Ultimate cheese toastie

This is a regular Sunday morning treat. It takes a little time to get right, but it’s worth the effort. It works best with a good quality cheddar and a cheap loaf!  I’ve experimented with different types of bread, from a sourdough to a nutty wholegrain, but thick slices of plain white just lets the flavour of the cheese sing. I have a large, non stick frying pan (about 12 inches / 32cm) so can do two of these at once.

Ingredients

For each toastie:

• 2 slices of bread
• butter
• 4½ ounces / 125g cheddar, grated

 Method

Butter both sides of your bread and make a sandwich with half of the cheese.  Place this into your frying pan on a low to medium-low light and heat for 5 minutes or until the bread is turning a lovely golden colour underneath.  Press down regularly with a fish slice and feel free to use the slice to have a peek underneath now and again to make sure the bread has coloured perfectly.  You don’t want it to burn but you want the cheese inside to melt.

Once the first side is done, turn over the toastie and do the other side, again for around 5 minutes.  Again, keep pressing down with your fish slice.

Once the second side is golden, lift the toast from the pan and place half of the remaining cheddar into the frying pan in a rough square where the toastie had been sitting and return the toastie on top of the cheese so that it coats the bottom side.  Don’t worry about being too accurate, as the cheese will melt and bubble until it covers the bread.

Let it cook for a further minute and then repeat, lifting the toastie, scattering the remainder of the cheese in the base of the pan and placing the non-cheesey side down on top of it for a minute.

Then serve.  Be careful, because the cheese inside will be very hot!

Tips

Any amounts are variable dependent upon the size of your bread and personal preferences. The amounts above are perfect for something bubbling with cheese and for bread the dimensions of a typical shop bought loaf.

Trivia

Wikipedia, as well as being a vital source of information on all important subjects, is also a fascinating source of trivia and minutiae. And this sometimes causes Wikipedia editors headaches as they grapple to find exactly the right names. And there is a Wikipedia debate on whether this should be called a cheese toasty, or a cheese toastie, or griddled cheese sandwich, and a variety of other possibilities. It seems people in the UK prefer this to be a cheese toasty or cheese toastie, as do the people in the north east of the State if Indiana. Part of the debate involves ensuring this type of cooking a cheese sandwich does not get confused with grilling, since this is frying or griddling. So the question remain: is a cheese toastie or toasty fried or grilled? And how should we differentiate between the two?