile, if you've been thinking ever since you laid eyes on the above photo that you surely do want to make yourself one of those Grilled Cheese With Dates and Prosciutto sandwiches, here's the recipe. Don't worry, you can click on it to enlarge it.



UPDATE: OKAY, SO I FOUND MY 50 GRILLED CHEESES.
NOW YOU CAN MAKE THE NO. 14, NO. 34, AND NO. 46

First there's what I guess we might call the, uh, "master recipe."

How to make grilled cheese

1. Heat 1 tablespoon salted butter in a cast-iron or nonstick skillet over medium-low heat.

2. Press the sandwich slightly and place it in the skillet. Cook until golden on the bottom, 3 to 5 minutes.

3. Flip, adding more butter to the pan if needed, and cook until the other side is golden and the cheese melts, 3 to 5 minutes.

And now here are our three, um, recipes.

No. 14, Avocado
Toss ¼ sliced avocado with lime juice and lime zest to taste. Sandwich 2 slices white bread with 2 slices pepper jack and the avocado. Cook, flipping once, until golden.

No. 34, Egg in a Hole
Cut out a 2-inch round from the center of 1 slice country white bread; place the bread in a hot buttered skillet and crack an egg into the hole. Cook until the white sets, then flip and top with 1 slice cheddar. Meanwhile, add another slice of bread to the skillet and top with 1 slice cheddar and 3 slices crisp bacon. Sandwich the two halves and cook until golden.

No. 46, BBQ Roast Beef
Spread 1 slice country white bread with 1 tablespoon barbecue sauce. Top with 2 slices each cheddar and roast beef, then top with another slice of bread. Brush melted butter on the outside of the sandwich and cook on a grill, turning, until golden.

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