Perfect Panini

Sandwiches are a great summertime meal for this exact reason and are even better grilled.  I have probably grilled a hundred of these things, so I thought I would share with all you lovely readers my method to making the perfect panini.

The great thing about the panini is that there are thousands of combinations you can come up with... prosciutto/ mozzarella/tomato, brie/pear/arugula, nutella/strawberry, I could go on and on.  Despite the combination you choose, I would venture to say that the most important ingredient of the panini is the bread.  I like to use any sort of focaccia that is thick enough to slice in half.  I usually get mine at Central Market or even Super Target has small round focaccia that are good for this purpose (shown).

Before you get started, preheat your panini press.  I use a Cuisinart Griddler and love it.  The top of it is on a floating hinge so it presses sandwiches flat no matter how thick they are without squishing all the goods out of the other end. And it also comes with smooth plates that you can use to make pancakes.

The most important step of the whole process is the inside out assembly.  First cut the focaccia in half and then flip inside out so the outside is now the inside.  This not only gives you a flatter surface on the outside to press, but it will also keep all the focaccia-y goodness from getting burned.  So turn it inside out, and then build it as you would any other sandwich.

After you have it built, drizzle/brush the outside of the sandwich with olive oil.  Or if you are lazy and want to make your life even easier, spray it on both sides with this wonderful little product.  Note: by no means is this fancy, but since you don't even really taste the olive oil, I don't think it's a bad shortcut to take.

Place on panini press and push down on lid to squish flat (note: these are all technical terms). The floating hinge is great, but I usually build the panini so it angles up to one side a little and then put that side towards the back so when it squishes, it moves the top half to be even with the bottom. (Shocking display of anal retentiveness from a Non-Type A such as myself, I know).

Grill for 5- 8 minutes to your desired crispiness, pull off, cut in half and enjoy*!  I am a firm believer that grilling makes any sandwich taste better and even with as much as I'm in my kitchen- the panini press is still one of my most heavily utilized appliances.

*Enjoy carefully depending on your ingredients: I don't know if I have dull teeth or if I am just inept at the skill of eating, but I was enjoying the pictured panini when I apparently didn't completely sever a tomato. I pulled the entire thing out of the sandwich with my teeth and it wrapped its piping-hot, fresh-off-the-grill, little self around my chin.  I started yelping and flung it off my face onto my lap where it burned my thigh. My roommate was observing all of this with quite a sense of amusement.  But seriously, that shit hurt.  It burned my face so badly that it peeled. Literally peeled. I took a picture to document my tomato assault/kitchen battle wound:

Ridiculous, I know.  

But anyways, happy eating and BE CAREFUL out there!

Adventures & Chicken Tequila Fettucini

As it is with most things in my life, the time I spend in my kitchen always tends to be adventurous. Whether it ends up with toasters on fire, marinara on the ceiling or just looooots of empty wine bottles, I always have fun!

Monday night was no exception. Jodi and I needed to get together to order the invites for a shower we are cohosting and I just so happened to have all the ingredients needed to make chicken tequila fettucini on-hand. Perfect!

This recipe was what made me fall in love with cooking. I was a city girl living in Lubbock, Texas (aka nowhere NEAR California Pizza Kitchen where the recipe was created) and this was one of my favorite dishes. The realization that CPK had a cookbook + some stubborn determination led me to tackle this somewhat complicated recipe as my first real culinary feat. Nine years and countless attempts later, I think I finally have this sucker down. It is pretty much as close to the original as you can get. Ironically enough, even though I am back in Dallas, I rarely venture out of my kitchen to go to CPK when I am craving it.

So Monday night I decided to bust this recipe out. I'm not sure if it was the year and a half of heavy use, the fact that I had all four burners going at once, or a faulty product, but midway through meal prep my vent hood started making these horrible noises and stinking. I mean stinking.

