Saturday, September 1, 2007

Prosciutto and Mozzarella Panini

When I worked at Pizza Rustica (36th and Chestnut) the summer between sophomore and junior years, one of our most popular sandwiches was this panini made with freshly-sliced prosciutto, which it was part of my job to slice. They were amazing! I haven't made them since then, because I usually don't have all of the ingredients available, although we came pretty close in Rome once. Usually it's lack of good bread, good cheese, or often good meat. But today on a trip to Trader Joes I noticed they had every one of these things, so I made them! It's easy, tastes somewhat out of the ordinary, and something I think anyone (except, I guess, a vegetarian) would like:

Ingredients:
Ciabatta bread
Fresh- NOT smoked- Prosciutto (about 3 oz. makes 2 sandwiches, I think)
Some sliceable logs of mozzarella cheese (like for Caprese salad)
Sun-dried tomatoes
Basil (fresh or dried)
Olive Oil

Cut the ciabatta in half with a good bread knife, slather olive oil lavishly inside. Slice enough mozzarella thickly to cover the bottom half of the ciabatta, add a small handfull of tomatos on top of the cheese. Place or sprinkle a good amount of basil on the tomatos (don't be shy, this was a pizza place and they used tons of basil on everything). Add the prosciutto on top, and enjoy. We heated these for people who were under the impression that panini must be hot, but they're totally fine cold.


P.S. I just learned writing this that "tomatoes" has an "e" in it, thanks to my Firefox spell-checker. Whaddayouknow?

1 comment:

Melinda said...

I made one of these last week - so good! Thanks Kate.