It’s National Grilled Cheese Month, and we have been happily delving into our collection of gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches.

The restaurant Primehouse New York has added another winner to our list: Cinnamon Raisin Grilled Cheese.

It’s fresh goat’s cheese, caramelized onions, bacon and warm fig jam on grilled raisin bread. Don’t you want to make one right now?

Caramelized onions is an easy—if time-consuming—delight to cook up, so consider doubling the recipe below.

Caramelization simply involves slow cooking sliced onions in butter or olive oil until they brown and release their natural sugars. The result: a sweet onion garnish for just about everything from eggs, sandwiches, burgers, and pizza to meats and fish (you can set the meat/fish on a bed of caramelized onions).

Enjoy carmelized onions on slices of baguette (or toasted baguette for bruschetta), turn it into an onion dip or an onion tart. Top mashed potatoes and baked potatoes. And eat them right out of the pot.

The recipe below makes two cups. You’ll like it so much, you might want to make a double (or triple) batch.

The cooked onions will keep for up to a week, refrigerated in an airtight container. You can use them in every meal of the day:

 
RECIPE: CARAMELIZED ONIONS

Ingredients For 2 Cups

Top: Caramelized onions atop Brie and baguette (photo by Paul Binet | IST). Bottom: You can caramelize any type of onion (photo by Lali Masriera | Wikipedia).

Preparation

1. PEEL the onions; cut in half. Slice lengthwise, cut side down.

2. ADD 5 teaspoons butter, olive oil, or a combination to a large sauté pan. Heat on medium high heat until the oil “shimmers.”

3. ADD the onion and stir to coat the slices with oil. Let cook for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

4. ADD the salt and the optional sugar. The sugar helps with the caramelization process, but if you’re cutting back on sugar you can leave it out.

5. COOK for 30-60 minutes, stirring every few minutes. The onions will stick to the pan as they brown. Scrape them up with a spatula before they burn. After 30 minutes, lower the flame. As the onions cook down, you may need to scrape more frequently. Add more butter or oil as necessary. Continue to cook and scrape until the onions are soft and a rich, brown color.

6. DEGLAZE the pan with balsamic vinegar. This will add even more complexity to a wonderful condiment.

The secret to easy chicken salad. Photo
courtesy Perdue.

Inspired by package of Perdue Short Cuts roasted chicken breast and a bag of Chinese fried noodles left over from take-out, we whipped up an easy Chinese chicken salad. We liked it so much, we plan to enjoy it weekly.

For a vegetarian salad, substitute grilled tofu for the chicken. If you don’t like fruit and nuts in your salad, leave them out. The flavors of the soy and sesame and the crunchy noodles are what makes this salad distinctive.

Chinese Chicken Salad Recipe

For a main course that serves 4 for lunch:

Dressing Ingredients
– 1/4 cup peanut oil (you can substitute olive oil)
– 3 tablespoons soy sauce
– 1 teaspoon sesame oil
– 1 teaspoon minced fresh ginger
– 1/8 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
– 2 cloves garlic, minced
– 3 green onions, thinly sliced

Preparation
1. Tear greens into bite-size pieces.
2. Whisk together dressing ingredients.
3. Dress salad. Top with fried noodles and serve.

NOTE: You can make your own fried noodles by cutting 4 wonton wrappers into 1/2″ strips and deep-frying.

• Click here for more salad recipes.

But for a special occasion, consider springing for the classy email invitations from Paperless Post.

These online invitations look just like custom-engraved invitations from the most expensive stationer. But they’re HTML instead of paper.

Just click and your invitation rises out of the envelope. We’ve been online for 15+ years, yet it’s still magical.

Choose from invitation designs that range from classic to cool. Then choose your envelope liner: alligator pattern, dots, florals, geometric patterns, stripes and zebra stripes, plus designs like mortarboards for graduation parties and horseshoes for Kentucky Derby parties. There are photo cards as well, to showcase those adorable kids or the bark mitzvah honoree.

And of course, your guests simply click to RSVP.

It’s an email invite, custom-designed by you.
Photo courtesy Paperless Post,

The price is right: For example, you can email 300 invitations for $15.00 and 1,000 for $50.00. And the first 25 invitations are free, so there’s no reason not to try it! Create an account and start designing!

Almost too pretty to eat! Photo by Corey
Lugg | THE NIBBLE.

Laurent Vals uses the excellent Guittard chocolate as the base couverture for his creations. One bite will convince you that all of the other ingredients he employs are first-rate as well.

A “taste” of the flavors: caramel infused with Port and vanilla in dark chocolate, strawberry and orange blossom in white chocolate and candied orange confit and caramel ganache in milk chocolate.

• THE PRIZE: One winner will enjoy a 25-piece box of colorful chocolates from Laurent Vals. Each of these striking chocolates has a different story to tell and a different flavor combination to delight those who are lucky enough to get a bite. Approximate Retail Value: $40.00.

• To Enter This Gourmet Giveaway: Go to the box at the bottom of our Gourmet Chocolate Section and enter your email address for the prize drawing. This contest closes on Monday, April 19th at noon, Eastern Time. Good luck!
• Learn more about Laurent Vals at LaurentValsChocolates.com.

Even if you are lactose intolerant, you can enjoy cheese—it just needs to be aged cheese.

In the cheese-making process, the liquid whey, which contains most of the lactose, is separated from the curd (the solids in the milk—they look like large-curd cottage cheese). Yet there is still enough lactose left in the curd to cause stomach discomfort to lactose-intolerant people.

But as cheeses age, the aging process breaks down the remaining lactose into simple sugars that even lactose-sensitive stomachs can digest. Aged cheeses like Cheddar, Colby, Jack, Parmesan and Swiss contain zero grams of lactose.

Alas, this doesn’t help with a bagel and cream cheese, a runny Brie or melting cheeses like mozzarella atop pizza; but you can enjoy a slice of aged Cheddar on your burger and grated Parmesan on your pasta. You can even make a grilled cheese sandwich.

Lactose intolerant? Dig in! Photo courtesy
iGourmet.

As always, address questions to your healthcare provider.

Find more information about cheese in our Cheese Section.