Ready to make grilled cheese grow up and go gourmet? Meet your new sandwich obsession.
You start with rustic Italian bread and baptize it in olive oil (just one side—no need to go full spa day). Then comes the basil pesto slather, a swipe of green gold that sets the tone. Layer on provolone like you mean it, tuck in a bunch of baby spinach, and artfully throw on strips of roasted red pepper like you’re plating for royalty. Add more cheese—because balance.
Smash it all together in a sizzling cast-iron duet: one pan cooks, the other presses like it’s conducting a grilled-cheese symphony. Flip, toast, and behold the melty marvel. Then? Chow down like you’ve conquered lunchtime.
Ingredients
- ½ cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil
- 8 slices rustic Italian bread
- ¼ cup prepared basil pesto
- 16 thin slices Provolone cheese
- 8 oz. baby spinach
- 4 whole bottled, well-drained roasted red peppers, cut into strips
Instructions
- Use two different-sized, cast-iron pans.
- Brush oil over all the bread slices. Or pour olive oil in one of the pans and drag the slices through. One side only, either scenario.
- Turn four slices over; spread pesto evenly over bread.
- Now plop on some of the cheese, tearing to fit if necessary.
- Add spinach, pepper strips, and remaining cheese. Do whatever order makes you giddy.
- Close sandwiches with remaining bread, oiled sides up.
- Cook (in batches), smaller pan on top, pressing occasionally. Flip about 3 minutes in.
- Wait until it’s golden brown and the cheese is melted.
- EAT IT!
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!
Brian Gerard (Lewandowski) writes books critics call "aggressively adequate"—better than "aggressively terrible" but somehow more concerning. He once traded a MetroCard for a pitchfork on a subway platform and now uses it exclusively for dramatic pointing. He lives on a farm outside Charlottesville, Virginia with three disappointed potted plants, a judgmental pig named Trouble McFussbucket, and a wife who smiles politely at his life choices.
See my Amazon author page and buy my books.
His first manuscript was composed entirely of punctuation marks and confused sketches. He's since published "Not Bukowski" (poems that don't rhyme) and "Slop and Swell from a Festering Mind" (essays so concerning that bookstores check on his well-being). He once spent three hours photographing a rare bird that turned out to be a plastic bag, and he's the only person banned from church bake sales for "weaponized brownies." Inheriting absurdism from Vonnegut and Adams, sprawling narratives from Irving, and weaponized failure from Moore, he writes about conflicted everymen struggling through supernatural chaos.
He has two new, offbeat novels waiting for an agent or a publisher: "Truth Tastes Like Pennies" and "Elliot Nessie."
He remains unconvinced that birds aren't surveillance drones.
More biographic lies...err...info.
See my Amazon author page and buy my books.
His first manuscript was composed entirely of punctuation marks and confused sketches. He's since published "Not Bukowski" (poems that don't rhyme) and "Slop and Swell from a Festering Mind" (essays so concerning that bookstores check on his well-being). He once spent three hours photographing a rare bird that turned out to be a plastic bag, and he's the only person banned from church bake sales for "weaponized brownies." Inheriting absurdism from Vonnegut and Adams, sprawling narratives from Irving, and weaponized failure from Moore, he writes about conflicted everymen struggling through supernatural chaos.
He has two new, offbeat novels waiting for an agent or a publisher: "Truth Tastes Like Pennies" and "Elliot Nessie."
He remains unconvinced that birds aren't surveillance drones.
More biographic lies...err...info.
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