Asparagus and Rice Soup; Sage-Grilled Cheese

I love cheese. I mean REAL cheese. The stuff that smells vaguely (or extremely, depending on the variety) funky and doesn't come in 8 oz. bricks, but in irregular hacked-up chunks. MMmmm. I'd never had fontina cheese before this weekend. I got the "Zuni Cafe Cookbook" from the library and it practically brought tears to my eyes, looking at all the decadent pictures and reading about how they add fresh figs to nearly EVERY course. I've got to move to California.

Anyhow, I got this recipe for grilled fontina cheese sandwiches with sage oil. The cheese was lovely! The sandwiches, pretty good - not enough sage flavor for me, as I like sage. Next time I'll fry the leaves and put them inside the sandwiches.

Sage/Fontina Grilled Cheese Sandwiches
1. heat 2-3 T. olive oil on med-low.
2. fry 20-30 fresh sage leaves (plus some black pepper) in the olive oil; 10 min. or so.
3. heat a skillet.
4. make grilled chese sandwiches (I would use good bread): brush the bread with the infused olive oil, then grill the sandwiches.

Zuni's version is more elegant, but also more "fiddly"; this is easier and acheives much the same delicious result.

The soup was pretty good too. Not AMAZING, but tasty and comforting. I might make a version, but next time I'll use bacon instead of pancetta. Pancetta was OK, but I wanted more flavor. Also will cut the asparagus into bigger pieces because...just because. Not bothering to post the recipe, it wasn't THAT great a soup.