Melt-y Grilled Cheese – with a Twist – for Spring

There's nothing better than a gooey grilled cheese sandwich. But now that it's warming up, you're probably craving less comfort food -- and something that tastes a little lighter for spring.

Adam Schneider and Vanessa Palazio, co-owners of Little Muenster in Manhattan and Brooklyn, share their sandwich recipe with a twist (gruyere cheese! pickled onions!) with Yahoo! Shine.

The dish is "interactive and easy for even kids to do," Schneider tells Shine. (He and Palazio will be whipping up thousands over the weekend at Brooklyn's second annual Great GoogaMooga food and music festival, which attracted 40,000 people last year. Over Friday to Sunday, the festival, held in sprawling Prospect Park, will feature food from 85 New York restaurants, hundreds of specially curated wines, beers, and cocktails, and performances by bands like The Darkness, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and The Flaming Lips.)

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The best thing: "In a half hour, you have a really good tasting grilled cheese." (The bulk of that time is spent caramelizing your onions, which doesn't take too much attention.)

The Little Muenster owners recommend a few must-haves for your sandwich.

"Choose the right bread. It really needs to be a little on the thicker side so you get that crunchiness once you bite in, and a little bit of texture," says Palazio. Their recipe calls for peasant bread, but anything hardy will do.

Schneider also suggests using sliced cheese instead of grated. "When you slice one nice, cohesive piece, it melts perfectly and uniformly," he tells Shine. It also doesn't make a mess when the sandwich is flipped in the pan.

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Once you're done, "it's like having a salad in a sandwich," says Schneider. "We love to use gruyere in our sandwiches. It's a great melting cheese, it has a nice, nutty flavor. You can use it in warmer weather. By adding veggies, it really translates into a spring-summer sandwich."

Below, their recipe, courtesy of Little Muenster:

Grilled cheese sandwiches with gruyere or muenster, served with pickled caramelized onions and arugula
Makes one sandwich

2 pieces of rustic peasant bread
3 oz Gruyere or similar style Swiss cheese, sliced
1 onion, sliced
1/2 oz fresh arugula
1 teaspoon butter
2 tablespoon red vinegar
1 teaspoon of sugar

Coat a heavy bottom pot with olive oil on medium heat. Add onions, a pinch of salt, and slowly start to caramelize. When they have started to turn a nice medium brown and are soft add, 2 tablespoon red vinegar and a teaspoon of sugar. Simmer the onions with pickling solution until the liquid is evaporated.

Assemble the sandwich.

Butter the bread, add cheese to both sides, add 1 oz. onions and arugula in between the cheese.

Grill in a pan on medium high heat until cheese is melted and crust is golden brown.

Give a diagonal cut and serve.


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