Weekly Dish

Apparently, the Brick-Oven (although the Brick-Oven in Jackson has closed, I understand that there’s a similar restaurant in Greenville, SC, called Trio. If I’m ever in Greenville, I’ll eat there.) has been on my mind this week. This pasta dish is one I also learned to make from the chefs there. On the menu, the entree was called Penne with Goat Cheese and Pine Nuts, but customers always ordered it with angel hair instead, minus the pine nuts, and usually with shrimp or chicken. So my order, when it went to the kitchen, would be called Chicken Goat or Shrimp Goat, which always sounded hilarious to me. I do like to make it with angel hair; the fine noodles are easily coated with the pesto-goat cheese mixture. I think the Brick-Oven recipe also called for spinach, but I always forget that; you can add some to your skillet if you have it.

Just to give you an idea of how many people there are now in the fair city of Baton Rouge, when I went to Calandro’s last week to get my groceries, I got the LAST package of angel hair pasta in the whole store! Traffic is horrendous too, but I try to only travel within my neighborhood. People seem to be in good spirits about it all (some people, anyway); I saw a bumper sticker last week that said: “Traffic is congested, but we’re glad you’re here.” Anyhow, if you have pesto on hand, this is a quick and easy pasta dish, and subject to many variations. Here’s the gist of it:

1 pound angel hair pasta

4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced

1/2 red onion, thinly sliced

1/2 yellow onion, thinly sliced

1 carton sliced mushrooms (about 2 cups)

1/2 cup chopped Kalamata olives

1/2 cup sun-dried tomatoes

Olive oil

Pesto

4 ounces goat cheese

Grilled chicken or shrimp (optional)

Cook the pasta until tender but firm, drain, and toss with some olive oil. Set aside. In a large skillet, cook the garlic and onions over medium heat until the garlic is soft. Add the mushrooms. Continue to cook until the onions begin to brown, about 15 minutes. Add the olives and sun-dried tomatoes (and shrimp or chicken, if you’re adding) and cook another minute or two. Place a nest of oiled noodles on plates and ladle vegetable mixture on top. Finish with a teaspoon-ful of pesto and a handful of crumbled goat cheese. Drizzle once more with olive oil and season with Kosher salt and cracked black pepper. Serves 4-6, depending on how much pasta you can eat in one sitting.

Oh, and just in case you’re keeping up, David killed another one of my plants this week. He took my three-year-old aloe plant out for some sun (the one that’s always been inside), and didn’t bring it back in until most of it’s plump leaves were fried. I must say, though, that I am painting quite a one-sided picture of his gardening abilities; the lovely basil I used to make my pesto would surely be dead by now without his attention, and we have some fun lettuces already poking their heads out in our backyard. He does seem to have it out for plants I’ve been caring for, so maybe I should just leave all the gardening to him! Oh, and one more thing: yesterday, he bought me some more rosemary. Just so you know.

Aaahh, pesto. That lovely oily amalgamation that I nearly kill my basil plants over every single summer. When I was a waitress at the Brick-Oven, I often worked the long lunch shift, which usually left me and the kitchen staff alone in the restaurant for at least a couple of hours. Steve, a vegetarian chef extraordinaire, taught me how to make pesto one afternoon in late summer, and I’ve made it every summer since. I usually stick to his basic version, with basil leaves, pine nuts, fresh Parmesan, garlic, and olive oil, but I’ve also made it with walnuts (my friend Angela is allergic to pine nuts, so when I lived in Jackson, I usually substituted the walnuts on her account). One of my favorite food blogs, Cooking with Amy, recently posted a whole host of variations on the traditional pesto; if you’re interested in mixing it up, you should check out her suggestions. I make mine as a paste with only a little oil at first, and then add oil as needed as I use the pesto in different ways. One of the tricks I’ve found that really enriches the flavor is toasting the pine nuts first; they become more buttery and flavorful when they brown. This week, pesto’s in chicken salad and dolloped on pasta, next week on pizza! It’s so versatile, and a little goes a long way. For this recipe, I made the pesto and then mixed about 2 tablespoons of it with 1/2 cup of the homemade mayonnaise left from the sandwiches on Monday. These proportions can be adjusted, depending on how much pesto flavor you like, and how “wet” you like your chicken salad. Add some small-diced chicken (also leftover from Monday) and toasted pine nuts. It’s wonderful on foccacia bread, if you have any left. I served the sandwiches with a simple green salad. Here’s how I made the pesto:

