just made: bloody mary grilled cheese

You heard me.

A few weeks ago, I met my friend Leslie at the Bearded Lady on Washington. Leslie is a writer (of fiction, grant proposals, no-longer-public blog posts, and the occasional poem), and I love to meet up with her to discuss what we’re working on. And have $4 happy hour beers. By the time Daniel joined us, we were ready to order food, and we were all intrigued by the sound of a grilled cheese sandwich with horseradish.

The sandwich was good, but it prompted the question: what if you put all the ingredients to a bloody mary on a sandwich?

A quick Google told us that no one [who's internet-savvy] has gone there. Daniel and I set about to change that.

Our friends Emily and Eliott were in town from Illinois, and they were down to make the Bloody Mary Grilled Cheese happen.

The components:

The steps: 1. Slice some bread (we used whole wheat sourdough from Bread Alone) and grate some cheese (we chose Consider Bardwell’s Rupert).

2. Make a (warning: potent) mixture of horseradish and Worcestershire sauce.

3. Add to that some finely chopped sun-dried tomatoes, spread the whole mixture on bread, and top it with pickles.

4. Add your cheese, as much or as little as you like. A mixture of different cheeses would also be nice.

[Side note: when Emily, Eliott, and I were buying this cheese at the Union Square Greenmarket, we informed our handsome cheesemonger that we needed enough to make four grilled cheese sandwiches. He proceeded to try to sell us a hunk of cheese about the size of the heel of my hand. Of course, we were quick to correct his mistake. "No, no. We're Midwesterners. Quadruple that, please."]

5. Pile high with greens. We used arugula for a peppery kick.

6. Grill. We coated our bread in olive oil rather than butter, reasoning that (a) butter might be too rich to evoke the pure, clean taste of a blood mary and (b) we didn’t have any butter.

A darling is born. Go. Make. Eat. Accompany with a good light beer. Or, you know, a bloody mary.