Watching Chef (and if you haven’t seen it, you should) gave me a hankering for some grilled cheese. I remembered how long it had been since I’d had a genuine grilled cheese sandwich. Crunchy crust, just the right amount of butter, and 3 or 4 kinds of cheese. And the way I figure it, a panini is just a very grown up cheese sandwich. So today, we’re talking about roasted grape chipotle panini.
Roasted grapes are really important to this sandwich. Their sweetness offsets the rest of the otherwise overwhelming savory of the panini. It comes back to the age old concept of introducing multiple flacors into the same dish. Side note: speaking of roasted grapes; they’re incredible. It’s not like I’ll never eat them any other way, but they are sometihinng spec-freaking-tacular.
You know what makes me really happy? That crunch when you take the first bite of a really great panini. It’s intoxicating to bite down on that golden-brown bread and feel it get all flaky in the moment right before the flavor of the thing really hits you. Are panini really panini without them? Luckily, getting that crunch is really easy. Wanna know how?
Just make sure that you butter your bread and either put it on a medium-hot grill or a pan that’s about medium to medium-hot. Let it sit, checking gently every now and then to see how the bread is looking. When it’ golden brown, you’ve got your crust. Simple, right? Consider it my present to you: another tool in your repertoire to impress everybody at your next meal.
Want to make this panini more sweet? Add some fresh genovese basil or pesto instead of the yogurt chipotle! Want a great accent flavor? Add a wee bit of bacon! Want a light sourness? Add some lime. Endless possibilities. That’s the great advantage of home cooking. It’s always DIY. And when you do it yourself, you can make it exactly the way that you want it.
And that’s literally all that I can think to write for today. Funny how some days, I can’t seem to shut up and other days I can’t even seem to open my mouth. Does that happen to anybody else?
Enjoy!
- 1 bell pepper, roasted (optional)
- 4 slices bread
- ½ pound chicken, cooked
- 400 grams cheese (I recommend 100 grams mozzarella, 200 grams havarti, 100 grams parmesan)
- ¼ stick butter to toast the bread
- 1 cup roasted grapes
- 1 recipe Chipotle sauce
- Shred chicken
- Toast bread on one side
- Begin toasting the other side of the bread and add the cheese, chicken, bell pepper (if you're using it) and grapes, followed by the sauce
- Finish toasting
- Enjoy!
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