1 cup basil leaves, washed and thoroughly dried

1/4 cup toasted pine nuts

4 cloves of garlic

1/4 cup fresh grated Parmesan cheese

1/4 cup olive oil

1/2 t. Kosher salt

1/2 t. cracked black pepper

Toast the pine nuts in a 350 oven until brown and fragrant, about 15-20 minutes. In a food processor or blender, mince the garlic as finely as you can. Then add the basil leaves and pulse until they are also chopped finely. Add the nuts, cheese, olive oil, salt and pepper, and process until a paste forms. Will keep in the fridge in a tightly covered container for about 2 weeks.

The weekend of Katrina, our friends Jerrod and Jessie were supposed to come stay with us. With Katrina and Jessie’s baby on the way, we decided to postpone the trip. I planned to make this chicken dish for them while they were here; it’s one of my favorite things to make for a small group of guests. Chicken and potatoes sounds simple, I know, but one of the things I really like about this recipe is that the flavors are surprisingly strong. The rich, citrus flavor of the roasted lemons adds just the right bite, and the capers and artichokes mingle nicely with the white wine to add some depth. I usually make the potatoes with a lot of rosemary too, but, well, you all know what happened to my rosemary. If you have some, please chop it and add when you sauté the potatoes. The trick to making this dish is timing, but if you follow these steps, it isn’t hard:

10-12 very small new potatoes, scrubbed

4 lemons

4 chicken breasts

Olive oil

4 cloves garlic, minced

2 tablespoons capers

1 14-ounce can artichoke hearts, diced

1/4 cup white wine

2 tablespoons butter

1. Preheat the broiler.

2. Place the potatoes in a large pot and cover with water. Bring the water to a boil. Boil potatoes until fork-tender, about 20 minutes.

3. Halve the lemons, and place in a flame-resistant dish (or in a foil packet). Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with Kosher salt and cracked pepper. Broil the lemons until the edges begin to darken, about 8-10 minutes (but watch carefully). When they’re done, set them aside to cool.

4. While the lemons are broiling and the potatoes boiling, flatten each chicken breast to about 1/2-inch thickness. Dredge in flour; salt and pepper.

5. Heat about a tablespoon of olive oil and a tablespoon of butter in a large skillet on medium-high. When the oil is hot, lay the chicken in the pan and cook for about 4-6 minutes per side, until brown and crispy. Remove the chicken to a platter and cover with foil.

6. When the potatoes are done, drain, cool, and cut into quarters.

7. In the skillet, add 2 cloves of garlic, and stir briefly. Immediately add the potatoes, and sauté, stirring occasionally and scraping up the brown bits from the bottom of the skillet. Here is where you would add the rosemary if you had it. Sigh.

8. Cook the potatoes until all sides are brown; remove them to the platter with the chicken.

9. Add to the skillet one tablespoon of butter and the remaining garlic. Sauté the garlic for just a minute, making sure not to burn it. Add the artichoke hearts and capers, and stir-fry for another minute or two. Deglaze the pan with the wine, and cook while stirring. Add the juice from the roasted lemons and cook for another couple of minutes; the sauce should reduce a little.

10. Pour the sauce over the chicken and potatoes; serve with any extra sauce. Serves 4.

DELICIOUS!

Tuesdays are my busiest nights. I have class all day, until 7:30, and when I get home, I’m both exhausted and starving. Tossing ingredients onto a plate is a great way for me to fix the hunger part without adding to the exhaustion. With grilled chicken from the night before, some strawberries, goat cheese, red and green onion, bacon, and a simple dressing, this salad comes together in no time flat. AND, it tastes good. (Which when I’m really, really tired is sometimes beside the point. But not often). Here’s how this one comes together, for 2 servings:

Cook 6 slices bacon in the microwave. While the bacon’s cooking, slice about 8 strawberries, small-dice about a quarter of a red onion, slice 2 or 3 green onions, chop the leftover chicken, and chop some nuts (I used walnuts; pecans would have been better.) Lay out some greens on 2 plates, top with your prepared ingredients, sprinkle with a good handful of goat cheese, and top with the cooked bacon, crumbled. Drizzle each salad with about 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar, 2 tablespoons olive oil, and 1 teaspoon honey. Sprinkle with Kosher salt and cracked pepper. If you have some crusty French bread (as you can see I did not), it would be a great accompaniment. The key to the dressing is to make sure you toss the salad together on your plate really well before you eat it, mixing it so that all the salad ingredients are coated with some of each component of the dressing.

