Summer Panini Sandwiches

What's Going on Today: Returned from high school reunion yesterday, tired but happy. Re-group with fresh groceries, playgroup, pick-up new library books.

Naptime Goals: Monday Catch-Up: Mail, laundry, general house-cleaning, put away groceries.

Tonight's Menu: Paninis, salad, seltzer (no more wine!)

Parenting Lesson of the Day: Kids don't have much sympathy for Mom when she's tired.

My high school reunion was a blast, though it did make me feel a little old. Some of the younger girls at reunion were born in the late 80's and early 90's and had just graduated from college - what?! When did we get so old? Despite feeling slightly out of date, my classmates and I had a blast. We even held our own staying out late at a local pub catching up, something I haven't done in ages.

The day after I got home was a typical Catch-Up Monday. There were laundry piles, bills, emails and loads of other little things to attend to. I usually have a day like this every couple of weeks. I find that dedicating one entire day to running the household seems to be the most efficient way to do things. This way I can spend a lot of time doing fun activities like going to the beach, strawberry picking or visiting local museums.

Luckily, last week when my friend Nicole came to visit she'd followed the wonderful tradition of bringing us Bread, Salt and Wine. I couldn't have been more grateful for her thoughtfulness. With the bread still in it's bag I decided to forgo major Naptime Chef-ing that afternoon in order to concentrate on household stuff. In the evening I used the bread to make up some yummy pressed sandwiches for all of us. As you know, I swear by paninis as a great, healthy dinner in a pinch.

My friend Cecily shared with me a cool secret she'd come up with recently to make her sandwiches even more flavorful, marinating the tomatoes. By tossing them with some balsamic vinegar, olive oil and salt the tomato flavor is enhanced and the extra oil gets soaked into the bread, giving everything a little more moisture and taste. I gave her technique a go with this sandwich and I think it works really well. We devoured these so quickly that I barely had time to take a picture. The good news is that after my Catch-Up Monday I was ready for the rest of the week. And, boy, I have some great Naptime Chef-ing planned!

Summer Panini Sandwiches with Balsamic Vinegar

Serves 2

2 flatbreads or 4 slices of country bread

4 slices of thinly cut prosciutto

6 pieces of thinly sliced fresh mozzarella

1/2 pint grape tomatoes, washed and patted dry

2 T. balsamic vinegar

2 T. good quality olive oil

1 pinch Kosher Salt

6-8 fresh basil leaves

1. Cut grape tomatoes in half or into thirds. Place them in a bowl and toss with vinegar, olive oil and salt. Allow them to sit for at least 10 minutes, or up to an hour at room temperature.

2. Lay bread open on the counter. Place 2 pieces of prosciutto on one slice of bread. Layer on 3 slices of mozzarella, then 3-4 basil leaves. Top with half of the tomatoes. 

3. Drizzle the remaining slice of bread with some of the balsamic/olive oil mixture at the bottom of the bowl. Close sandwich.

4. Sandwich can be toasted on panini press, in a skillet or eaten as is.

Naptime Notes:

Naptime Recipe Variations & Ideas: Sandwiches are a great dinner, especially in the summer. Try substituting roasted red peppers or eggplant for a new, flavorful, twist on this old favorite.

Naptime Stopwatch: Making this sandwich takes 10 minutes from start to finish.

Naptime Recipe Props: This is definitely a family friendly meal, my daughter eats pressed sandwiches like there is no tomorrow. Though she did pick out the basil leaves this time because she didn't know what they were for...

Paninis & White Truffle Potato Chips: Webisode #13

What’s Going on Today: Returned from vacation- unpacking, laundry, errands... quick trip to grocery store for a few staples.

Naptime Goals: Baked White Truffle Potato Chips to serve with dinner tonight. Make grocery list for tomorrow's shopping, finish laundry.

Tonight’s Meal: Paninis with Baked Potato Chips - that's as fancy as I get the first day back from vacation!
Parenting Lesson of the Day: When flying with kids bring cash so you can buy drinks for the poor souls sitting in front of you.

