Cheese as Buttons

Cheese as Tires

Tom Lewis' Nachos in Oz

Anthony Clover's Ricotta Pastizzi

Cheese and ...
            ...Apple Pie - Bill Nyden
            ...Apples - Jay Reay
            ...Fruit, of course - David Spencer
            ...Bread - Anthony Clover

Toasted Cheese
            Ray Martin's Sliced Toasted Cheese
            Satyam's Compleat Toasted Cheese
            Sarah Scott's Flaming Hot Addition
            Adam Quinan's Toasted Cheese
            Adam Quinan's Toasted Cheese with M*rm*te
            Larry Finch's Toasted Cheese and Bread Discourse
            Dick Ellis' Toasted Cheese-and-Garlic Spread
            Andrew Midkiff's Toasted Cheese and Rarebit Sauce
            Matt Cranor's Rare Bit for Andrew's Rarebit
            Gary Brown's Greek Cypriot Toasted Cheese
            Mauricio Contreras' Argentine-Italian Toasted Cheese
            Susan Wenger's Toasted Cheese and Fish
            P. Richman's Toasted Cheese
            Jay Reay's Welsh Rarebit (which it is toasted cheese to Lissuns)

Open a bottle of BUD, open a can of Campbell's Cheese soup . Drink the BUD.
Open another bottle of BUD. Find a pot. Pour the glutinous mass in the can into the pot. Throw half a can of milk in it and half a bottle of BUD. Drink remaining half of BUD.Open another bottle of BUD. Stir the stuff in the pot on low heat. Drink the bottle of BUD while waiting. 
Now heres the tricky part. After the glutinous mass in the pot has burned and stuck to the bottom because you didn't stir it throw the pot and the mass away. Now open another BUD and drink it. Send out for pizza. 

List of ingredients: 1 8oz can of Cheese soup
1 Six pack of Bud (long neck bottles preferred)
1 phone to call for the pizza (extra imported cheese on it)
Oh yeah, some milk if you got it.

Sarah Scott asks:
Cheese...didn't sailors carve buttons out of cheese? What do you have to do to cheese to make it that solid? Would they melt in water? in sea water? What kind of cheese would they have been issued?

(Experienced) Marian van Til replies:
Cheese (at least some types) will get rock hard when its moisture evaporates (as in: leave it unnoticed for three to six weeks in your refrigerator in a less-than-airtight wrapping). On the up side, that prevents it from molding, and it remains edible (more or less; if you intend to melt it; with a blow torch; or at least a Bunsen burner).

Kyle Lerfald: California cheese is second only to Goodyear tires on a cracker.
Marian van Til: Do you serve Goodyears on crackers regularly, Kyle? Maybe you should try washing it down with dark sambuca instead of beer the next time. It may better bring out the nuances in the rubber.
Kyle: Personally, if I must serve tires, I only use steel-belted radial Goodyear "All Season" tires - one has standards to maintain. Usually served on Carr's Water Biscuits with cracked pepper and a light white wine.

David Goldblatt: Hmmm. You've always struck me as an import tyre kinda guy. Pirelli perhaps? With a little melted Brie on top all nestled in a baguette of French bread. 

Kyle: Pirelli have a good "chew," but I find that unless one eats them quickly...well, one becomes exhausted with the flavor.
...thinking of those folks who eat jeeps and such...and what the after might be like for such people...prune juice ain't innit!

Nachos in Oz are corn chips, grated cheese, and nacho sauce (Old El Paso is best) over the top of that. There are three varieties of sauce - mild, medium, hot. I prefer the latter. Then you either heat in a medium oven for 20 minutes or do 5 minutes in a convection microwave. 

...'Pastizzi' on hot black trays straight out of the ovens - a delicious sort of crisply baked oily choux pastry stuffed with ricotta. 

...Apple Pie - Bill Nyden

...howzabout a hot slice of apple pie with a couple slices of sharp cheddar melting across the top - yummy!!
       An apple pie without the cheese
       Is like a kiss without a squeeze.
        -- Marie Callendar

I do like a good New Zealand Royal Gala with my Davidstow cheddar. I'll try a slice of brie on my next apple pie.

Pear, port and pont l'eveque (or stilton or cheshire or any strong or subtle cheese) -- there's the ticket. Though of course, the fruit's an accompaniment, not a medium.

I disagree - the only medium for eating cheese (apart from wine) is good BREAD - anything else is a gastronomical gimmick and likely to taste either of another cheese or plain cardboard - and you can chuck away all your stupid celery sticks.
Also sprach Zarathustra ...

