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!

Salami and Cheese 1

I can't say that I was particularly excited about this week's sandwich.  I've never actually been sure of what meat(s?) salami even is, and haven't been particularly inclined to find out due to its unappetizing appearance.  But, my mission is to stick with GGC in good times and bad and thus it's time for me to conquer my fear of this mystery meat and dive right in with a salami and cheese grilled cheese.  You'll notice the title of this post is "Salami and Cheese 1," which means that there are, in fact, two delightful (?) salami and cheese recipes for us to try.  Oh joy.

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)!