Grilled Muenster and Blue Cheese Sandwich with Pear-Vanilla Preserves
Pear and vanilla make a really delicious duo, as I mentioned a few weeks ago when I posted the recipe for my niece Rachel’s Pear Torte.
Well, guess what?
Dagstani & Sons, a Very Fine Fruit Company just won a coveted Good Food Award for its Pear-Vanilla Preserves.
It’s not just that pear and vanilla are so good together. This award is given to manufacturers of foods that are “tasty, authentic and responsibly produced.”
That’s Dagstani & Sons.
Over the past year I’ve tried several of their jams and preserves and they are definitely not your ordinary jelly. Every one that I’ve tried booms with flavor. These jams are like fruit but not like the sticky, viscous “fruit spreads” you get in the supermarket. These slither softly over your tongue. Like dessert.
It seems almost wasteful to use this stuff on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
But you can’t just go around eating jam out of the jar can you?
Or can you?
It’s what everyone in my family has been doing. Eating Dagstani jams by the spoonful.
No double dipping allowed.
Of course that didn’t stop me from using the jams on top of yogurt and ice cream. Or from experimenting with a variety of the varieties to see which flavor would be best on a grilled cheese sandwich.
The Pear-Vanilla turned out to be the perfect one.
You don’t want to overwhelm Dagstani & Sons Pear-Vanilla Preserves with a cheese that’s too strong. Some balance is required. So I used a very ordinary, mild, meltable cheese that would give the sandwich the right texture (Muenster, but Jack and Fontina are good too) and a few crumbles of blue-type cheese to give it some tang. Yum is all I can say.
Congrats to Raj Dagstani and his sons!
Grilled Muenster and Blue Cheese Sandwich with Pear-Vanilla Preserves
2 tablespoons Dagstani & Sons Pear-Vanilla Preserves
2 slices multigrain bread (or whole wheat)
1-1/2 to 2 ounces Muenster, Fontina or Jack cheese
2 tablespoons crumbled blue-type cheese
1 tablespoon butter
Spread one tablespoon of the preserves on one side of each slice of the bread. Place the Muenster cheese on top of one of the jam-spread slices, then top with the blue cheese. Cover the sandwich with the other slice. Melt half the butter in a saute pan (preferably nonstick) over medium heat. When the butter has melted and looks foamy, place the sandwich in the pan, cover and cook for about 2 minutes or until toasty brown. Lift the sandwich with a rigid spatula and add the remaining butter, let it melt and flip the sandwich into the pan. Cook for another 1-2 minutes or until the outside is crispy and golden brown and the cheese has melted. Makes one sandwich