This week’s menu is the one I fixed after the hurricane, so it represents a new start (at least in my refrigerator, which had to be completely purged). We came back from staying with friends in Mississippi to a city where groceries were hard to come by (at least that’s what we’d been told). So, I sent David to the grocery store to pick up a few things, and this is what we ended up with: chicken, chicken, and chicken again. So, if you find yourself with a whole bunch of chicken and you don’t know what to do with it, this week’s menu is for you. With just a few other purchases, you’ll have a week’s worth of meals at your fingertips (even if they are all, well, chicken).

For this first one, David grilled all but 4 breasts, and I used the leftover grilled chicken for the Strawberry-Goat Cheese Salad and the Pesto Chicken Salad. I made the focaccia bread and mayonnaise for these sandwiches; the mayonnaise I divided in half: one half for tonight, and one half for the pesto chicken salad. Now, I have to admit that I was a bit skeptical about the balsamic mayonnaise, as I am particular about the use of both balsamic vinegar and mayonnaise. My Aunt Prissy forbids the use of store-bought mayonnaise in anything but comeback sauce, and I don’t like the taste or texture of the congealed, eerily white store-bought stuff.

The focaccia bread, I like with lots and lots of rosemary. But strangely, when I went out to cut some sprigs from my favorite evergreen herb–from the plants my husband gave me as GIFT, mind you–I discovered that they were all, well, dead. My idea was to leave them in their pot because they seemed so happy there, but no, my expert gardener husband just had to try to put them in the ground. Thanks, David, thanks a lot. (Do you sense the bitterness?) I had to use the sprigs in my window I’d been trying to root, which only amounted to about a tablespoon. If you make it, please use as much rosemary as you can get your hands on (and don’t let David anywhere near your rosemary plants).

My sister-in-law, Hannah (that’s her below on our trip this summer to Napa Valley), emailed me the recipe for these yummy sandwiches; the original recipe comes from Jane and Michael Stern’s Southern California Cooking from the Cottage: Casual Cuisine from Old La Jolla’s Favorite Beachside Bungalow, reprinted in The Splendid Table’s e-newsletter, The Weeknight Kitchen. Here’s my version:

Grilled Chicken Breasts

4 pounds chicken
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup rice vinegar
2 T. honey
Combine all liquid ingredients and pour over chicken breasts; salt and pepper well. Marinate at least a few hours, preferably overnight. Grill the chicken over a medium flame for a total of 12 minutes, turning every 2-4 minutes to prevent the honey from burning. Baste as you turn it.

Tomato-Basil Relish
This is best after it’s marinated for several hours, so I make it when I marinate the chicken.

3 ripe Roma tomatoes, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tsp. fresh lemon juice
2 T. chopped basil
2 t. olive oil
1/2 t. Kosher salt
Cracked black pepper
Combine and refrigerate.

Focaccia Bread with Rosemary

1 pkg. yeast
1 t. sugar
2 cups warm water
5 cups flour (I used a combination of all-purpose and bread flour because I only had 3 cups of all-purpose in the house)
2 t. salt
2 T. olive oil
4 T. chopped rosemary (or more)

Mix the yeast and sugar together, and sprinkle the mixture over the warm water. Let it stand for about 5 minutes, or until the yeast dissolves. In a mixer, combine the water/yeast with the remaining ingredients with a dough hook until it forms a ball (or something resembling a ball). Remove dough to a floured surface and knead with your hands. (This is my favorite part–I love the feel of the smooth, elastic dough and the smell of the rosemary). Return to mixing bowl, cover, and let it rise for about an hour. Divide the dough into two balls and place in greased cake pans (some people use cookie sheets, but I think the bread stays more moist if you bake it in a pan). Preheat the oven to 475, and let the dough rest in the pans until the oven is heated. Stretch the dough to fit the pans, drizzle with more olive oil, sprinkle with Kosher salt, and bake for about 10-15 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Homemade Mayonnaise

