Salami and Cheese 2 AND Red, White and Blue Grilled Cheese

No, your eyes do not deceive you-- this week I'll be featuring two different sandwiches!  One from GGC (as usual) and one created by yours truly as a belated celebration of July 4.  The GGC sandwich we're doing this week is the second in our two part series on salami and cheese.  I can't say I entered this week with a higher opinion of salami-- it still grosses me out, but I'm willing to tough it out for one more sandwich.

The ingredients for this one sounded a lot like a classic Italian sub: Italian bread, olive oil, mozzarella, ricotta, pepperoncini and salami. 

Much like last week, the first step was to cook the salami.  Only this week, the salami did this weird thing where some of it would bubble up and not actually cook all the way.  It ended up looking like weird little blisters on the salami.  Not surprisingly, this didn't exactly make me anxious to give salami another chance.

This was basically all the prep work that was required, at least for the version I chose to prepare.  The actual recipe called for cooking some fennel seed and grinding them up to add to the olive oil, but I definitely don't like fennel and didn't want a repeat of the cumin incident from Dutch Grilled Cheese.  So I skipped straight to brushing one side of six slices of bread with olive oil (as usual, the recipe calls for 4, but the bread was small).  From there I evenly spread 4 ounces of ricotta cheese over the bread.

Next came 6 ounces of mozzarella.

Now it was time for the pepperoncini.  The recipe called for 12 pepperoncini that have been stemmed, drained, pitted and cut in half lengthwise. 

While I was cutting them up I snuck a taste and realized they might be a little too spicy for me, so I opted to leave them off of one sandwich just in case.

Next came the salami.  Same deal here-- left it off one sandwich, just because I'm not a huge fan.

Then it was into the frying pan.  One of the perks of the slightly smaller sandwiches was that I could cook two at a time, so we were finished in no time!

Taste Review:

One of the strongest tastes you get in this sandwich is the pepper.  It is very spicy, but actually kicks in as almost an after taste, which is interesting since I would've thought that a hot pepper would overpower everything else.  In fact, there was no reason for me to be scared of the peppers-- they were spicy, but not too hot by any means.

The cheese is very creamy and provides a nice contrast to the crunchiness of the bread and salami.  A big reason for the creamy texture is the ricotta cheese.  On its own, ricotta is pretty bland, so it's good that it was paired with the mozzarella to give it some subtle flavor (I say subtle because mozzarella isn't the strongest cheese in the world).  But the mildness of the cheese actually ended up giving the sandwich a pretty diverse flavor profile-- there was some spiciness, which was offset by the mildness of the cheese; the salami was salty, the bread was crisp, and the creaminess of the cheese meant it all blended together to go down smoothly.  It also made the sandwich quite gooey:

 

The only potential change that Colin and I discussed was perhaps using a different meat.  Obviously neither of us are really sold on the merits of salami, so Colin suggested ham as a blander meat that would still give the sandwich some saltiness (without a less than desirable after taste like salami).  Colin thought about tasting the sandwich with some salsa, but found that it was flavorful enough on its own.  Overall we both liked it more than we thought we would.

FINAL RESULTS:

Sandwich:	Salami and Cheese 2
Gooey-ness:	4
Aroma:	2
Appearance:	Nice colors-- bright peppers, white cheese, brown salami and bread.
Taste:	B

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!

BUT WAIT!! THERE'S MORE!!!

As mentioned, I decided I also needed to pay homage to Independence Day by creating my own "Red, White and Blue Grilled Cheese."  I pondered the possibilities for awhile and concluded that using blue cheese (the logical choice for blue) was less than ideal since this isn't exactly my favorite cheese.  Luckily I remembered a delicious treat from the Wegmans bakery called "Red, White and Blue Bread." 

Nutella), I decided goat cheese was the cheese to try here.  So with that (and some cinnamon for good measure) I was ready to go.

Prep for this sandwich was easy because, well, I was the one making it up!  I started with two slices of RW&B Bread:

I spread about 3 ounces total of goat cheese over the slices:

Then I sprinkled each with cinnamon:

And was ready to go!  I topped each slice with another piece and placed one sandwich (buttered side down) into the pan.  The heat in the pan was a little too intense for the delicate nature of the bread, so it actually ended up browning/burning pretty quickly :-/  But that's OK.  After learning my lesson on sandwich one I turned the heat down very low for the second.  I also tried sprinkling a little sugar on the butter before putting the sandwich in the pan to try to give it a sort of caramelized outer shell.  This worked quite nicely!

That was basically it!  Once the sandwiches were browned on each side they were ready for tasting.

Taste Review:

The sandwiches had a GREAT aroma-- thanks almost entirely to the cinnamon.  You just can't beat the smell of warm cinnamon.  The sandwich has a very breakfasty feel (probably because of the sweetness in the form of berries, cinnamon and sugar), but could actually do with being sweeter.  The goat cheese is very bitter and provides almost too much of a contrast to the sweetness of the bread.  Although the creamy texture of the goat cheese does mean the sandwich goes down smoothly, it would almost be better with something like cream cheese.  Colin basically said he would be fine to have the bread with just some butter-- so really it's clear the bread was the standout here.  But I do think it's fair to say that with a sweeter cream cheese filling this would be a very tasty sandwich (not that it wasn't also tasty with goat cheese).  We definitely weren't disappointed, but it could use some tweaking.

FINAL RESULTS:

Sandwich:	Red, White and Blue Grilled Cheese
Gooey-ness:	1.5
Aroma:	4
Appearance:	Light sheen to a crispy colorful outside.
Taste:	B+

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 yourstomach 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!

Next Week: My sous chef is getting called up to the big leagues with a unique creation all his own!