Sloppy Jessica | “Brooklyn Nine-Nine”

by Blake Stilwell

I have never been more excited about carbohydrates as I am at this moment. While watching my favorite new show of the 2013 Fall season, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, I came across the Sloppy Jessica, something I had never before heard of but completely support.

This bit of sandwich glory appeared after Sergeant Jeffords (Terry Crews), Detective Santiago (Melissa Fumero), and office secretary Gina Linetti (Chelsea Peretti), start a horrible crash diet – whose lunches include a single carrot and a snack of a razor-thin slice of cantaloupe – and Gina caves immediately. As the other two sit down to lunch, Gina brings in the Sloppy Jessica, described as “mac-and-cheese-chili pizza on a bun.”

The important thing for this younger sister of the Sloppy Joe is to determine how to best interpret “mac-and-cheese-chili pizza on a bun.” Should we make a whole pizza and stuff it onto a bun? Or make a pizza of the bun and cover it with Mac n’ Cheese and then Chili? Or just Chili Mac? The possibilities are endless! But, based on how the sandwich itself looks onscreen (I know it’s just a sitcom, but whatever) it looks like the Mozzarella is on the bottom and the rest of the bun is filled with delicious chili and Mac n’ Cheese. So it’s a sandwich in three parts! Being from Southern Ohio, I have a distinct kind of Chili preference, so I don’t often make Chili from scratch (I do have a recipe, but that’s a secret), but there are a number of awesome Chili recipes out there. While they wouldn’t be using Cincinnati Chili in Brooklyn (that’s found in Manhattan), I used it here because I want this to be as awesome as possible.

I think it would be better to make the two separately and mix them, as I often find chili mac to be really dry and half the fun of the two dishes when cooked separately. Feel free to make Chili Mac  from another recipe if that’s your preference!

Ingredients:
• Kraft Cheese and Macaroni
• Chili
• Mozzarella Cheese
• Hoagie Buns

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350°F. Open the bun and remove some of the interior. Then add a layer of mozzarella cheese thick enough to create a thick melted layer.

Cook Kraft Macaroni and Cheese as per instructions on the box (don’t mess with a classic).

Prepare chili as instructed by your personal tastes and/or laboriously developed chili recipe)

Toast sub roll and melt the cheese into the bun

Mix Chili and Mac n’ Cheese (if necessary)

Add Chili & Mac Mixture to Melted Cheese Bun

My Sloppy J.

 

Enjoy for Hours, Lament for Days

 

My Sloppy J.

 

Grilled Charlie | “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia”

by Blake Stilwell

April is closing fast. This means we have the May flowers to look forward to, but it also means we have to say goodbye to a celebration that foodies around the country know very well: Grilled Cheese Month. GCM is a celebration of a simple staple, the original fast food. It sticks to your ribs and “warms your inners” (as my mama used to say) on a cold day’s lunchtime. Personally, one of my favorite meals is a grilled cheese with tomato soup. Though I am a professed classicist, preferring American on white to Katrina‘s throw anything on a cheese sandwich mentality (not to mention being lactose intolerant), I will throw down on a Gruyère and Caramelized Onion Grilled Cheese from time to time… It’s just that good.

In recognition of the glory of the sandwich that won the war, the As Eaten recipe this week is a snack sammy from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the Grilled Charlie. In episode two of season two, The Gang Goes Jihad, Charlie (Charlie Day) has to correct Frank (Danny DeVito) as he tries to make a Grilled Charlie on their apartment’s hotplate. I wanted to upload  a clip here, but FOX is very stingy with its content on YouTube, so instead of my 25 second clip, you can watch the entire episode online for free here.

Protect what’s yours.

In the episode, Charlie says the ingredients, the order, and the recipe: Peanut butter outside. Chocolate inside. Butter inside. Cheese outside. Which is simple enough, but putting it together into a cohesive sandwich is the trickier part.

Ingredients:

– 2 slices of store-bought white bread
– 1 slice of american cheese
– chocolate syrup
– peanut butter
– actual butter… considering Charlie’s socio-economic status, it’s much more likely his “butter” is actually margarine.

It sounds awkward to put together. It kinda is. The order of operations takes patience and finesse. Especially patience, which, if you can’t make a grilled cheese without burning it, is the number one reason you can’t: you have no patience (No grilled cheese was ever successfully made with the fire up all the way.  I don’t care what you tell yourself, salvageable is not successful).

The first step is to set yourself up for success. Set the fire to medium, prep your breads. Remember the order. Peanut butter goes on the outside, so save it for last.