Ray Martin's Sliced Toasted Cheese

With no historical precedents whatsoever to go on, I always toast the bread before putting the sliced cheese on (grated cheese melts too much, and then fat seeps into the toast, making it soggy; slicing the cheese means that the bit in contact with the bread remains solid, and thus impermeable to the grease, leaving the toast crunchy). Cheddar, or Double Gloucester for preference.
Add liberal amounts of ground black pepper and/or Lea and Perrins/ Tabasco sauce to taste. Consume immediately. 

I didn't give toasted cheese a second thought since I associated it with grilled provolone (my translation, sorry), usually called 'provoletta' here, which is available in almost any restaurant here in Buenos Aires. Now that I think of it, I haven't seen it anywhere else in the world, so I shouldn't be amazed nobody seems to know about it. So, this is what I believe 'toasted cheese' might be:

Provolone cheese is made in a long cylinder about 5 inches in diameter and a foot in length. When aged long enough (a rarity nowadays, since it take months of dry and fresh storage space, which costs too much) it becomes quite hard. I guess that after being a few months at sea, that part was easy. You cut slices about 1/4th of an inch thick and paint it with oil and sprinkle oregano over it (basically, the oil is there so the oregano sticks to the cheese). Then you can put it on the grill. The cheese, being hard, won't melt through, though it will turn soft. You might want to warm it up slowly so it softens, if it is already too hard. Otherwise, you skip the softening and go to the final stage, which is making the outside crisp, by giving it full heat. You keep it there until it turns deep brown, then turn around and do the other side. You serve it with some olive oil (this oil has to be savoury) and sprinkle some more oregano over it.

You can also do it in a skillet. If the cheese is not really hard, you do it on a high flame, so the crust gets toasted before the middle starts spreading all over the skillet, and looks like mozzarella without the rest of the pizza underneath. If it is hard, you use a lower flame to soften it and give it the final browning on a high flame. You have to put a little oil (spray will do) on the skillet so it doesn't stick, and keep moving it around so it doesn't stay long enough and sticks in one place. If it gets stuck to the skillet, when you try to slide it on a plate to serve it, you will get the melted inside while the crispy crust, which is the best, stays in the skillet. It is still tasty, but you wouldn't like to put it on the table for everyone to see. You have to serve it right out of the fire. If it cools down, it will get harder than it was before cooking, and you can't get the crispy crust reheating it. Just like any toast, you can't let it get cold. And, there is no bread involved in the whole thing.

So, back from the kitchen, I just cut a little slice, toasted it and ate it. Thanks for giving me the idea. By the way, the slice I got out of the fridge was already cut and spiced with oil, oregano and a little chile, and wrapped in plastic. It had been there for a while (months, actually, I forgot about it) so the spices got into it. It is a little hard on the liver, so though I was tempted when I bought it, I left it for later. Another trick, if the cheese is soft, you can wrap the slices in paper instead of plastic, so it will dry up in the dry air of the fridge (not the freezer).

Sarah Scott's Flaming Hot Addition:

Also known as Saganaki-- cook it, pour liquor over it, flame it, douse the fire with lemon and eat it.

1. Toast, any sort of bread but a good multigrain is my preference.
2. Slice of non-processed Cheese (if you are picky use a good Cheddar otherwise anything vaguely cheese like but not processed will do!)
Instructions:
1. Put 2 on top of 1.
2. Grill or broil (depending on which side of the Atlantic you are) until cheese is bubbly.
3. Let it cool down a little or you'll burn your mouth.
4. Eat accompanied by an appropriate beverage.

Some people like to make toasted cheese with a little Worchester sauce. I like my version. Toast the bread spread very thinly with a dark brown salty, yeasty comestible with a picture of a large soup pot on the label (Yes, M*rm*te). Then slice old cheddar and toast under the grill until its bubbly.

Somewhat related -- I worked in an office once where the short order cook in the cafeteria made a "grilled cheese sandwich" by putting the bread on a griddle, then when it was almost done he dropped a couple of slices of cheese directly on the griddle, left them for a few seconds, then scooped them up with a spatula and dropped them on the bread. It was a significant improvement over the usual. I asked him once where he learned it, and he said it was as a US Navy cook. [A mathematician would say he made a "(grilled cheese) sandwich" rather than a "grilled (cheese sandwich)".]
Coming back to Elizabeth David, I recommend her bread book for pleasure reading. The first recipe is over 200 pages into the book; up to that point she devotes a chapter or more to each of the ingredients of bread, discussing the types of wheat to use, yeast and how it works, salt (she uses only sea salt), liquids, principles of kneading, etc. Beard on Bread is also a great cookbook and I use it constantly [Myrtle Allen's Brown Bread is a favorite], but if I could take only one to the desert island it would have to be Elizabeth David.

