I know that Paninis were a fad at least a couple of years ago, but I didn’t go there back then.  Why?  Because, I watched some food show where they made one and I said to myself, “That is nothing more than a glorified grilled cheese sandwich.”  While I still believe that the panini is the sibling to the grilled cheese, I am there now!

I had been making my Paninis with two skillets, one to cook in and my heavy cast iron skillet to use as a weight.  For Christmas, wonderful hubby got me the Rachel Ray Sammi Skillet with the Cast iron weight to smoosh (you knew I would figure out a way to use the word “SMOOSH” for something didn’t you???) the sammis (short for “sammich” - that is how you say it, right?).  Now, my daughter wants me to make her panini to put in her lunch for school.  We use ham, turkey or chicken, with different kinds of cheese (her favorite and mine is Horseradish Cheddar!) and then we add sliced cucumbers, arugula, tomatoes, and roasted red peppers.

If you are going to use arugula, please, please, please, do not spend $4.00 on the teeny, tiny package in the herb section of the produce aisle.  I did this and then when I found I could actually buy it in a bunch, fresh by the lettuce and pay less than half, I was horrified!  If my grandfather or father-in-law were alive, they would classify arugula as some weed you must have picked up from the back yard.  But, it really does have a nice peppery bite that goes well with most every meat and cheese combination you can think of.

 Yes, yes, there is a vegetarian reading this say, “hey, what about me?”  You’ll be happy to know that today for lunch I only had veggies on mine, no meat at all.  Did I mention that I really did use Homemade Gourmet for this meal?  I put a different spread on each one of these.  What are the recipes for the spreads?  Hmmmm.  Well we are using the spread for a whole different reason and I don’t want to spoil the Spring Product Launch, so I will keep it a secret for now.

Just remember, after the launch, and you see some great spread recipes designed for something totally different, you can use them to create great paninis as well.

Happy Eating!

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 31st, 2008 at 2:04 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.