Chocolate Inside, Butter Inside

To preserve the integrity of the sandwich and the bread, I’m telling you to grill the butter side out first, but only until its a nice golden brown, with the cheese on the bread. This will get the cheese ready for its turn on the outside (and add a little butter to the pan) and help the bread hold the soggy chocolate. Once its flipped, add the bread with the chocolate sauce. Don’t add the peanut butter til last! And not for a minute or so, either. Give the cheese time to get grilled, otherwise it’ll stick to the pan even with the butter.

The cheese can be toasty too. A quick flip will give this effect.

Once everything else is in place add the peanut butter. It might be good to grill… toasted peanut butter is tasty, but Charlie probably meant the peanut butter to be more of a topping. Warning: this sandwich is more than the store-bought bread can handle. It falls apart very easily.

It also probably contains a thousand calories per bite.

This wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be. It was a flavor explosion, that’s for sure. With a little reworking, no chocolate syrup, all ingredients inside, it might have potential… but it just wouldn’t be a Grilled Charlie, would it? This meal, however, is an excellent preparatory meal for a rousing game of Chardee MacDennis.

Homer Simpson’s Patented Space Age Out of This World Moon Waffle | “The Simpsons”

I am a huge fan of liquid smoke now. I never tasted it before making these waffles, but I really am now. I know, I know, I’m getting ahead of myself, I just don’t want anyone to be turned off when they read the ingredients list. We at As Eaten are aware that not every food idea on television is a good idea.

Homer Isn’t Wrong About This One.

This is from the fourth season of The Simpsons, where homer decides to skip church one cold winter Sunday. The waffle becomes an integral part of that day (and Homer’s subsequent decision to leave the church). I don’t know that these are so good they’ll make people give up religion and become hedonists, but it might make hedonists want to add this recipe to their own Sunday morning ritual.

The ingredients are easy enough to find, though the liquid smoke may require a trip to a larger supermarket. For waffle batter, I used “Jiffy” Mix, which is a “just add water batter,” but if you find yourself without the instant batter, you can make waffle batter with:

– 2 cups Jiffy Mix
– 1 1/4 cups of 2% milk
– 2 med eggs
– 2 tbsp melted margarine

Blend well. If you have the instant kind, follow the recipe on the package.

For Homer’s Patented Space Age Out of This World Moon Waffles, you will also need:

– 5-6 Caramel Squares, easily obtainable around Halloween, but Kraft makes and sells them year round. This is if you’re a traditionalist. If you just want the caramel flavor, you can use caramel syrup, with negligible loss of flavor.
– 2 Tbsp Liquid Smoke

I am aware this is a lot of liquid smoke in proportion to the two cups (or so) of batter. But I do try to stay as true to the recipe as possible and if you watch the clip below, you’ll see Homer uses a LOT of liquid smoke. It is a lot. But they’re Homer’s waffles, after all, so… when in Springfield…

While I made a point to identify myself as a traditionalist, for the most part I stand by that. But the caramel squares are a bit of a wild card here. If you opted for the caramel sauce, your life just got a lot easier. If you got the candy, you can crack open the squares and throw them on the batter as homer did, but I didn’t do that because I borrowed Katrina’s waffle iron (and that would play hell during cleanup).  They can also be arranged evenly through out the batter, though I warn you the insides of the candies will not even get warm before the waffle burns. Alternatively, you could slice the caramels thinner and then arrange them (a much better plan). Or you can do what I did and melt the caramels first in a double boiler and then add them to the batter.

If you go this route, be sure to add it to the batter that is already on the waffle iron, as the caramel congeals quickly and will not mix into the batter.

No matter what, unless you use caramel sauce, you’re going to have pockets or clumps of sweet caramel. No one is going to complain about that.

Don’t forget to get some of that waffle runoff.

At the end of the clip, Homer wraps it in a whole stick of butter and eats it like that. That is just a bridge too far, even for me. I can’t do that. I physically can’t do that. The thought of biting into a stick of butter or margarine makes me queasy. I opted instead to use a normal, tolerable amount of butter. I don’t recommend syrup because the waffle itself is pretty sweet and tiptoes my sickly-sweet threshold.  You may have a higher tolerance than I do. My brother always did (he is the inventor of the Ice Cream Sundae Eclair Doughnut), so I might be kind of a sugar wuss. So try it how you like it. You might even like an entire stick of butter with it.

Don’t take MY word for it.

One final caveat: With cheaper waffle irons, there is going to be uneven heat distribution. With normal waffles, this is no big deal. When dealing with the caramels, you may want to avoid that spot as the caramel will burn long before your batter is crispy if the hotspots are too high. My waffles were noticeably darker in the middle rim, as is usually the case with the smaller Cuisinart brand irons.

They even look pretty good.

This recipe makes three to four normal size waffles, give or take the amount of butter you need to accompany them. Above is an undoctored photo… they can turn out very well: crispy and golden brown, sweet and smokey.

And don’t throw away that liquid smoke. It’s also great in everything. Ever.