The weather this week has been fantastic here in the Mid Atlantic region. Nice and warm and sunny.... I was inspired.
Now, I didn't do a lot of recipe creation, more like tweaking. And I tried a new recipe.
Tuesday ended up being Italian Villa day at my apartment. I got out early from work, had time to stop by the store and pick up a couple things and make it home. The sun was shining, the breeze was blowing, it was warm... amazing day all around.
First thing I did when I came home was some baking. If you have Cooking Channel, you are probably familiar with Extra Virgin. If you don't have the channel or are not familiar with the show, here's the basic run down. It's hosted by actress Debbie Mazar (Goodfellas, among other things) and her husband Gabriele, who is from Tuscany. It takes place at their house and their two girls are involved, it's a really cute show with some really nice, authentic recipes.
One such recipe looked really good when I saw it- Schiacciata Alla Fiorentina- an orange cake simply dusted with powdered sugar. Since this is not my recipe, I will not copy and paste it here, but here's the link- http://www.cookingchanneltv.com/recipes/debi-mazar-and-gabriele-corcos/schiacciata-alla-fiorentina-recipe/index.html- if you're interested.
I did a couple different things with this recipe. 1)I added vanilla. I don't know if vanilla isn't Tuscan or anything, but I felt it needed to be added. Vanilla makes everything awesome. 2) You're supposed to make it in a great big cake (Gabriele has a fleur de lis stencil he used to form the powdered sugar. It looked fantastic) but I don't have regular cake tins. I mostly have cupcake tins. And I love portion control. I also have a tin I don't use often- it's a square cupcake tin. Just like regular cupcakes... but square. So I used that. I even had a few leftover so I made regular cupcakes. 3) I used applesauce instead of oil to cut out a few calories. I've never done this before but I figured any slight flavor difference would be hidden with the orange so I called it a day. The cake turned out amazingly moist and even now, a few days later, no moisture has been lost. The humidity helps, I'm sure.
So I made that, set it aside and started with dinner.
Dinner started with my Champs Ulysses mix salad- it's a bagged mix from Trader Joe's with raddichio, carrots, baby spinach, frisee and some other lettuces- topped with feta and my standard vinaigrette. It was somewhere around 4 so I thought it a little early to have dinner proper. The boyfriend and I ate our salads nice and happily.
The main course, however, was a Panini Caprese. What does that mean? Tomato, basil and mozzarella. That simple. You can get it anywhere and everywhere. I had an amazing variant on my trip to Vermont a week ago that was a wrap with fresh mozzarella, tomato, pesto, baby spinach (I think) and caramelized onions that was then grilled. AWESOME.
My version starts with an Italian bread. I picked up a loaf of Pane Bello from Trader Joe's. It had everything I wanted and the leftovers are going to be great with my kielbasa soup tonight.
What I decided to do was take a hint from a lot of places and use pesto instead of fresh basil. I have bad luck with fresh herbs. I need to get them the day I need them or they are brown. I've always used dry herbs. They last longer and I don't have to worry about it much.
Pesto has all the lovely basil flavor along with salt, pepper, pine nuts, parmesan cheese and olive oil AND it's easy to spread. So I did, on the inside of my bread. I then sliced up a tomato and some fresh mozzarella (and ate a bunch of it) and stuck the two sides together.
Now, you can have a panini press or a George Foreman grill to grill your sammich. I don't have it so I go old school. I heated up my grill pan on medium heat. The goal here is not so much to make a grilled cheese, but to heat up the bread and make it crispy. If your mozzarella and tomato are room temperature though, they will probably get nice and warm too.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the point of a panini is for it to be pressed as well. If you don't have a fancy grill press, cheat... like I did. All I did was stick a heavy skillet on top of my sandwich. If I had worked it out better, I would have also put a can in the skillet to make it press the sammich further. But that's neither here nor there.
The point is that I flipped it, grilled it and ate it. And it was perfect, especially when accompanied by a glass of cold sparkling limeade and eating on my balcony with my sweetie. That is lovely eating right there.
And that Schiacciata Alla Fiorentina, dusted with powdered sugar, was a lovely way to end that meal.
So try out this meal. The warm weather is here. Let's embrace it! With delicious food!
-Merry
PS: Two posts in a week's time?! CRAZY!!!
PPS: I edited my last post with the royal icing and a note about humidity. Please go back and check it out.
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