Moroccan-Style Grilled Cheese Sandwich

It has been crazy wild around here since my appearance on Top Chef Masters.  As you may know, I managed to win the Quickfire challenge with a Moroccan-style Grilled Cheese Sandwich.  The best part is that I won $5,000 for the charity I was playing for, Recipe for Success.  Of course, this is the season that the Quickfire Challenges don’t contribute any points towards your final score.  Kind of like when, back in 1996, I won Best New Chef from Food & Wine Magazine, and the next year was the year they started putting the Best New Chefs on the cover.  For some reason, this kind of thing always happens to me.

The night my episode aired, we had a watch party at t’afia; a good customer told me that, if I won anything, she was going to match it as a donation to Recipe for Success (ooh, I hope she can afford $5,000!).  Since then, I have been overwhelmed by how supportive and generous people have been — my wallet is full of checks for Recipe for Success…$50, $100, $150.  I am excited that people were moved to give and are stepping up to make change in the lives of our children.  Both Gracie and I say thank you from the bottom of our hearts!

The actual Top Chef Masters challenge was to do a grilled cheese sandwich that reflected me as a chef, that really represented “my” food.  Some folks are having trouble connecting the Moroccan Grilled Cheese to what they perceive as “Monica Pope food.”  But Coastal Mediterranean cuisine has always been my thing.

In the Top Chef Masters studio kitchen, they take you around to the pantry and coolers so you can assess the ingredients on hand; there’s a cheese fridge, a lettuce fridge, a miscellaneous pantry, breads, etc.  We were also allowed to bring some signature ingredients with us as long as they fit in a 17” x 24” metal bin; I stuffed my suitcase with all sorts of things, including pomegranate molasses.  From the start, I had my eye on the loaf of date-walnut bread and I immediately came up with this Moroccan-style grilled cheese with feta, farmer’s cheese and a melt-y white cheese.  I made a cumin butter (to toast the bread with), sprinkled some cinnamon, used more fresh dates and voila.  I also grabbed three micro herbs — cilantro, basil and mint — to make a little accompanying salad with an orange blossom water-honey dressing.  I finished the plate with a swizzle of a pomegranate molasses-maple syrup mixture.

So, for class today, I am going to re-create my TCM Quickfire Challenge sandwich.  Luckily, I’ve got a posse of women sous chefs today that I motivate to grate and slather all these grilled cheeses and to pick and clean and dry lettuces because we’ve got a full class!

Right before someone gives me the grater, they say Benjy warned them to be careful, it’s very sharp; but, of course, I grate my finger.  I call for a medic (Dr. Adam is in the house), but someone from the audience is actually faster than he is and I get bandaged up.  Must keep cooking, must keep cooking (sing as Ellen DeGeneres’ Dori from Finding Nemo).  My friend Julia made a hand-sewn word shirt for me that says, “just grate” — I wish I was wearing it now.

At the market today, Emile St. Community Garden has some really nice petite dino kale, arugula and some stunning curly mustard (I’ve actually never seen this variety before — it’s a beautiful leaf, almost like filigree, and has a wonderful mustard-y flavor).  I’m thinking that this will be really nice with the dressing…and the grilled cheese.  My army of sous chefs is asking how to tear or cut the lettuces.  I decide to not tear the lettuces, I like the idea of biggish leaves of lettuces today.

Beautiful and delicious local lettuces

I keep barking at the sous chefs to keep on prepping, keep on prepping.  I’m trying to make them cry, but no one is having it — the pressure isn’t getting to them for some reason.  Who knew I would cry on national television, in front of millions?  Not me.

I joke that I’m fishing my band-aid out of the pure luck feta but no one buys that, either.  Then there’s a crash on the front row.  Valerie, one of my sous chefs, has tumped the orange blossom water over and onto the floor, breaking the bottle and Moroccanizing the entire Green Plum Cooking School.  I take a deep breath.  On Top Chef Masters, someone has to play the jerk, someone has to cry, someone has to get hurt, someone’s food has to be compromised — you get the idea – and it’s all déjà-vu now, but history seems to be repeating itself.  I refuse to cry again.  Valerie is gritting her teeth, her daughter is trying to pretend they’re not related, and I’m going to Plan B.  I tell the audience to “imagine” the taste of the smell of the orange blossom water and I set about to make a dressing with blood oranges (blood seems to be a running theme today), honey, orange zest, cumin and cinnamon.  Joe “Kanye” Apa appears with (oddly enough) one Moroccan-style lamb chop for me to taste/approve.  I eat it (delicious).

Time to jump on the grilling of the cheese sandwiches, or else we won’t make it.  It’s 10:12am.  On the show, each chef is told to call out the time, so I have the audience do that.  It really does build drama as we’re building the grilled cheese sandwiches.  I have three pans going and a sandwich press all at once.  I’m trying to get the right balance of toast-y and melt-y that makes a grilled cheese sandwich great.  We manage to serve it all up by 10:29.  I only got burned once and cut twice and I’m pretty sure that Valerie went home and cried.  Sometimes, drama happens.

NOTE: The recipes used in my Green Plum Cooking School classes can be found in my online cookbook, “Eat Where Your Food Lives,” available for purchase at http://www.ChefMonicaPope.com.

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Title Translation: Making fancy French cooking techniques less scary.