We returned from Florida a couple of days ago with decent tans, happy memories and several loads of laundry. It was sad to leave our fun family vacation, but my daughter was really glad to be home. Upon return she spent hour after hour playing with her toys and getting reacquainted with her stuffed animals. I didn't mind this in the least, it gave me some free time to unpack our bags, shake out the sand and put away our warm weather clothes for another few months.

As you'll see in this webisode, when we got home we also returned to a big fat empty fridge. Of course I expected this since I so diligently cleaned it out before we left. (If you've ever returned home to rotten milk and spoiled cheese in your kitchen you'll know exactly why it is important to clean out the soon-to-expire items before you depart.) In an attempt to control the catch-up chaos I opted to take the easy route and buy a few key food staples to get us through the first few days home, then do a big grocery shopping later. It was during this quick shopping trip that I picked up the makings for baked chips and paninis.

Making sandwiches and chips may seem like a pretty lame meal for our first night home, but I assure you it is not. To me a hot toasted sandwich served with crisp salty chips is comfort food in it's finest form, and this meal fits the bill. Though it is a tad more laborious then buying chips at the store, making these baked chips is simple and the end result is far healthier and more flavorful then anything I've ever eaten out of a bag. In this case I used white truffle oil and a touch of sea salt as my flavor combination of choice, but you could also use pepper, herbs or other flavored oils. Almost anything goes. The flavors of the sandwich are also well-balanced with oozy mozzarella, juicy tomatoes and a good spread of my Perfect Pesto - thawed from the freezer - to give it an extra pop of flavor and moisture.

Rest assured, after shooting this I took quite a lengthy trip to the grocery store and had the makings of several more meals delivered straight to our apartment. We will be eating heartier, more involved meals in the weeks to come, but this was the perfect way to give ourselves a big welcome home.

Baked White Truffle Potato Chips

method adapted from Barefoot Contessa Parties by Ina Garten
Serves 2
3 large baking potatoes
4 T. olive oil
4 T. white truffle oil
3-4 Pinches Sea Salt

1. Preheat oven to 325ºF. Pour 2 T. of olive oil on a 18x13 jelly roll pan and spread it all around so the pan is fully coated. Place coated pan in the oven and heat for 10 minutes.
2. Scrub potatoes and slice to 1/16" thick on a mandoline. *If you don't have a mandoline, slice the potato as thinly as possible with a sharp knife.*
3. Line up potato slices on the baking sheet and drizzle with 1 T. white truffle oil. Then sprinkle with 1-2 pinches of Sea Salt. Place in the hot oven and bake for 10 minutes. Then, rotate the pan and bake for 5-6 more minutes. At that point, look at the chips, as they get darker flip them with a pair of tongs and bake for 1-2 minutes more. The chips will darken a bit as they bake, just don't let them burn.
4. Remove pan from oven and transfer chips to a layer of paper towels. Allow them to cool and the oil to be absorbed by the towels. They will crisp up slightly as they cool.

Panini with Prosciutto, Mozzarella, Tomato and Pesto

Serves 2
4 Slices good bread
2 T. heaping teaspoons perfect pesto
4-5 slices fresh mozzarella
4 slices fresh tomato
2 slices prosciutto

1. Heat a skillet or panini press and coat lightly with butter or olive oil.
2. To make a sandwich: Swipe one side of bread with pesto, then layer with tomato, prosciutto and mozzarella. Close with second piece of bread. Toast and serve.

Naptime Notes:

Naptime Recipe Ideas and Variations: The flavor possibilities for this meal are nearly endless. As long as you have some bread on hand you can make almost anything from your fridge into a great toasted sandwich. I've also flavored the chips before with different herbs including rosemary and thyme, as well as garlic oil and red pepper.
Naptime Stopwatch: Slice and baking the chips takes about 30 minutes, assembling and making the paninis takes about 10 minutes at the most.
Naptime Reviews: My husband and I are always game for a sandwich and chips for dinner now and then. For my daughter we omitted the prosciutto and gave her a pesto and mozzarella grilled cheese.

