Grown-Up Grilled Cheese: White Cheddar, Cherry Preserves, Basil on Sourdough

My best friend doesn't like bacon.

I know, strange, right?

She tries it when it's offered, but I'm not about to make an entire meal she won't eat.

Which is why I made these grown-up grilled cheese sandwiches to go along with the other grown-up grilled cheese sandwiches that had bacon.

Now, Martha says to use white bread. I think that seems very plebian for basil and cherry preserves. So I decided to use sourdough. I mean, I already have the loaf thawed, anyway.

Martha's is so pretty.

The other big change was with the basil. I don't have fresh basil in the house, and I really didn't want to go buy some. So I decided to use that organic herb puree I had already bought and not used up.

I kind of fear that buying the required cherry preserves was going to be expensive. And, indeed, when I went to the grocery store, most of the options were $5 for a jar. Then I looked to the left, just to see if a brand like Smuckers, or heck, the store's generic brand perhaps made a cherry preserve.

Smucker's totally has cherry preserves.

Totally saved me $2.

I decided before I even got home from work that I would try to make these sandwiches in my toasty maker. Obviously, it's called something else here in the states, but I was first introduced to this contraption when I was studying in England. We'd go down to the bar in the basement of the manor where we were studying and order a "toasty" -- a grilled cheese made on this specific appliance. They were very good. Or maybe the cafeteria food was just really bad. Or maybe we were all just really drunk. Or all of the above.

Anyway, I haven't been able to use this device in a couple of years, and with the grilled cheese with bacon on the stove, I figured, this would allow me to multi-task. Not the mention these ingredients lend themselves better to squishing than bacon or pickles.

Of course, I forgot to factor in the size of the toasty maker versus the size of the bread slice.

The bread slice was bigger.

Screw it, I said, I'm doing it anyway.

I spread on some basil puree, put on the cheese, and then attempted to spread on cherry preserves.

Except that the other wide of the bread had magarine, so it wouldn't stay firm to allow spreading.

I fumbled through anyway, and then just plopped some cherry preserves on the second sandwich.

And then put my friend in charge of watching the machine while I worked on the bacon-pickle grilled cheeses.

Not at all pretty. But very yummy.

Again, the sandwiches should have had more cheese. But everyone liked these. Yes, they are weird. Basil and cherry preserves. Doesn't mean they weren't tasty. There was no textural variance since I used puree instead of actual basil leaves, but using the toasty maker made them super crispy, which I think helped.

In some ways, I woudlnt' want to change anything about this. The cherry preserves weren't super sweet, which was good since this was a savory dish. On the other hand, aren't there recipes pairing basil with strawberries? Because I'm fairly certain I have some strawberry jam in the fridge...

Conclusion: Next time, use bread that fits the toasty maker.