Have you ever been skimming through recipes, trying to find something to “inspire” you to tie on the apron, roll up your sleeves, and start creating a world of mess in the kitchen?  You find something mouthwatering, and just as you’re approaching your “I got this…Here we go!” moment, you read the recipe a little more closely and find some fancy French technique that you’ve never even heard of, let alone attempted, which completely deflates you of any kitchen confidence you may have had.  As if those snooty chefs behind that recipe are sticking their noses up at you, smirking at the fact you even entertained the idea of doing their recipes justice.  Well Chef David Bull (who does not fall into the “snooty chef” category), is a master at making these fancy techniques approachable, one term at a time.  Training, shcmaining!  You should be able to open a cookbook (or login to a cookbook, in Chef Bull’s case) and cook whatever you want, whenever you want, without a culinary degree. 

In this particular case, we’re talking about the term concassé.  You’ll see it in numerous recipes referring to tomatoes primarily.  The direct French translation is “to crush”, but as a culinary technique, it’s a little more detailed than that.  Some may say that it adds an element of precision and sophistication to a recipe, but the bottom line, according to Chef Bull, is that it’s a fancy way of saying “blanched, peeled, seeded, then diced.” Well now that’s not so hard – I can do that in my sleep!  Well, maybe that’s a stretch, but still – very doable.  I may not execute it with the same grace and accuracy as someone with a degree under their belt, but by gosh I’ll get it done! (Re-inflate the confidence here.)   In this video, Chef Bull demonstrates his technique for a tomato concassé, even offering a “mess free” way to seed your tomatoes.  

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Does this look like a kitchen tool to you?  

Here in the Keeper Kitchen we see- and taste! - a LOT of food. Did you know that we test the recipes in each cookbook before they are published? Because of this, we spend plenty of hours outside the kitchen scouring the aisles of the local grocery stores and markets for ingredients (we could probably navigate the aisles blindfolded by now).  We have just about every cooking tool imaginable to the home cook, and a ridiculously well stocked pantry of spices and staples. Needless to say, we spend even more time inside the kitchen testing, and through this process we find plenty of hits, misses, adjustments, recommendations, revelations and “mmmmmmmmmm”s along the way.  Now don’t get us wrong, we aren’t complaining because getting to cook this often ain’t a bad gig, but it does make for some interesting stories and hard work.

The taste combination we doubted but then loved the most?  

Chef Monica Pope’s Beet Brownies – The beets threw us off a bit, but we stood corrected when they turned out to be the best brownies we’ve ever tasted!  I guess that is why she gets invited to Top Chef Masters and not us!

Beet Brownies with Molasses Caramel Sauce & Meringue Pecans

The most difficult technique we’ve had to break down into steps for our subscribers?  

Typically things like homemade pastas and gnocchis.  Each chef has a slightly different method, but regardless, making these from scratch and shaping it into the different types is an involved process.  It can be difficult to put something that requires so much work of the hands into concise but descriptive enough words for someone who may be trying it for the first time.

Homemade Gnocchi

The most interesting non-cooking challenge we’ve faced while recipe testing?  

Resurrecting a chef’s defunct hard drive to retrieve some irreplaceable recipes! This was truly a test of getting the Taste from the Technology! The chef will remain unnamed, but we can promise that the cookbook is even better than before now that the rescued recipes are in it (see photo “evidence” at the begginning of this blog – can you guess which chef?).  

For continued updates on the trials and tribulations in our test kitchen, follow us on Twitter and Facebook – you just may be inspired by something new that we uncover!

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For a taste of these videos, take a look at How to Trim an Artichoke by Chef David Bull.  Chef Bull told the Keeper Team, “If you’re anything like me, the task of trimming artichokes is daunting and tedious.  From my experience in restaurants when I’ve had to trim cases of artichokes at once, here is a quick and simple technique to help you out.” This video, among others, can be found in Chef Bull’s Crisp Sea Scallop with Artichoke Ragout recipe. 

For other similar “how-to” videos and general recipe demo videos, check out recipes like Pan Seared Lobster with Citrus-Onion Confit, Beef Tartare with Fried Oysters, and Chocolate Almond Silk Tart.

Also, Bull’s Eye on Food is announcing the release of Chef Bull’s famous Pepperoni Soup (or as many people call it, “Pizza Soup”) recipe! The Empty Bowls event in Dallas benefiting the North Texas Food Bank was a huge success, raising a total of $164,102 in just two hours!  He prepared this soup for event attendees and was blown away by the response – so naturally, he wanted to share this Bull family recipe with his cookbook subscribers. Enjoy!

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Chef David Bull Manicuring Shallots

Already a feature added to many recipes in their Interactive cookbooks, Chef David Bull; Chef Monica Pope; and Chef Paul Petersen (and many more!) will continue to add recipe videos to make your home cooking experience an even easier and more enjoyable experience.

If you are already a Keeper Cookbook user, check out the videos and come back here to let us know what you think! We love feedback!

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Uchiviche is a seafood dish with refreshing texture and flavor and a top seller at Uchi.

Uchiviche

Kai Mushi, which is sake steamed mussels in a Miso Kaffir Lime Broth, is a delicious and creative example of how Uchi chefs play with flavors.

Peanut Butter Semifreddo is a dessert that plays on your favorite childhood tastes, easy to make, and is their most popular dessert on the menu.

Peanut Butter Semifreddo

So if you are craving a sushi fix or have an aching sweet tooth, one of these recipes is sure to do the trick without even having to leave home! But of course for those of us who have the good fortune to be able to pop in to Uchi whenever we want, we know the real thing is too good to resist!

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