These Spinach Artichoke Melts Are Where Dip Meets Grilled Cheese
Welcome back to Picky Eaters’ Club, where Smitten Kitchen’s Deb Perelman reveals what she actually cooks for her two kids.
When my first kid was born, I lived in fear of him being one of those toddlers who eats only boxed macaroni and cheese and chicken nuggets. I got it in my head that if I never served these foods, this would not happen. I am here to tell you this backfired spectacularly. In not wanting to get sucked into a tater-tot-and-PB&J vortex, I inadvertently ended up depriving myself of, well, all my favorite childhood foods, which I still enjoy in periodic doses. I tried to fix this by introducing him and his younger sister to cheese-sauced elbows and crispy bite-size chicken, which were soundly rejected. What kind of children have to be talked into eating chicken tenders?
Meanwhile, the “kid food” they love and request the most often—grilled cheese sandwiches—just happens to be the one I consider the least interesting: completely bland, with waxy insides and greasy outsides. So in our usual push-pull of family meals (me trying to nudge them to try new things that aren’t so scary-new that they flee the table in protest), I started creating open-face vegetable melts: toasts piled high with chopped cooked vegetables, topped with cheese, and broiled until bubbly. I’ve made these with garlicky broccoli and Parm and sautéed mushrooms with béchamel, but this spinach-artichoke-dip-inspired version is the only one we were still talking about a week later. They get their cheesy bread fix, while I can rest assured they eat some vegetables—all in a grilled cheese sandwich I actually like.
Get the recipe:
Spinach and Artichoke Melts
