13 PEI chefs compete to make the best grilled cheese sandwich—and create some tasty new takes on the old standby
We cannot be sure why or how it was that John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, came up with the idea of slapping a hunk of meat between two slices of bread back in the mid 18th century, though some do say it was so he could eat while he played at the gaming tables of London.
Nor has anyone, until now, written an ode to the Grilled Cheese Sandwich—one that might go (with apologies to Robert Burns):
Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o’ the sandwich-race!
Aboon them a’ ye tak your place
Peanut butter, jelly or jam,
Weel are wordy o’a grace
As lang’s my arm.
We can be a little more certain, however, that sliced bread and processed cheese did not come along until the 1920s. That is when the grilled cheese sandwich was invented in the US (although cooked bread and cheese combinations were known to exist on most continents, in one form or another).
Through the Depression years, the grilled cheese became a favoured nourishment of the poor and unemployed. Since that time, generations of North American children have been fed on that curious combination of white bread, mayonnaise and a slice of bland and almost tasteless processed cheese for noontime lunches and after-school snacks—and indeed still look upon it as a comfort food.
As a result, the grilled cheese sandwich has earned a certain plebeian nobility in its own right.
So it was that the organizers of PEI’s Fall Flavours, an annual culinary festival held in September, announced that in the midst of gourmet dinners concocted from elaborate recipes using home-grown oysters, clams, lobster and other elements of fine dining, an homage would be paid to the creative potential of the grilled cheese sandwich.
The call went out to PEI chefs to enter the Great Island Grilled Cheese Challenge, and 13 of them answered, ready to pit their personal interpretations of le fromage grillé against their compatriots, with $2,000, and let’s face it, a degree of prestige, at stake for the dish judged best.
Certain criteria were established. The sandwich could be gussied up with other edible elements, but must contain at least 60 per cent cheese, preferably cheese made on Prince Edward Island.
The entries were to be scored 50 per cent for taste; 25 per cent for presentation; and 25 per cent for originality. The total points awarded by the three judges would constitute each entrant’s score.
And so a huge tent went up on the grounds next to Cows Creamery at the entrance to Charlottetown, and on the morning of Sunday, September 23, the chefs assembled to prepare their entries, all of them created especially for the competition.
Heavy overnight rains threatened to turn the turf underfoot into a muddy mess, but neither the participants nor the hundreds of onlookers who were lined up outside the tent entrance were daunted.
Free food will sometimes do that, for besides the sample sandwiches being prepared for the judges, the entrants were obliged to stay at their cook stations all afternoon to prepare their creations for sampling by the multitudes—and a subsequent vote for the People’s Choice.
Which raises the questions: What is it about the grilled cheese sandwich that elevates this simple dish to status as favoured food amongst the common folk? And from whence derives the mystique that would bring about long lineups of people of all ages getting their feet wet on a September Sunday afternoon to watch other people make sandwiches?
Perhaps it begins with the essential simplicity of the grilled cheese. The truth is, it takes no great culinary skill to make one. Anyone can do it. It is, after all, pretty hard to mess up a dish that uses a couple of slices of bread, a little mayo and a slice or two of cheese in its most common presentation.
And everybody’s got a frying pan in which to do the grilling that will melt the cheese into the bread.
But from that simplicity comes curiosity as to what the imagination of the professional chefs could cook up.
As it turned out, there was more than a little imagination at work in the sandwiches served up by the 13 chefs and their helpers. There was, for instance, the entry of Nick Giles from The Inn At Bay Fortune, dubbed “The Redneck” in a hand-scrawled cardboard sign held up by a broken windshield wiper blade: a combination of smoked lamb ham, extra old cheddar and smoked cheddar on homemade corn bread.
The judges liked the flavour, but Nick lost points for lack of sufficient cheese in his combination.
Contrast that with “The Toasted Fox,” a sophisticated creation from Jane Crawford, of the Redwater Rustic Grille in Charlottetown, which did not involve participation by the common red fox, but rather Fox Hill Cheese from Nova Scotia—medium white cheddar, smoked Gouda and havarti on challah bread, with artisan orange marmalade and duck-infused butter, presented with jars of squash soup.
When the tasting was done, the winner was the 13th sandwich sampled by the judges, a tidy creation served up by 34-year-old chef Stephen Wilson from Mavor’s Restaurant at Confederation Centre of the Arts.
Chef Wilson says he played around with a combination of fall flavours, eventually coming up with an entry using pumpkin seed and cranberry bread with a filling of two- and three-year-old cheeses made in Summerside’s Amalgamated Dairies (ADL) facility. His sandwich also had a surprise element—a slice of fresh avocado infused with a browned butter squash purée, and cooked on a panini grill.
“It doesn’t look like it’s going to taste like that,” commented one judge, approvingly, as he marked his score sheet.
Wilson split the $2,000 prize money with his sous chef, Alan Paul.
Runner–up was chef Dave Mottershall’s team from Terre Rouge Bistro-Marché, while third place went to James Oja from The Big Orange Lunch Box, a mobile kitchen based in Charlottetown.
The People’s Choice Award, chosen by majority vote of the public, went to Andrew Smith from the Delta Prince Edward Hotel.