Fabrice Fabrice Caprese

I just spent four dollars on ONE tomato.  Yep, I have a problem.  I think I could have probably gotten this entire sandwich for that much money somewhere else, but nope, I had to get the biggest, most beautiful heirloom tomato from union square. And it was totally worth it.  So basically after buying this tomato I decided I had to do a grilled cheese around it and I thought what better than the all time Italian classic - the caprese.

So there's a lot of ingredients that go into this one, but I promise it makes it reeeealllly good.

Ingredients:

- 2 tbs hot pepper infused olive oil
- 1 ts garlic salt
- 2 pieces of olive oil & garlic ciabatta
- 1 clove of garlic
- mozerella (amount dependent on bread size)
- 1/2 tbs balsamic glaze
- 3 big basil leaves
- 1 heirloom tomato (or more)




So the first thing you'll want to do is to sprinkle the garlic salt onto the mozzarella.  I think it makes the mozzarella much tastier and my mom did it when I was little so I think it's the right way.

Now you can lay half the cheese onto one of the slices of bread.  Make sure to slice the cheese so it fits onto the bread without any of it hanging off.

Then slice that beaut of a tomato and lay it down on top of that.  Eat the rest of the tomato with salt and pepper and enjoy.

Next drizzle some balsamic glaze on the tomato. The balsamic not only tastes delcious and balances out the saltiness of the cheese, but it also functions as a glue for the basil, which is the next step.

At this point you'll want to julienne the basil and sprinkle it on top of the mater.

Now put the remaining cheese on top!

Almost done, almost done, almost done!  bread time!

 

Drizzle one tbs of olive into your skillet and turn the heat up to medium high and lay the little guy in there.

 

After about a minute and a half it should be golden brown.  When it gets all pretty like that, drizzle the remaining olive oil and flip it. Be careful because when mozzarella melts, it's that not sticky and there's a lot of stuff on this guy so stuff might fall out. If it does, REMAIN CALM, just take everything back to your cutting board and reassemble, but don't burn yourself.

 

Once it's even on both sides, take it off the skillet and peel your clove of garlic.  I think the easiet way to do this is just to crush the garlic a little bit by either using a can or the side of your knife (not the sharp one, DUH) .  After all the skin is off, just rub the garlic clove all over the bread.

 

The garlic will be really fragrant at this point and it will smell delicious, so go ahead, fucking eat it already.

Here's another helpful hint : After you eat this, brush your teeth really good because that raw garlic makes for a kickin' breath later on. And you don't want an angry Fabrice coming after ya.

xoxo,

GCS