I feel like with all the "food in your room", "grab and go" questions it's time for me break out my "Beach and Yacht Club, In Room Recipes Cookbook ©".
I'm still looking (in vain) for disk shaped hot dogs that can be cooked in a pod coffee maker, so that recipe didn't make the book (Available on "Vanity" press) BUT my Ironin' Board Grilled Cheese won an award from the prestigious "Flames Beard" Society for Hotel Cuisine.
You'll need a loaf of white bread, some Velveeta cheese, (you can substitute limberger or other european fancy cheeses), some bologna or pressed ham (pressed at the factory, not in the room) and some parsley or other greenery from Flower and Garden to gussie things up.
Add some tin foil and butter and you've got the fixins for a feast!
Assemble the sandwich with your ingredients and butter the OUTSIDE of the bread (if your cholesterol is too low feel free to butter the inside of the bread too.)
Warm up the iron to medium high and place on the top of the sandwich that is wrapped in foil. Keep peepin' to see when the bread gets warm and starts to melt and brown things. Flip your sandwich over and repeat the cooking on the other side.
When the sandwich is sufficiently toasty, cut the bread on a diagonal into 4 triangles and sprinkle with the local greenery. If you want to get really fancy, cut the crusts off and take lots of pictures for your twittergram.
Many people have written to me inquiring how I conquered this culinary masterpiece. Ok, so maybe not that many people. I will tell you that while I was in college, many leisure hours were spent experimenting, sometimes with food, to come up with this technique.
I'd be remiss if I led you to believe that this was an easy procedure. Many failures were had prior to my triumph. For instance there were the sous vide experiments in the hot tub that turned out to be not so hot. Who could have predicted that sandwiches in zip lock bags, floating around in the jacuzzi, were a no no , especially when they had to be in there for hours to get the cheese to melt. You'd think the Lifeguards would be amenable to saving a snack for their break time, but NOOooooOO!
Then there was the mushroom fiasco. Do not under any circumstances use mushrooms that your friends who follow the Grateful Dead give you. It will not end well... trust me.
Right now I'm working on something I call the "Meatza". You take a bunch of pepperoni, some mozzarella cheese, and ragu sauce and you smother it on some of that white bread, after all, you had to buy a whole loaf, what are you gonna do with the rest, feed it to those seagulls at the Nemo ride?
Anyway, you wrap the buttered mess in tin foil and put that iron to work. When this one is done it's ugly looking so don't make it on a first date. Also, why is a first date in a hotel room with you?
Be careful and don't use too much sauce, otherwise it looks like a homicide took place on your ironing board.
That sandwich is not going to win any Michelin Stars so it's back to the ironing board for me. The good thing about being an in room cooking gourmet is that there are so many directions I can take my ironing board in. Will I choose tuna and go with a tuna melt or will peanut butter and jelly be the way to go? An ironing board cheese steak seems beyond the reach of my iron but one can dream...
So, the next time you are hungry for a tasty snack, skip the Marketplace and let your iron do all the cooking. After all, nobody irons when they're on vacation so get busy!
~NM