Jodi and I were honestly afraid it was going to blow up, but since it comes on automatically we had no way of turning it off. So we turned the gas off, took a few steps back, and pulled out the fire extinguisher (thanks mom and dad!). It wasn't getting better so Jones made the executive decision to locate the breaker. We scouted the house, found the breaker and turned the kitchen off. Only problem- the burners wouldn't relight and dinner wasn't finished. So being the intelligent, girl-scout-problem-solving-ish girls that we are... we decided to flip the breaker back on, relight the gas burners, and then flip it back off and see if we could finish dinner that way. Sure enough, it worked!

Dinner, check! House not burning down, check!

If I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times... Martha WHO???

To make a long story short: we survived, the house is still in tact, and dinner was delicious. Teensy tiny Jones even had seconds! (something I've rarely witnessed even though I'm told she rarely met a Budweiser she didn't like in college).

To get the deeeelicious Chicken Tequila Fettucini recipe click here.

And just for sh*ts and giggles since blog posts without pictures are like a fat kid without cake, a picture for you of Jones and I getting into trouble as usual (this time was in NYC if my memory serves me correctly):

Cheers!

Cheese Plate 101

One of my favorite chill-out-at-home dinners isn't something cooked at all, but a big glass of red wine with a home-made cheese plate. It is such a nice way to end a long work day. Cheese can be intimidating with all of the confusing names and types, but with anything, the best way to figure out what you like is just to buy some and try it!

I usually have a variety of cheeses in my fridge, but if I don't, I love heading to a nicer grocery store to pick up some of their "odds and ends". Many grocery stores with a good cheese selection will have a basket of sample cheeses.... basically smaller chunks of cheese that were leftover when they cut everything up. Unlike the bigger pieces, these may only be $1-4 and are the perfect size for a cheese plate. You can get a good variety for under $20 and if you don't like something, it's not as much of a waste as if you had spent $7.00 or so to buy the normal size piece. Just remember to save the wrappers so if you really like something you can make a note of it for next time. There is nothing worse than having to dig through the trash to see what something was.

A few pieces of cheese and the following, and you'll be in business:

• A great bottle of wine... or even a so-so bottle- good cheese always seems to make an average bottle taste so much better!
• A big, crusty loaf of bread
• Crackers
• Cornishens
• Olives
• Salami/Proscuitto
• A small dish of olive oil with fresh herbs, garlic, salt & pepper mixed in
• Grapes, pears, or apples
• Nuts
  
• A pretty cutting board to display everything on

Finally, some of my favorites:

• Piave Vecchio... I had this for the first time at a wine tasting in Napa and it is so good. Try it drizzled with a balsamic reduction.
• Tillamook anything... my parents got me hooked on this after they took a trip to Oregon and discovered the brand. They also make butter that I swear you can taste a distinct difference when you cook with it.
• Fresh, local cream cheese... this seems strange to put on a cheese plate, but fresh cream cheese tastes infinitely better than that overprocessed Philadelphia stuff. Try drizzling it with honey.
• Goat Cheese... any type. Mmmm, this is probably one of my favorites and tastes so good paired with this sundried tomato jam.
  

Light a few candles, throw on a good movie, fill that glass up and you've got a pret-ty good night!

Salut!

Contributor: NATALIE

Hi everyone, I'm Natalie! Also a 20-something Dallasite and I suppose I could very aptly be considered one of Jodi's "foodie friends". That word 'foodie' gets thrown around a lot, so out of curiosity I just looked it up and the definition is: a person having an avid interest in the latest food fads. Hmm... considering I currently have about 147 hours of food network tivo'd, I'm thinking I qualify.

Some of my culinary adventures include: a full on iron chef competition with my friend Trey (of which the winner is still debatable), setting a toaster on fire, daydreaming of becoming a food stylist, getting marinara sauce on my ceiling during one very tasty italian meal prep, stalking the food network building during a trip to NYC, and generally just loving life in the kitchen with a big glass of red wine in my hand.

I am a single girl about town and try to cook as often as possible, but it completely depends on my schedule for the week. My roommate Alex often reaps the benefits of my love of food. My personal adventures can be found on my normal blog, moose and lulu.

Favorite Cuisine: Toss-up between Mexican and Italian
Favorite Chef: Giada de Laurentiis
Favorite Utensil: my Global knives