Back when Dominique Ansel shot to fame over his Cronut, I couldn’t help but think I had missed a marketing opportunity. Not long before, I invented my own wildly delicious hybrid carb: the garlic bread grilled cheese. (Is “invented” an appropriate word for something that surely existed before though I was totally unaware of it?) It’s everything you love about a classic grilled cheese, but more garlicky. Which is to say, it’s very, very good.
It started when I was making garlic bread, using this recipe. I had more of the garlicky, parsley-flecked butter than I needed, and an imperative not to let it go to waste. Surveying my fridge the next day, I saw some cheddar, a few slices of bread, and that cartoon lightbulb that appears when you’ve had a good idea💡. Now I just straight-up skip over the garlic bread step and make the garlic butter exclusively for grilled cheese. I halve the aforementioned recipe, chopping 1 clove of garlic and mashing it into a paste with ⅛ of a teaspoon of salt. Then I mix in ¼ stick of softened, unsalted butter, ½ tablespoon olive oil, and 1 tablespoon chopped flat-leaf parsley. It would work just as well with the garlic butter from a garlic bread recipe of your choosing, or you can wing it—butter + garlic + parsley is a pretty unmessupable combination.
Next comes the marriage of the garlic butter and the grilled cheese. I take two pieces of Pullman bread and swipe the garlic butter on one side of each slice. Then I drop a small knob of butter (like, regular butter, not garlicky butter) in a skillet set to medium, and drop a piece of bread in the skillet, garlic-side down. Then I top it with some cheddar cheese and the other piece of bread, garlic-side up. I cook until the bottom side of the bread is golden brown, about 4 minutes, then flip, adding a little more regular butter, and cook until the other side is golden brown and the cheese is nice and melty. (For the record, I basically make this recipe, swapping the garlic butter for the mayo).
And then I eat it and wait for the royalties from my “invention” to roll in.