Wine and (Grilled) Cheese Party

I like having dinner parties. They allow me to cook all day and make stuff I usually wouldn't for just Arlo (my fiance) and I. I wanted to fancy-up some ordinary food and thought grilled cheese sandwiches would be perfect.

Planning started earlier this week. I had several pounds of tomatoes and thought tomato soup was a good idea, so I peeled and seeded the tomatoes and packed them in juice for later. The soup was a simple recipe from Cook's Illustrated "Soups and Stews." I roasted the tomatoes with some brown sugar to bring out their flavor (per CI's advice). The soup is based on butter, shallots, tomato paste (from my awesome tube paste!) and flour and rounded out with broth, tomato juice, the roasted tomatoes and some cream. I've never actually had tomato soup before but I think it tasted pretty good! Nice and...tomato-y. It had a nice red color too, despite the broth and cream.

For the sandwiches Arlo and I picked up a variety of cheeses (mozzarella, pecarino, gouda, fontina, two types of cheddar, monteray and a cheese with habanero in it). I shredded and separated them all (except the mozzarella which I just pulled apart as I went) for ease of melting.

For bread we got some sourdough and this great "tuscan-style" bread made by this bakery (yummy). We also picked up some pumpernickel bread because Arlo wanted some.

Of course, all you need for a tasty grilled cheese sandwich is good bread and cheese (and maybe some butter) but I wanted to go further so we got some granny smith apples, basil, red and yellow tomato, cilantro, onion and (what else?) bacon.

Cheddar, green apple and bacon sammies were popular as were pecarino, mozzarella, basil and tomato. Yummy!

Dinner was complete with a salad (romaine, toasted almonds, feta, dried cranberries and a homemade dressing of orange and lemon juice, apple cider vinegar, honey, garlic, basil, salt and olive oil), some iced green tea with honey, cookies (with oats, cranberries, white and dark chocolate, almonds and almond butter) and wine (everyone brought a bottle to share). Oh, and a cake that Rachel brought (yellow with chocolate icing) and homemade chocolate ice cream and grape/tequila sorbet.



It was fun, but now I have to do the dishes :/.