Goat Cheese, Roasted Garlic & Olive Tapenade Grilled Sandwich Recipe

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Goat Cheese, Roasted Garlic & Olive Tapenade Grilled Sandwich Recipe


  • Author: Toastie Lab
  • Prep Time: 70
  • Cook Time: 5
  • Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes
  • Yield: 2 1x

Description

It’s raining flavors today in the Toastie LAB! Danggg, this creamy goat cheese with roasted garlic and a tangy tapenade is heartening… I don’t care anymore if it rains all day, I’m all set with this delicious toastie + book + rain dropping on my window!


Scale

Ingredients

  • Four slices of (whole-grain, nutty & seedy) brown bread
  • One head of garlic (roasted)
  • 50 grams of tapenade or olive relish
  • 60 grams of soft goat cheese
  • Butter (optional)

Instructions

Preparation (60 minutes before)

  1. Cut off the top of a whole head of garlic. Sprinkle some olive oil on the garlic, add some salt and lemon juice (optional).
    Wrap it in aluminium foil. 
  2. Roast the garlic 50-60 minutes at 350° Fahrenheit (175° Celsius)
  3. Let cool down.
  4. Take the goat cheese out of the fridge and let soften
  5. Prepare olive relish if not store-bought

Toastie Recipe: 

  1. Preheat grill (or toastie iron).
  2. Butter the outsides of the bread (optional)
  3. Spread goat cheese on one side (thickly)
  4. Make sure garlic has cooled down and squeeze garlic onto goat cheese.
  5. Spread out more evenly if necessary.
  6. Spread tapenade or relish (thickly). 
  7. Assemble toastie. 
  8. Grill for 3-5 minutes or when cheese starts to soften.
  9. Serve with ketchup or soup.

Notes

  • Sauce Tip: Ketchup
  • Bread Tip: dark, whole grain with nuts and seeds or neutral, plain white
  • Category: Homemade
  • Method: Grilled Sandwich
  • Cuisine: Toasted Sandwiches

Keywords: Grilled Sandwich, Toasted Sandwich, Toastie, Roasted Garlic, Goat Cheese, Olives, Tapenade, Comfort Food, Snack, Lunch, Brunch

It’s raining flavors today in the Toastie LAB! Danggg, this creamy goat cheese with roasted garlic and a tangy tapenade is heartening… I don’t care anymore if it rains all day, I’m all set with this delicious toastie + book + rain dropping on my window!

Getting Ready for Fall

I don’t know why, but these flavors just sum up fall for me: tapenade, goat cheese and roasted garlic. And then that warming feeling of eating a toasted sandwich straight from the iron… Can it get any better!? Jack and I ended up serving this toastie with a small bowl of soup for the complete rainy day feeling! It was delicious! 

Goat Cheese 

Goat cheese is such a fantastic type of cheese for toasties. Just like outside a toastie, goat cheese is super versatile, as it can be used for savory sandwiches or sugar sweet desserts! And everything in between (amuses, starters, salads, soups, pasta dishes…). Needless to say, goat cheese is a great foundation for a delicious toastie. 

You can go two ways with goat cheese, either the soft “round” goat cheese that often comes in a wrapper, or the hard goat cheese that can be or is cut into slices. And then there is like another hundred types of goat cheese, but we’re not thinking about those today! (Check out Wikipedia’s full list if you are!)

Today, we’re going for the soft one because it will blend in better with the garlic. While I am convinced that slices of goat’s cheese will also bring you the joy and warmth of this hearty toastie, I recommend the soft one if you are in the position of choosing. 

Check out the YouTube video… it’s yummy!

Preparation Is Everything

You might need to get a bit of a heads start for this toasted sandwich. There are two things that will need to be done before you can get started: 

  • You’ll need to take cheese out of the fridge about one hour before starting. 
  • Roasted garlic takes about one hour in the oven 
  • Roasted garlic needs cooling down!

Pro Tip #1 Make sure that you let the cheese get soft before you use it! 

Pro Tip #2 Make sure you let the garlic cool down before using it!