1 egg
1 T. cider vinegar
Juice of 1 lemon
1/2 t. Kosher salt
1/2 t. paprika
1/4 t. cayenne pepper
3/4 cup salad oil (canola or vegetable or a combination), divided
Place all ingredients in the blender, but start with only 1/4 cup of the oil. After the ingredients are blended, with the motor running, add the remaining oil in a very slow, steady stream. The mayonnaise should emulsify, creating a very thick consistency. Remove one half of the mayonnaise from the blender, and reserve for the pesto chicken salad later in the week. Add to the remaining mayo in the blender 2 tablespoons of balsamic mayonnaise and blend just until the vinegar is incorporated.

To assemble the sandwiches: Cut the focaccia loaves into fourths. Slice open one of the fourths, spread liberally with balsamic mayonnaise, add a chicken breast, and top with about 2 tablespoons of the tomato relish. Serve the sandwiches with a green salad, or with chips and the remaining tomato relish.

CHIMI, CHIMI

Friday, September 9 (but not really)

I’m not sure what happened, but somehow my days got mixed up this week. Labor Day? The hurricane week? I don’t know; I’m sure it’s a combination of all manner of things. Baton Rouge has turned into a different city this week (my local grocery store only had one bag of angel hair pasta in the whole store when I went Wednesday afternoon), new students from New Orleans have transferred to LSU for a semester, and traffic is, well, a nightmare. I try not to stray too far from home, fearing I may never return. I, for one, was glad to return to class, see my students’ faces, and know that they and their families are okay (many of them are from the Slidell area). Several of my students lamented not their families’ loss of property, but simply said, “We are thankful to be alive and have food and a place to stay.” These times do indeed put things into perspective, possibly one positive out of this surreal disaster.

So, here is what I cooked on Friday of whatever week this menu comes from (I really am having a hard time remembering), even though I am perfectly aware that today (the day I’m posting) is Saturday. But, whatever. I always buy ground beef in the 2 or 3 pound quantities, so I had about a pound leftover from our hamburger night. By Friday, I’m always looking for something quick, and these chimichangas really hit the spot. Yes, you have to fry them (gasp!) in about a half-inch of oil, but really, how often do you do that? And, look, I’m serving the fried thing with oranges and avocado! Doesn’t that help to balance out the grease? (This is what I tell myself when I have a diet coke with a medium pizza, anyway). You can make guacamole, of course, but these avocados were so perfectly ripe and pretty that I decided not to. The salsa is leftover from quesadilla night (Wednesday, I think?). Next week will be saner (at least I hope so.)

Beef Chimichangas with Orange-Red Onion Salad and Avocado

For the filling:

1 pound ground beef

2 cloves garlic, sliced thinly

1/2 small yellow onion, ciced

1 t. cumin

1 t. chili powder

1/2 t. seasoning salt

1/4 cup salsa

4 ounces pepper jack cheese

Cook the onion and garlic over medium heat, just until tender, about 4 minutes. Add the meat and seasonings. Cook until the beef is completely brown; drain well (I use a mesh strainer so I don’t lose the garlic or onion). Return the beef to the skillet, add the salsa and cheese and heat until cheese is melted and well-mixed in. Remove to a plate lined with paper towels (they will absorb more of the grease).

To assemble:

4 large tortillas

Enough oil to fill the skillet about 1/2 inch-up (I use canola)

Lay each tortilla flat, and place about 1/2 cup of the filling down the center. Fold in from the sides (like you were making a wrap), and then fold the ends up too (to make a closed packet). Heat the oil over medium and lay the chimis in the skillet, folded side down. Fry until brown, about 4-6 minutes per side. (The first ones will take a little longer, but once the oil gets really hot, they cook pretty quickly). I cook them two at a time; they should not touch in the skillet.

While they are frying, in a medium-sized bowl, toss 2 oranges, peeled and diced (I cut it into rings and then quarter each slice), about a quarter of a red onion, chopped very, very finely, 2 tablespoons of red wine vinegar, and 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Season well with salt and pepper.

Let the oranges sit and soak up the dressing while you finish frying. Remove each chimi, as it’s done, to a paper-towel-lined plate. While they are cooling, slice the avocado and sprinkle with salt. Plate up, and enjoy!

