Day 2 of the Great Gourmand Vacation Week

Day 2 (Monday): Homemade Jalepeno Cheese Bread sandwiches

The Great Gourmand Vacation Week continued on Monday with a recreation of one of my all-time favorite sandwiches: a steak melt on jalepeno cheese bread. I've sung songs about the valiant JCB in the past, and for good reason--the combination of creamy cheddar and spicy chile does wonders to any filling you dare insert between the slices.

Monday's JCB melt was inspired by leftover tri-tip, and took a deliciously local turn. Our overstuffed sandwiches not only featured leftover Brandt Beef tri-tip, they were crafted on Bread on Market jalepeno cheese mini-baguettes, and topped with caramelized Schaner Farms onions, and a splash of diced Valdavia Farms arugula for good measure. If only I had some Winchester Gouda on hand, the sandwich would seriously have been the best flavor explosion to come out of one San Diego kitchen since it started playing host to locally sourced meals about a year ago. (As it was, I had a huge block of Tillamook in my fridge, and being on "vacation" and all, I settled for the convenient rather than the trek to a Hillcrest cheese shop).

The meal even included San Diego hot sauce--I had the pleasure of sampling an array of hot sauces from Carlsbad company Scorpion Bay. When GGVW (Great Gourmand Vacation Week) ends and I go back to my regular routine, I intend to experiment more with these sauces--their tantalizing flavors (avocado, chocolate, taco-shop) deserve front-and-center placement in a dish. For the time being, I was content to dash a few drops of each on different bites of my sandwich, as any hot sauce that doesn't hold up to a steak sandwich is no hot sauce in my mind. (They all passed).

Suffice it to say, San Diego puts forth a damn good cheese steak. Why has it taken me so long to come to this realization? Seriously, with the triumvirate of Bandt beef, Bread on Market JCB baguette, and (I imagine) Winchester Gouda, Philly's got nothing on us. And did I mention how well a JCB cheese steak goes with a pint of Ballast Point Dorado? It's like the two were made to go hand in hand. (The brewery has 22-oz. bottles if you're wondering where to get some).


Coming up next: the Great Gourmand Vacation Week Road Trip!