The Yonge and Grafton: Haloumi Cheese, Spiced Beef, Diced Tomatoes and Onions, and Sweet Garlic Sauce
The Yonge and Grafton
The funny thing about this late post is that I actually got the photographs in on time. Just plain slipped my mind to actually get the post up. I guess that’s what happens when you’ve got grilled cheese on the brain, especially our new feature at our Yonge and Eglinton location, The Yonge and Grafton. This one takes influence from the east coast, by way of Eric. It is a Donair style grilled cheese and some have told me it is our best one yet.
While our cheese choice makes it somewhat unlike a normal grilled cheese - Haloumi doesn’t melt, at all - the flavour will blow your mind. The Yonge and Grafton is Haloumi Cheese, Spiced Beef, Diced Tomatoes and Onions, and Sweet Garlic Sauce on Black Olive Bread with some more garlic sauce to dip on the side.
Eric, thank you for this one, it is killer.
Here We Go! The Super Mario in all it’s glory. That’s Spaghetti Bolognese on a grilled cheese. Yup, it’s amazing.
It’s-a me, Mario! The Super Mario that is
In our fine tradition of pushing the boundaries with our features, Ernest brings us one of our most intense features yet, The Super Mario. His main focus in creating this feature was that it had to be Italian, and this is nothing if it isn’t Italian. It’s basically Spaghetti Bolognese on a grilled cheese.
To make the bolognese we made a marinara sauce from scratch and added a mixture of ground beef, pork and veal. We then mixed the sauce with spaghetti and a combination of melted provolone and mozzarella. That allowed the spaghetti to set up in the fridge.
When it is ready to be served we put the bolognese on garlic, oregano and parmesan crusted French White bread, with more provolone and mozzarella and a healthy smear of the marinara sauce to make sure it’s just a bit messy.
Yup, this one is awesome, thanks Ernest.
The Sheeva is Back
As happens approximately once a month, The Sheeva is brought back as our interim feature while we’re sourcing the ingredients for our next customer selected feature. As anyone will tell you, this is an awesome grilled cheese. If you haven’t had the opportunity to try it yet, swing by sometime in the next few days for a tasty treat.
This beauty is The Bacon Jam, the current Feature Grilled Cheese. I know, not a very inventive name, but it says everything it has to say. It’s quite the grilled cheese with Edam, asparagus and our own homemade bacon jam. Think just a bit sweet and smokey all at once. Oh it’s a tasty treat alright.
The Julien, a Class Act
Today we are introducing our new Feature grilled cheese. It replaces the relatively long running Silver Slugger that had all the cheese on it, with a more refined flavour. This one takes the class level up a notch here at The Construction Site Y&E. Julien in all of his wisdom made only one request when picking his featured grilled cheese. He told us to just make one with short ribs. That’s right, we’re bringing a little bistro flavour to your next grilled cheese. This new feature is relatively simple, but has a great traditional short rib flavour. First we took short ribs and pulled them to get a nice shredded beef. We then sautéed mushrooms and shallots in a homemade port wine reduction. We mixed the two together and put it all on 100% Red Fife wholewheat sourdough with Fontina cheese. Yup, we here at TCS now how to class things up a notch. Enjoy.
Rise of the Silver Slugger
The Silver Slugger, the customer selected feature replacing The A.F.T., is just that, a slugger. Jason, the man who got to pick this one, wasn’t messing around when it came to making a grilled cheese. He knew what he wanted and it had to have a lot of cheese. It packs a cheesy punch with Fontina, Cheddar and Swiss cheeses. Matched with the Panini Bianca there is enough cheese to fill all the air pockets and stand up to the dense bread. To finish off the flavour explosion are prosciutto and tomato. Yes there is a lot going on with this one, but the three cheeses blend well and it all comes together nicely.
It will be interesting to see how this one does compared to The Jack Hammer, a similar Ham/veggie style grilled cheese. I know it’s not fair to compare customer’s grilled cheeses like that. I can’t help it though, I’m the competitive type, and I view this as grilled cheese battle royale, with only the best surviving. Maybe we should call it The Hunger Games :P
The Epic Double Decker-Double Down version of The A.F.T. Three chicken breasts and a whole lot of Cambozola wrapped, breaded and deep fried then tossed in buffalo wing sauce. Oh yes!
A.F.T. All Around
I have to start this post out with an apology to Ken. While the lateness of this post is apt considering the name of his feature, he deserves better. Well now that the A.F.T. has come and gone as our customer selected feature last week, I figured I might as well finally write a bit about it, since I thought it was a pretty solid one. While it was a simple concept with a simple execution, a Buffalo Chicken grilled cheese, I thought it was damn tasty. For this one we decided to go with a creamy Cambozola, Mesquite grilled chicken and Hot Sauce on Cayenne-Panko crusted French White. The Cayenne-Panko crust had the interesting effect of making the bread less crispy this time around, far different than the Panko-Parmesan crust on the Funghi which makes the grilled cheese even more crispy. The crust had a great flavour to it though, that contrasted well with the saltiness of the Cambozola.
What was even better about the feature was the ability to make a really awesome Epic version. We’ll call this one the Double Decker-Double Down. The awesomeness started with three chicken breasts surrounding a healthy amount of Cambozola. The stack of Chicken-Cheesy awesomeness was then wrapped in rice paper, egg washed and dredged in flour and the Cayenne-Panko crust. The whole thing was deep fried until nicely brown and then tossed in hot sauce, making one giant buffalo wing grilled cheese.
It was a great feature, it was a sick epic, it was about freakin’ time that Ken got to choose the feature, and geeze it was about $#@%in’ time I got this post out. Sorry Ken, I’ll make sure those awesome photos follow right away.