David and I have often been accused of being vegetarians. Yes, for those of you who live in other parts of the country, being a vegetarian is something you can be accused of in the South. Possibly even prosecuted in court, although I personally have never had it taken that far. In any case, we eat a lot of vegetables and not very much meat. Especially not very much red meat. But every now and then, I really crave a big, juicy burger. I don’t know if it’s too many years of Fourth of July in Mississippi, or possibly just growing up in a house with my father and two brothers, but I can’t escape the occasional physical need for grilled meat. David is always happy when these cravings strike–like me, he doesn’t eat red meat often, but when he does, he really enjoys it. I think it makes him feel more manly somehow, but he’s an artist–that’s a losing battle. He proved his muscles by grilling these burgers–they were perfectly falling apart, crispy and black on the outside and tender and not-quite-pink on the inside. I mixed up some Corn Salad from The Barefoot Contessa–a delightful mixture of corn straight off the cob, red onion, and basil with cider vinegar and olive oil. David ate the corn salad leftovers–all of them–straight out of the bowl the next day. I also cooked the remaining potatoes and onions I chopped for the hash browns on Tuesday, so the vegetables in no way took backstage. We are fair-minded people, after all. Here’s how we fixed the burgers:

David’s Burgers

1 1/2 pounds ground beef

1/2 yellow onion, chopped finely

1/2 cup bread crumbs

1 egg

1/4 cup Worcestshire

Salt and pepper

Mix all in a bowl (with hands, he says, if you can stand the goopy-ness), and form into patties. If you have time to refrigerate the patties for a while, they tend to hold up better on the grill. Grill over a medium flame to desired doneness.

To dress the burgers:

1 cup sliced mushrooms

1/2 yellow onion, diced finely

3 T. butter

1 t. Kosher salt

Sauté the mushrooms and onion in butter until very soft and the onions are beginning to brown. Top each burger with a heap of this mixture and some Swiss cheese. Enjoy your carnivorous meal, but don’t forget the veggies (or they will have their feelings hurt).

I love to make quesadillas. I love the idea of making an interesting filling, placing it in a tortilla, frying it, and voila! — a crispy, melt-in-your-mouth-good combination of flavors. This recipe is inspired partly by the Black Bean Enchiladas in Intercourses, which are also delish, but more labor-intensive and partly by a smoky black bean pizza that the pizza chef at the Brick-Oven used to make. For these, you just need some good salsa, leftover chicken, a can of black beans, some bacon, and some cheese. My husband really likes these, and the filling makes enough to have plenty of leftovers.

For the filling:

6 slices bacon

1/2 yellow onion

1 cup chopped green onion

4 cloves garlic, chopped finely

Chicken (I had 2 breasts leftover from grilling, so I used them, chopped, but shredded cooked chicken would also work)

1 can black beans, drained

1/2 cup salsa

Monterey Jack cheese (with peppers if you like spicy)

Tortillas (burrito-sized work well, but if you have the smaller ones, just use 2, instead of folding them in half)

In a skillet, cook the bacon slices until done. Remove, and drain off all but about a tablespoon of the grease, and sauté the onions and garlic over medium-low (be careful not to let the garlic burn). Add the diced chicken, black beans, and salsa. Cook over low for about 10 minutes, until you can begin to mash up the beans to get a good, thick consistency. Crumble in the reseved bacon. Remove the filling from the skillet. Fill tortillas with the chicken mixture and top liberally with cheese. Fry the tortillas in a little bit of oil (I use the same skillet–mindful always of my sweet husband who cleans up my messes!). Serve with salsa and guacamole (Ina Garten’s recipe in The Barefoot Contessa is my favorite–chunky, with lots of lemon and salt). The citrusy flavor of the guacamole works well with the smoky intensity of the quesadillas. We like to drink a spicy wine with a meal like this also–Zinfandel is our favorite. Or, of course, margaritas if we don’t have school the next day. Tequila and early mornings, in my experience, are not a favorable combination, but hey, if it works for you. . .

