Grilled Cheese Month

According to Stinky Bkln cheese shop around the corner from my place (and NY Magazine), April is "National Grilled Cheese Sandwich Month". Good enough for me, because it might be my favorite thing to eat. Got my technique down and everything.

My mom taught me how to make grilled cheeses, and I've developed strong opinions about how they should be done. As a kid, I made them all the time for myself after school. I had five rules back then.

The old rules:

1. Bread: had to be Mrs. Baird's or Sunbeam thin white bread
2. Cheese: had to be Kraft Deli Deluxe (never the "cheese food" crap)
3. Butter: had to use butter
4. Had to be SMASHED! Take your spatula and smash the whole thing down, so you get a crunchy thin layer of bread and oozy cheese in the middle
5. Had to be cut on a diagonal into two triangles
• Optional additions: tomato soup on the side, pickles, or Lay's potato chip

I was convinced back then that I made the best grilled cheese. I still like that version for what it is, but I've updated and upgraded my rules lately.

The new rules:

1. Bread: now that i've learned to make awesome bread at home, that's all I need. I prefer rustic white bread. And I love when there are holes in the slices so that the cheese melts down onto the pan and makes kind of a cheese chip that becomes one with the bread
2. Cheese: I'll try anything that melts these days, but I buy a good cheese from a local cheese shop (Stinky). I make it a point to try a new cheese every time I go in. I like to grate the cheese. Some of the gratings hang over the edge and, again, melt down to the pan and form kind of fringe cheese chips! I'll still by Kraft in a pinch and for nostalgia's sake, but there are too many awesome cheeses out there...
3. Butter or Olive Oil: depending on my mood, I might use olive oil. Like if I'm putting slices of tomato in the sandwich, for some reason olive oil sounds better to me
4. Weighted instead of smashed: I like to weigh down the sandwich with something, whether it's a smaller pan, a plate, or whatever. This is mostly to make sure that the entire surface of the bread touches the pan and gets brown, because when you're slicing your own bread, you might not have an even plane
5. Low heat: I like to cook them slowly. It should take 5 to 8 minutes. The cheese slowly melts, the bread gets really crunchy and brown
• Options: I like putting other stuff in the middle. Tomato, dijon mustard, proscuitto or serrano ham, salami
• Other options: Soups. Grilled cheese just works with soup. You can dip your sandwich in it
  

Recently, I made some chipotle flavored red bean soup with grilled cheese. The cheese was the "cheese of the week" from Stinky, Neal's Yard Appleby's Cheshire

I've got a little ceramic baking dish weighing down the sandwich in a non stick skillet.