Snow-day grilled cheese

Well, to quote the popular Christmas jingle, the weather outside is frightful. It’s March already, which means spring is almost here, but somehow there is a foot and a half of powdery snow blanketing the streets of Amman today. Not to say that I don’t love frolicking in the snow occasionally, but I definitely did not see this one coming.

Anyway..one of my favorite childhood memories of snow days – aside from all the snowman-making and makeshift sledding down the stairs of the garden on sheet trays – is roasting food on the embers of our fireplace. So today, I decided to do just that. It’s almost like a wintery version of a barbeque. Traditionally, we always used to roast cheese and chestnuts, but it could work with almost anything roast-able…sweet potato or marshmallows are also good candidates. Today it was cheese and sweet potato.

Sweet potato wedges roasting on our fireplace embers

The cheese we usually use for this is Akkawi cheese, a special white cheese made of cow’s milk that comes from the town of Akka in Palestine. It is similar to Halloumi cheese, but slightly saltier, creamier and stretchier, but Halloumi is certainly a great substitute. Simply place slices of cheese inside a grilling rack (I’m not sure if this is the proper technical name for it..see here for photo) and place on embers of the fire place. You can do the same with wedges of sweet potato, boiled for 5 minutes, brushed with olive oil and lightly salted before going on the embers. Alternatively, you can wrap the entire potato in tin foil and “bury” it inside the embers for 10-20 minutes (depending on size of potato and temperature of coals). Mmmm

I love the slightly charred and smokey flavor of cheese grilled on the embers of the fire place...slices of tomato and cucumber go so well with it, and help break the saltiness

In good health,

F

* Top photo credit – Associated Press via Daily Mail