With the exception of our family vacations and the occasional parental date night, my mother prepared a home-cooked dinner every night of the week. And we all sat down together to eat it.
How did she do it??
To this day, I have no idea how she made it happen with three daughters needing to be picked up from two or three different schools and shuttled around to soccer practice, cheerleading practice, saxophone lessons, Brownies. I sure wish I’d been more appreciative at the time. Now that I have a family of my own, and do nearly all of the cooking, I understand the challenge of getting a healthy meal on the table every night.
Welcome to my month-long series, Get Dinner on the Table. My goal is to help us all learn and share strategies for preparing stress-free weeknight meals. I’ll have several great giveaways (including one today – read on for details!), cookbook reviews and new recipes for easy dinners on the panini grill.
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Boy, pop tarts are everywhere these days, aren’t they? Recipes for homemade pop tarts have been appearing on food blogs for a while now, but once Bon Appétit published theirs this past spring it ignited a bit of a trend. Then, last week, the Pop-Tarts World retail store opened its doors in Times Square. The sweet little breakfast treat we grew up with all of a sudden got huge!
Of course, I’m of the belief that almost anything that you toast can be made just as easily – possibly even better – on the panini grill. Pop tarts definitely qualify. So I cut out some puff pastry rectangles, filled some with homemade blueberry jam and others with chocolate-hazelnut spread (aka, Nutella), sealed them up and put them on the grill. Within about seven minutes I had perfectly puffed, flaky, golden homemade pop tarts…complete with ridges to cradle some tangy lemon glaze.
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Sometimes it’s best to keep things simple. You may have seen Mark Bittman’s incredible list of 101 Simple Salads in the New York Times last summer or his 101 Fast Recipes for Grilling just a few weeks ago – in just a sentence or two he sketches out simple suggestions for preparing different types of foods. It got me thinking…out of the hundred or so panini recipes I’ve got under my belt a good number of them are super-simple and would lend themselves to a similarly useful list. So here you go: 27 Simple Panini.
Most of the panini on this list require little preparation and many of them are great for using up your leftovers. For those who would like more detailed guidance I’ve included links to my full write-ups for each sandwich. If you’ve got other simple panini ideas you’d like to share, please do so in the comments!
This just a small sample of the nearly 100 panini recipes to explore on this blog. See the Recipe Index for the full listing of all the panini I’ve grilled.
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#2 - Spicy Grilled Cheese Sliders
1. Simmer shredded leftover (or rotisserie) chicken in barbecue sauce, grill with fresh mozzarella and caramelized onions on Italian bread. Brush chili oil on the outside of the bread for extra flavor. (Pulled BBQ Chicken Panini)
2. Combine shredded pepper jack and mozzarella cheeses. Grill on slices of baguette, with chili oil brushed on the outside. (Spicy Grilled Cheese Sliders)
3. For a kicked up leftover turkey sandwich that doesn’t taste too much like Thanksgiving – turkey, Monterey jack cheese, sliced jalapeños, sliced tomatoes and mayonnaise grilled on sliced sourdough. (Turkey Jalapeño Melt Panini)
4. Try a classic Reuben: corned beef, Swiss cheese, sauerkraut, Thousand Island or Russian dressing, grilled on rye. (Classic Reuben Panini)
5. Combine shredded leftover (or rotisserie) chicken in a bowl with halved grapes, chopped walnuts and mayonnaise. Season with salt and pepper. Grill with shaved Gruyère cheese on dark rye bread. (Chicken-Grape Salad & Gruyere Panini)
6. Simmer 1 1/2 lbs. of sliced boneless-skinless chicken thighs in a bottle of Buffalo wing sauce (the wing sauce, not the hot sauce) for about 15 minutes until cooked through. Combine with caramelized onions and crumbled blue cheese on pita breads (microwave the pitas for a few seconds to make them more malleable), fold over the pita and grill till toasty. (Buffalo Chicken Panini)
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Yup, it's a panini blog! Here, you'll find more than 80 of my original 
