for the love of mayonnaise a blog about sandwiches.

So I made this beauty the other day because my mother had told my father to go to the store and pick up garlic bread and what he came home with was a thinly pre-sliced loaf of what looked to be whole grain artisan bread. Now while this sounds delicious it was clearly not what my mother wanted and now she had two loaves and no plan. So I took one. And made this. A few too many times.

If you like garlic bread, cheese, your typical mozzarella basil combo, or just a plain grilled cheese sandwich, you will probably slobber all over yourself before this is finished cooking. Like my husband, and he’s not one to put vegetables anywhere near his bread and butter.

Grilled Garlic Tomato and Mozzarella Sandwich
Ingredients:
Butter (enough to spread on your bread)
Tomato slices
Mozzarella Cheese (or any other white cheese could work, the one in these pictures is actually Monterey Jack and White Cheddar)
Fresh Basil or Dried Basil, whatever you have on hand
2 slices Fresh Bread (this is really good with a light grainy bread with lots of crevices in the surface to let the butter pool)
Garlic Salt

Directions:
Place a pan on your stove and set it to medium or medium low to heat up.

Take your pieces of bread and lay them down. Spread a little butter on one side and then sprinkle your basil, dried or fresh (I used dried and it turned out just fine), if you just want a hint of the basil obviously don’t put too much on, it can over power the rest of the sandwich if you aren’t careful.

Then lay your cheese, covering the whole surface of the buttered bread. Then place your slices of tomato. Then place another layer of cheese. Place the other piece of bread on top of this tower.

After the sandwich is compiled, butter the top slice of bread generously. Sprinkle on a good amount of garlic salt. Then place this side of the sandwich down in your frying pan. While that side is heating, butter the now exposed side of the sandwich and sprinkle this with garlic salt as well. (Yes you could rub some fresh garlic on your bread and make some serious garlic bread but honestly people, garlic salt will work just fine, it’s pretty much parsley, garlic, salt and a few inconsequential things.)

Keep your heat on medium low and your patience on high. You don’t want to go burning your bread but you want to make sure that the cheese on that side of the sandwich is melted before you flip it. And you don’t want your tomato to be too hot and mushy so as you can see this is like rocket science. This is also why it is nice to have a thin, airy bread that will pass the heat through to the cheese rather quickly as opposed to a thickly sliced dense bread that will burn before the innards are all melty and good. Melty. My spell check is telling me this is not a word but I think my spell check doesn’t know what it’s talking about.

Flip the sandwich when it is obvious that it should be flipped based on my very helpful explanation above. Wait until the other side of the sandwich resembles the first side and voila. Eat it. Sorry it is a melty, buttery mess but that is why it is so delicious. Now go jump on a machine that resembles a treadmill.