Alright, so I didn't get to hit my usual shopping grounds (Wegmans) due to some time constraints, so instead I swung by my local Safeway on my way home. The ingredients were straightforward enough that I was confident I'd be able to find the necessary items even at a less gourmet grocery store. The only potentially hard to find item was olive bread, but GGC advised that if you couldn't find it then you could use regular hearty white or wheat bread with sliced olives instead. Safeway did actually have olive bread, but they weren't willing to slice it for me because apparently the olives jam the slicer. I don't really like olives that much, so this was the only sign I needed to show me that olive bread was not the way to go. As suggested I got some regular hearty white and some pitted kalamata olives from the olive bar. Add to that 12 paper thin slices of salami and 6 ounces of Fontina cheese and I was ready to roll!
I wasn't familiar with Fontina aside from knowing that I've tasted it before, but always in combination with other cheeses on some sort of sandwich or pizza or something, so I never really knew what it tasted like on its own. The cheese I got was labelled "Denmark's Finest Fontina: A delicate, nutty cheese with a distinguished flavor," and I'd agree that this is an accurate assessment. The cheese is mild, but does have a subtle flavor to it that I guess could be classified as nutty. I had more than enough cheese for the recipe, so I bided my prep time by snacking on some of the excess ;-)
I started off by cooking the salami in my non-stick pan for about 2-3 minutes (or until it turned brown and started to shrink). I should've realized that trying to cook all the slices at once wasn't a good plan because they all started to stick together and I had to use a fork to peel them apart. This was not helping the salami's case that it isn't gross-- it was all greasy and gradually getting crispy, but still unappetizing looking. I tried to forget about the fact that I would soon be ingesting this.
Once the salami was cooked I brushed four slices of bread with some olive oil on one side and placed them oily side down on my work surface. Next came the cheese-- spread evenly over the four slices, followed by the olives. I opted to leave olives totally off one sandwich and only put them on half of another because I knew I wasn't an olive fan. Finally I added the salami (again, on just 2 and a half sandwiches-- who knows how salami and my taste buds would get along) and finished the sandwiches off with four more slices of olive oiled bread.
Into the frying pan they went where they browned up nice and evenly.
There was nothing to force the salami to adhere to the bread, so the sandwich didn't get as gooey as some of the other sandwiches have since the salami served as a buffer between the cheese and one slice of bread, keeping half of the sandwich pretty dry. But that doesn't mean the cheese didn't melt, so in no time the sandwiches were all ready!
Taste Review:
Let me start out by saying that I don't like olives. Not one bit. Even though I was skeptical about the salami, I was willing to give it a try, but olives-- not for me. So, take this review with a grain of salt-- especially if you're an olive fan. In fact, you might actually like what I'm about to say-- in the first bite of the sandwich virtually the only taste I got was that of the olives. They add a LOT of saltiness to the sandwich, but unfortunately the saltiness is the element of olives that I dislike. In fact, they were so salty that they drowned out whatever taste the salami brought to the table. Part of this could've been because I don't actually know what salami tastes like on its own, but based on the strong meaty smell I find it hard to believe that when left to its own devices that it wouldn't taste pretty strong.
What the salami does bring to the sandwich is crispiness-- the cooked salami is brittle and adds an extra crunch to the chewy bread. The more I ate the more I started to notice an after taste from the salami, but I still couldn't get past the olives. Oddly enough, I could've been alright with just the salami and cheese, but I was picking out the olives by the end. The cheese adds the nice standard gooey cheese texture, but since it's so mild in comparison to the olives and salami, it's very muted. The olive oil on the outside in lieu of butter makes the sandwich greasy, but not overly so. I didn't feel like my hands were gross by the time I was done eating, but I was glad there was some sort of oil on the outside.
Colin's assessment was that the sandwich was good with ketchup even though he couldn't pinpoint what exactly the ketchup added. He suggested that the sandwich might do well with some sauerkraut, but I'm not sure how I'd feel about adding something so sour/bitter to the already salty/bitter taste of olives. In fact, he liked the fact that the olives are the main flavor in the sandwich. Oh well, to each their own I suppose!
FINAL RESULTS:
Sandwich: | Salami and Cheese 1 |
Gooey-ness: | 3 |
Aroma: | 2 |
Appearance: | Colorful and interesting with gooey cheese, bright salami and black olives. |
Taste: | C |
Gooey Scale | Aroma Scale |
| 1 = still cold/hard | 1 = can’t smell a thing |
| 2 = slightly melted but still firm | 2 = tender waft |
| 3 = melted evenly | 3 = makes your stomach growl |
| 4 = melted and slightly runny (starting to get those cheese strings between your sandwich and your mouth when you take a bite) | 4 = strong scent |
| 5 = runny | 5 = overpoweringly pungent |
| 6 = sloppy mess! |
Again, if you like olives this sandwich would be right up your alley. Alas, I do not.
Next Week: I'm on vacation, so grilled cheesing may be delayed, but once we get cooking it will be salami and cheese part 2 (and I promise-- no olives)!
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