Soup and salad is such a traditional combination–cold and hot, liquid and solid–that I like to continue the contrasts with flavors. This corn soup from Sara Foster’s Fresh Everyday is divine, especially with sweet, fresh summer corn. I followed the recipe exactly, so I won’t reproduce it here (if you don’t have that cookbook, you really should buy it anyway), but I paired it with a salad full of contrasts. I love to mix a sweet fruit with a sharp cheese on top of a salad and then top it with a sweet-and-sour dressing. In this case, the Asian pears serve as the sweet and their classic partner, blue cheese, as the sharp. If you don’t like blue cheese, feta works well too. To fulfill my husband’s starch needs, I also cooked some hash browns, which we really like better at night than in the morning.

Pear and Blue Cheese Salad

Salad greens of your choice (I used Romaine because that’s what I had)

2 pears, diced

4 ounces blue cheese

Walnuts, chopped coarsely (I also like to toast them in the oven)

Sherry vinegar (about 1 Tablespoon per salad)

Olive oil

Kosher salt

Cracked pepper

Arrange the greens on a plate, top with the pears, cheese, and nuts. Drizzle equal parts vinegar, olive oil, and honey over each salad, and season with salt and pepper. Makes 2 servings.

Easy Hash Browns

Yukon gold potatoes (they really do make the best hash)

Yellow onions

Butter and olive oil

Salt and pepper

Dice the potatoes and onions really small. Heat the butter and oil in a skillet over medium; add the potatoes and onions. Cook in a single layer for a good 5 minutes or so to allow the bits of potato and onion to begin to brown; stir and repeat. These make a terrible mess in the skillet, but they taste so good. There are no magic proportions; if you like lots of onion, chop lots of onion. If you prefer a more potato-ey flavor, chop less onion. I usually dice as many potatoes and onions as I have on hand and save the raw leftovers for hash browns on another occasion (like with my hamburgers on Friday). The key is not to get your skillet too full; otherwise the vegetables will steam instead of sauté, which will not give you the crisp brown texture you want in hash browns.

Tomorrow, I will resume the menu to the left, but for now, I thought I’d share what we cooked on the grill the day our power went out. After a week of watching the harrowing coverage of the tragedy in my two home states, it seems trivial¾to say the least¾to contemplate my own inconvenience of a few day without electricity. Nevertheless, many people found themselves resorting to the grill until their refrigerators and stoves were back in action, so I thought I’d offer this recipe for what we cooked the night we lost our power.

My heart goes out to those who have lost so much, and I can only pray that the recovery efforts will help them begin to put their lives back together. In the meantime, I hope you and your family and loved ones are out of harm’s way. May all of us who have survived count our blessings and remember to reach out to those in need.

The original recipe for this antipasto, which my Aunt Prissy shared with me, comes from Angela Rhemann, a long-time friend of our family who occasionally teaches cooking classes at The Everyday Gourmet in Jackson, Mississippi. If I followed her recipe, I would bake the antipasto in the oven and serve it with crostini, which I am certain makes a divine appetizer. However, I wanted it to serve as a main dish, so I cooked it in a skillet on the grill, and then stuffed it in some grilled portabella mushroom caps and topped it with slices of fresh mozzarella.

Antipasto-stuffed Portabella Mushrooms

1 red bell pepper

1 14-oz. can artichoke hearts, chopped finely

4 cloves garlic, sliced thinly

4 oz. mixed Mediterranean olives, chopped

¼ cup olive oil

¼ cup capers

4 oz. fresh mozzarella cheese

4 large portabella mushroom caps

French bread

Over a medium flame, grill the bell pepper until it is charred on all sides. Remove from the grill and place in a shallow bowl; cover with plastic wrap to steam. While it is grilling, remove the stems from the mushroom caps, chop them finely, and mix them with the artichoke hearts, garlic, olives, capers, and olive oil in a flame-resistant skillet. Cover with aluminum foil and cook on the grill for about 20 minutes, or until the garlic is very, very soft (you should almost be able to mash the mixture to a paste). Spray the mushroom caps with cooking spray (I use the canola oil spray) and place gills-up on the grill. Cook until the mushrooms are soft. Remove the mushrooms and fill with antipasto mixture. Place each cap in a foil packet, top with mozzarella slices, and drizzle with olive oil. Cut the French bread in half length-wise, brush it with olive oil, salt, and pepper, and place it face-down on the grill. Cook until the cheese is melted and the bread is toasty.