Posted by Adam Kuban, March 6, 2008 at 5:00 PM
Monday was a croque monsieur. Tuesday was a ham-and-brie-and-apple sandwich. Yesterday we went vegetarian with a goat cheese, artichoke, and tomato sandwich. Today we're back on the pork tip. Sorry. We're like junkies here at the Serious Eats office. The Catskills Cubano recipe called to us from the pages of this week's featured cookbook, Panini Express, and we couldn't resist. I'd been wanting to make a sandwich on ciabatta to see how it reacted in our new panini press, and this one was pretty darn simple, with no pre-press prep other than chopping some peppers. From there, it was a simple matter of layering on pork and cheese.
The book's author, Daniel Leader, named this a Catskills Cubano in honor of the region in which his bakery is located. It's a slight variation on a traditional Cuban sandwich, in that he calls for pickled jalapeños instead of regular pickles and he uses serrano ham or prosciutto instead of the the more common cured ham used. We riffed on this one a little more, subbing in Hatch green chiles.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, March 5, 2008 at 6:30 PM
Today's recipe from this week's featured cookbook, Panini Express, veers away from the ham of the last two days and heads straight to vegetarian territory with Artichoke, Oven-Roasted Tomato, and Goat Cheese Panini. Although tomatoes aren't in season as I write this, oven-roasting those you do find this time of year can help concentrate their flavor, sweetening them enough to play against the other flavors in this pressed sandwich.
But that's not what we did. We didn't have four or five hours to roast tomatoes today, so we subbed in jarred sun-dried tomatoes. We also didn't want to buy an entire bunch of basil just for one tablespoon's worth, so we subbed in some greens we had growing in the office AeroGarden.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, March 4, 2008 at 3:15 PM
Today's recipe from this week's featured cookbook, Panini Express is for a Ham, Brie, and Apple French Toast Panini. Apologies in advance for going for another ham-and-cheese variation. I was halfway through preparing this recipe when I realized I'd just done a similar sandwich yesterday. I couldn't resist this one, though, because I've been a fan of the ham-brie-apple combo since discovering it a few years ago. Add the French toast, I thought, and this recipe's a knockout.
As I found out, this recipe really is a knockout. You're essentially taking some fairly rich items—brioche, eggs, and brie—and combining them in a hot, pressed-sandwich package. It's a lot to take in, and I was pretty much "game over" a half a sandwich in. It might be the kind of sandwich you could cook up on a lazy weekend for brunch and serve as halves to family or friends with some fruit or a salad.
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Posted by Adam Kuban, March 3, 2008 at 1:45 PM
The Panini Express Neo-Classic Croque Monsieur recipe makes two hot, crisp ham-and-cheese sandwiches.
The first recipe out of the gate for this week's featured cookbook is what Panini Express authors Daniel Leader and Lauren Chattman call a Neo-Classic Croque Monsieur. It's "neo-classic" because, Leader says, it's a bit more rustic than the "dainty" versions typically served in France; it uses thick-cut ham, along with chopped cornichons and grainy mustard to "give it some heft."
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If you're just now tuning in, you should note that we're giving away five (5) copies of this book here on Serious Eats this week. More details on that here.
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