Grilled Cheese and Tomato Goodness

This morning, as I pondered the beautiful late season golden heirloom tomato calling my name from the shady spot on the kitchen counter, I remembered the hunk of Point Reyes Farmstead Cheese Company’s www.pointreyescheese.com Toma in the fridge and began crafting a way to put that tomato to use. Well duh, a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich. It’s debatable if there's a more perfect griddled sandwich than this. Most folks have the ingredients on the ready (well at least the bread and cheese part), and the kitchen chops to transform cold, hard cheese and butter into oozy goodness in a matter of minutes. 

Tomatoes need a little salt to brighten them up and bring out their flavor, and Toma’s semi-hard, gouda-like quality was just the ticket to consume both locally sourced food items in one sitting. To complete the “local” trifecta , call me a geek, but I happened to have a loaf of Grindstone Bakery’s Caraway Seed Wheat Free Rye Bread www.grindstonebakery.com

in the fridge and opted to try that instead of the Dave’s Killer Bread I had stashed in the freezer. It was a hard decision, as Dave’s Killer Bread makes a killer grilled cheese!  A couple of slabs of Straus Family Creamery www.strausfamilycreamery.com  butter in a warm skillet later, and the bread was down, the cheese was on, and a lid was perched. 

I like to start with the cheese side down, and put it on medium to give it the chance to melt without the bread burning,  which is helped by the lid. Once I flip to the tomato side, I remove the lid so the bread can get nice and crusty without any chance of condensation.    All of these products, why do I bother listing them? Local and organic are my go to, and tomatoes, there’s nothing like organic heirloom deliciousness while they’re in season. Tomatoes out of season? I simply don’t, but that’s a subject for another post.  Right now, I have a sando to consume.