Monday, November 12, 2007

experimental panini night

another wedding gift i'm just getting around to unpacking is an awesome panini grill. if there's one thing i love it's a good sandwich, so i picked up some interesting ingredients from whole foods and got down to business.

the first panini was a combo of some of my favorite ingredients: sopressata, provolone, roasted tomatoes, and spicy mayo. the spicy mayo has been on my mind since the last time i had my favorite sushi at akai hana, the sweet potato roll. it contains sweet potato tempura, radish sprouts and the magical spicy mayo. i made mine by combining mayo and huy fong sriracha. i love it when you can easily replicate a restaurant ingredient you crave.



the second panini i made was a hawaiian panini, at the suggestion of my bff. other experiments with the hawaiian pizza flavor combo have been successful, so why not? the ingredients were: ham, sliced pineapple, mozzarella and a bit of garlic salt. i used rustic italian bread from whole foods and olive oil spread to facilitate the yummy crispy panini goodness.

*update: i think the panini maker is our new leftover consumption strategy. it's so easy to pull it out, assemble the sandwiches and be eating a warm meal in less than 15 minutes. that's my kind of weeknight dinner.
the husband made two paninis. the first consisting of leftover spaghetti, sopressata and provolone and the second made of sliced ny strip steak, provolone and spicy mayo.
my panini contained sliced chicken, artichoke hearts, spicy mayo and provolone. yummy!
i've had so many tasty breakfast wraps (north star cafe being among my favorite) i'd like to try to recreate some of my favorites and grill them on the panini press. the fun part about the grill i got is that you can set the top to rest at different heights so it won't totally flatten items unless you want it to.

2 comments:

SRH said...

I have never really "gotten" into the panini phenomenon. That isn't to say that I do not like paninis or scrumptiously grilled sandwiches, just that I haven't really gotten into them enough to get a panini press or a sandwich maker kind of contraption.

Love the blog and look forward to more restaurant reviews. My wife said that I should post a comment here after meeting you. Cheers.

heather said...

srh,
thanks for the comment and thanks for reading! your wife is lovely and truly did an amazing job facilitating the other night.
i didn't think i was ready to commit to another small appliance until i read the amazon review of the grill and found out people were using it for all sorts of things like reheating pizza, making pancakes, eggs, bacon etc. when i attempt to recreate the carrot cake pancakes i had in massachusetts (soon!) i'm going to cook them on the grill. i'll let you know how it goes.