Our first creation introducing our Mascarpone Pesto, which turned out to be a brilliant spread for sandwiches and even pizzas. This is one of our leftover turkey sandwiches from Thanksgiving, a fresh creation with a little crunch from the cucumber, and a lot of taste from the pesto.
“Pizza!” you may be saying with increduility as you wonder at the seeming incongruity of providing pizza recipes on a sandwich blog. Well, please bear with us while we provide this rather plausible and very convincing rationale.
In Scandinavia, there is a long tradition of open-faced sandwiches (or smørrebrød as they are called in Denmark). Open-faced sandwiches are essentially bread, with layered toppings. So it’s not much of a stretch to call a pizza, a sandwich. After all, it is just that: bread with layered toppings. For the pizza purists among the readers, this might seem like too much of a stretch, but we say that pizza by any other name is still an open faced sandwich. Convinced yet?
Continue reading Smoked Salmon Pizza – The Way My Mother Never Made It
A simple appetizer, but not cheap due to the tuna. However, well worth the money if you like us love seared tuna. We got a few nice steaks at Costco and decided to make Tuna Sandwiches, and appetizers from the leftovers. This is one of them, and it belong in the very tasty food group 🙂
The day before we made this sandwich, Wendie cooked an amazing pork tenderloin based on an Alton Brown recipe. It is perhaps the best tenderloin I’ve ever had. Having also recently visited a Chinese grocery store, we had a few king mushrooms in our refrigerator, so we thought they would go brilliantly with the pork. We chose the pecorino romano cheese to add a little saltiness, the vinaigrette dressing to make it a bit more moist. And so, one thing led to another, and we ended up with this fantastic sandwich. It’s messy to eat, but it really brings out the best in the leftover pork. Enjoy.
This is one of the three appetizers we plan on serving for Thanksgiving. The secret is to use freshly-made ingredients, and so we made our own pesto and used Super Sweet 100 tomatoes from our backyard garden. We used goat cheese, which blends very nicely with the tomato and pesto. For bread, we stuck to a baguette.
Continue reading Appetizer: Goat Cheese and Pesto Bruschetta with Cherry Tomatoes
During a recent weekend getaway to San Francisco, we ran into the very nice Cowgirl Creamery, which is an actual real cheese shop. These are a rarity these days, as the business of cheese has been largely delegated to supermarkets, and somehow the rather bland cheddar has been the victim of a marketing blitz turning it in to the star of California cheeses. Not that we don’t enjoy a good cheddar, but there are soooo many more fantastic cheeses that the general populous are missing out on. At the Cowgirl Creamery, we found the Red Hawk, “… a triple-cream, washed-rind, fully-flavored cheese made from organic cow’s milk from the Straus Family Dairy. Aged six weeks and washed with a brine solution that promotes the growth of a bacteria that tints the rind a sunset red-orange…” Indeed, this little gem is very tasty, and forms the base of the taste experience with this simple sandwich. A warm gently toasted baguette, Tuscan bean paste, Red Hawk and Genoa salami. That’s it.
Continue reading Italian Genoa Salami Sandwich with Red Hawk Cheese and Tuscan Bean Paste
We recently discovered a great food store in Little Italy in San Diego. It should be noted that Little Italy is very aptly named, since it’s basically just one street. You blink, you miss it. If you are of Italian descent, please move to San Diego so we can add a couple more streets. In Little Italy, we found Assenti’s Pasta, a wonderful little delicatessen shop where you can get fresh pasta of all shapes and forms. Arriving there at 5:59pm we were simply happy traffic had not delayed us more, and positively exuberant that Assenti let us in. Yes, we had a rushed 5 minute shopping spree, but it was great. Here we found muffaletta and tuscan bean spread as well as fresh pasta (which weren’t really for sandwiches, although Anders tried and failed).
This sandwich is our first using the muffaletta, is was delicious. It fell a bit apart due to the iceberg lettuce, which became very slippery with the oil from the muffaletta and the melted cheese. We had to add toothpicks to hold it all together long enough to take pictures.
About two weeks ago I promised Anders that I would make him the perfect steak sandwich. His raised disbelieving eyebrows might have been because I am frankly not a fan of beef. I mean, I don’t get it – what is the fascination? Still, a promise is a promise so I determined that this would be the day.
I left work with the plan in mind: rush to Trader Joe’s to buy ciabatta bread, watercress and the requisite rib-eye steak and get home and get down to business. Alas, the steaks at Trader Joes were disappointingly thin – a setback that resulted in a trip to two more supermarkets before I found the perfect steak. Two hours later, I finally made it home, tired and with some of the wind gone from my sail. Still, the look on Anders’ face when he bit into this sandwich made the evenings’ frustrations well worth it.
For Christmas 2007, Wendie bought me a torch – one of those you use in making desserts such as creme brulee. I had seen one on TV and I wanted it desperately. When I got it, I started manically torching everything, hoping to discover new uses and develop new dishes. As it turned out, most things don’t do well being torched. Roast beef… not so good. Vegetables…nope. Cornflakes… wouldn’t recommend it. The one thing that actually has its moments is cheese.
With the torch I can melt the surface of the cheese, and when biting into it you get a a feeling of warmth on your upper lip, while the rest of the bite is cold. Not entirely unpleasant. For a cheese sandwich, this requires a huge amount of torching action, due to the surface that needs to be melted, but for appetizers it works. After two years I still haven’t made creme brulee, but I’ve managed to construct this appetizer, which in my opinion is perfect for all those torches out there collecting dust. Enjoy.
Continue reading Torched Roquefort Appetizer with Muffaletta Spread and Pecorino Romano Cheese
Living in San Diego means being influenced by Mexican cooking. Each street corner seems to sport a Mexican fast-food joint. Our cooking regularly employs cilantro and salsa, bothView Post of which can be tasty new ingredients to familiar meals. In this sandwich, we use both, and with the French bread, this becomes an international affair. Danish meatballs (frikadeller), Italian mozzarella, cilantro and salsa, made by a Dane and a Jamaican living in the US. It is a small world these days.