The recipe comes from the wrapper of a brand of platina, Italian flatbread, in stores briefly some years ago, but not seen since.
1/4 pound butter, or reasonable facsimile
1/2 C grated Parmesan
1/2 C shredded Mozzarella
1/2 C shredded Cheddar
3 cloves garlic, minced

Mix it all up together: using a food processor, I find it easiest to chop the garlic first, then mix the butter and Parmesan, then add the other cheeses.
Spread it on bread, bake at 350 degrees F. for 15 min., and Bob's your uncle. Best warm, but very good cold.
The recipe is enough for one 11" or 12" flatbread; I usually make a double recipe, and put it on English muffins, pre-toasted, and cut them in quarters for hors d'oeuvres.

2 Tablespoons butter
2 Tablespoons flour
1 cup beer, darker is better, but never tried stout, might work
1/2 pound sharp cheese
tobasco (not traditional, but I like it)
Worshersheshtershishtershire sauce
Bread
butter for bread

Melt the 2 Tablespoons of butter in small sauce pan, add flour and stir, cooking over low heat until it starts to turn a tan color. This will take about as long as it takes to drink one beer. This is called a One Beer Roux. Some of lighter constitutions may need to make it a Half Beer Roux. Slowly add the cup of beer, stirring the whole time to make sure there aren't any lumps. Stir and cook on low for about 3-5 minutes.
Add cheese and stir until smooth. Add tobasco and Worshersheshtershishtershire sauce to taste. Pour over toasted and buttered bread and serve. You can also use stock, milk or even tomato juice instead of the beer, but I prefer the beer.
The left-over sauce keeps well in the refrigerator and to reprise, just toast some bread, butter and spread with the cheese, then either pop under the broiler or in a toaster oven until melted. I also like to sprinkle just a little paprika on the bread before serving. Serve with a tart green salad using just lemon juice and olive oil for dressing, and red wine. Bob's your uncle, a repast fit for a king!

Matt Cranor's Rare Bit for Andrew's Rarebit

Try putting a slice of ham, or a fried/poached egg, or both, on the toast, then cover with the sauce and brown as before. As Andrew suspects, stout (or porter) works well -- is maybe even best. I also add a half-teaspoon or so of dried or prepared mustard.

Whilst on the tempting subject of toasted cheese, I dare say this has been mentioned before (what hasn't?) but you can produce a fine appetiser that is just 'toasted cheese' rather than 'cheese on toast'; no doubt there are lots of receipts, but a good and traditional Greek Cypriot dish is 'lounza and halloumi' (often with tzatziki too).

Lounza is a hot, firm, spicy lamb sausage; halloumi is a slice of ?sheep's cheese, about 4" x 2" x 1/2", grilled on the open fire griddle until nicely etched with criss-cross marks on both sides, served hot, drizzled with oil. 

There's something about the cheese itself that prevents it from melting at all (is it perhaps very low fat cheese?), and it has a most agreeable spongy, slightly chewy texture. With a generous glass of one of those surprisingly delicious Cypriot reds .... well, it makes me long for the Mediterranean!

The Italian-Argentine variety of grilled cheese is putting 1.5 to 2.0cm-thick slices of Provolone cheese on the barbeque. Some like to flour and butter the surfaces beforehand. Flip it over once the bottom starts to melt. You get a golden crust on both surfaces, and the center of the slice is almost melted never runny. Serve it with some oregano! Buen provecho!

Fried fish (I used tilapia, a firm white fish), 
on thick-sliced seven-grain bread,
topped with a hefty slab of Gorgonzola cheese,
and buried under a few spoonfuls of (canned)cream of mushroom soup,
broiled until bubbly.

For four sandwiches:
4 tablespoon butter or margarine
1/2 cup chopped fresh mushrooms
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
8 slices decent bread
4 slices Cheddar cheese
4 slices mozzarella cheese
For the egg coating: 1 large egg mixed with 3 tablespoons milk and a splash of Worcestershire sauce.
To prepare the sandwiches, in a 10-inch skillet, melt 1 tbs. butter over moderate heat. Cook mushrooms, onions, and pepper in butter until tender. Remove from skillet.
For each sandwich, layer a slice of bread, a slice of each cheese, some of the mushroom-onion mixture, and top with bread.
Dip sandwiches in egg mixture to coat on both sides. Melt 3 tbs. butter in the skillet, cook sandwiches, 2 at a time, over moderate heat until bread is golden and cheese begins to melt, turning once.

I also like my version of Welsh rarebit - again thick toast (I'm badly brought up you can see) with cheese previously melted over lightly fried onions mixed with Lea and Perrins before toasting to a lightly burnt, chewy surface.