More On That Roasted Garlic

Roasted garlic is deliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiicious! Jack and I are HUGE fans of garlic and I don’t think there’s ever a meal where we don’t use it. I honestly don’t think we eat enough roasted garlic, though. But yeah, WE LOVE GARLIC!

And… For a reason: there are A LOT of health benefits to eating garlic! Check out this Healthline article to read more about it! 

Roasted garlic is super easy to make, although it is a bit time consuming. The easy way is to do it, is by literally just cutting off the top of a whole head of garlic, wrapping ‘r up in aluminum foil and putting her in the oven for 50-60 minutes at 350° Fahrenheit (175° Celsius). 

If you’re feeling more adventurous, you could add some olive oil, salt, lime juice and any other herb you feel like adding! 

For more options and a more detailed guide on how to roast garlic (including a few options to avoid using aluminum!), I recommend reading Tori Avey’s blog, where you can find five different methods for roasting garlic at the bottom of the article!

Olive Tapenade or Olive Relish

Key ingredient for this grilled Goat cheese sandwich is to add a lovely amount of olive tapenade or relish. The flavors of either will be somewhat similar, and you could either opt for a home-made relish or a store-bought tapenade, hack, you could even go for a mix of fresh olives! 

It’s up to you!

My recommendation is to make sure that you include a combination of green and kalamata olives and sundried tomatoes, flavored with some lemon juice, garlic and/or capers. 

My organic supermarket has a delicious freshly prepared “tricolore tapenade”, that includes green olives, kalamata olives, sundried tomatoes (hey three colors!), with garlic and lemon juice. They’re finely cut, but it’s definitely not a paste, which is just perfect to me! 

Depending on whether you like your tapenade thicker or thinner, you could opt for making it yourself, or just using chopped olives with some sprinkled lemon juice (and add some extra of that roasted garlic!) 🙂

The difference between relish and tapenade is that relish can be a pit more tangy or sour, depending on how long you let it sit to “pickle”. Check out this Olive Relish Recipe from Better Homes & Gardens if you feel like making your own! 

Breaking Bread

You can go two ways with this grilled cheese; either a white bread with a neutral flavor, or a darrrrrk bread with contrasting color and perhaps some crunchy nuts and seeds additionally. 

Jack and I opted for the second choice. First of all, because we just love our dark bread and the one we found is chock full nuts and seeds and other good stuff. On top of that, dark bread just feels more fall-like for some reason. Or perhaps its just because I feel like I need to start feeding my defenses with this rainy weather all day… 

One way or another, we chose the dark bread, but you could really use any kind of bread for this toastie. 

Just remember that thicker bread might require using a grill instead of a classic toastie maker! 

On the Sidenote

While we normally recommend ketchup and nothing but ketchup with any given toasted sandwich, today I might actually make another recommendation: this toastie is great with a little bowl or glass of soup!

We ate our toastie with a Moroccan Chickpea soup, but I was originally thinking about a zucchini or tomato soup. One way or another, soup + toastie is a delicious combination for cold, rainy days!

And yes, you can still eat ketchup with this toastie 🙂 The flavors will actually complement the goat cheese and the relish and the garlic perfectly well! 

Meet the Team 

We couldn’t have prepared this toastie without the loving support of our fabulous GRILL! I think I initially wanted to use the toastie maker, but luckily Jack reminded me that the bread would be too thick and might just squeeze out all the tasty toastie goodies. So, we decided to stick to our grill instead. And yay, everything managed to stay inside the toastie! 🙂

The grill is our more preferred option when it comes to thicker toasties, although this toastie is actually not all that thick! So, depending on the bread, you could probably very well use a toastie maker! 

Check out our Recommended Tools page for our most updated recommendations!

Ketchup

I don’t really need to vouch for this one, do I? Toastie + Ketchup = Deliciousness!

YouTube

Want to see some real experiments take place? Go to our Toastie Lab YouTube Channel and see what else you can do with a toastie maker! 

And also go there to hit like and subscribe to our channel and you’ll be a toastie masterchef in no time!

Toastie Lab

Toastie Lab is the collective effort of Jack and Eveline. We love making, experimenting with, and eating toasted sandwiches.

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