Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Toasted cheese and onion

Bread; cheddar cheese; white onion




SOME TASTES ARE JUST NATURALLY affinitive: ham and asparagus; sausage and artichoke; gin and vermouth. Anthony Boucher wrote a wonderful science-fiction story, years ago, in which a tiny by-the-way in an account otherwise about really serious issues raised by space-travel to the planet Venus involved the discovery, there, of a plant without which the lamb-garlic-rosemary-salt combination was simply incomplete.

Among these simple but brilliant marriages of taste: good bread, cheddar cheese, onion. You butter the bread, or you sprinkle it with olive oil, or you don't. You put very thin slices of raw white onion on it. You then put on the cheddar cheese. Some people put it on in thin slices; others grate it coarsely. Doesn't matter which.

Under the broiler, then, until the cheese melts and bubbles a bit, and maybe some edges nearly burn.

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