Napping with a P for Panini: Emergency Meal Series #3

Sometimes, on the weekends, I put my husband in charge of cooking. I am lucky, he is a very capable cook, having grown up in a household where both parents regularly turn out delicious meals that would make any chef green with envy. Since I've known him he has made some fantastic dishes including homemade vegetarian spring rolls, mustard-crusted rack of lamb, and all sorts of seafood dishes involving scallops, which are my favorite. It is pretty rare that he takes a misstep in the kitchen. I've only seem him burn - no, char - a pork tenderloin once. In his defense we were also trying to hang pictures in the other room at the same time, hence, we learned our lesson about multi-tasking when cooking. Last month, having witnessed many of his past successes, I decided it was time to give him a true challenge. I put him in charge of an emergency meal.


You see, that morning my daughter and I had just flown home from Florida. The trip had not gone well, my daughter was wide awake and crying for the entire flight, plus, she had a low-grade fever. We were tired, cranky and not in the mood to do anything other than be lazy on the sofa while watching Dora and Boots scamper over rickety bridges. For the duration of the afternoon my husband served as chief runner, jogging back and forth from the kitchen bearing sippy cups of ice water and cheddar goldfish for my daughter, and fresh cranberry spritzers with sourdough pretzels for me. By dinner time I recovered enough from our flight trauma to generate a small appetite, and, after all the running to and fro, my husband was ravenous. When he looked to me, desperate for meal ideas, I held both hands out to my side and turned my palms upward. I was at a loss for inspiration, he was on his own.


Being the resourceful guy that he is, in the middle of this meal crisis, he pulled a brilliant move. From the dark recesses of a kitchen cabinet he retrieved our panini maker. We had received the panini maker as a gift at my "alphabet" themed wedding shower in Cooperstown, my hometown. My friend, Christina, was assigned the letter "P" and, thus, bought me a panini maker. I hadn't registered for it but I am forever grateful for the gift. The panini maker quickly became one of our most favorite kitchen gadgets from the moment we unwrapped it. In our pre-parenthood years, when we were both working at offices, we would come home spent and uninspired after long days at work. It was during these times we discovered that, as long as you have a loaf of bread, almost any combination of ingredients can form a panini. In this particular instance my husband had spied a fresh loaf of sourdough bread on the counter, along with recently purchased thinly sliced spanish jamon, roasted vegetables and a ball of mozzarella in the fridge. I hadn't planned on making sandwiches with all these ingredients, but, despite my original intentions for them, it was obvious they were meant to form our dinner.


As with any toasted sandwich the assembly was a total snap. It was even snappier because of the low-tech kitchen tool we had at our disposal. All we had to do was assemble sandwiches and squash them between the heated plates to toast. During the few minutes it took to cook I had time to refill my spritzer, pull a plate out of the cupboard and prepare myself for warm, oozy mozzarella. As expected the flavors of this sandwich were perfect. Instead of using anything too heavy my husband had drizzled the inside of the bread with olive oil and a sprinkling of balsamic vinegar. The dreamy mozzarella perfectly offset the sweet vegetables and salty jamon. I found comfort in every single bite, exactly the kind of meal I needed after an arduous journey. Even my daughter liked the sandwich we made for her, just a simple pressed cheese of fresh mozzarella with diced vegetables on the side. I think she was as grateful for the warm, homemade meal as I was. After we tucked her into bed that evening I hugged my husband, congratulating him on surviving an emergency meal, one of the great cooking challenges of all time. I was glad to be home.

Naptime Jamon, Vegetable and Mozzarella Panini - inspired by ingredients in the fridge
4 slices of fresh sourdough bread
6 slices of fresh lightly salted mozzarella
2 thinly sliced pieces of spanish jamon (or prosciutto if jamon is unavailable)
4 slices of roasted vegetables, any kind you want (we had slices of roasted red pepper, squash, zucchini and eggplant)
Olive Oil
Balsamic Vinegar
Yields 2 paninis, double portions to make more sandwiches

1. Preheat panini maker and lightly brush plates with olive oil. If you don't have a panini maker you can use a simple griddle pan, or even a skillet. Just be sure to have a wide spatula to press the sandwich down with while it toasts.
2. On one slice of sourdough bread drizzle it lightly with olive oil. Then sprinkle it with balsamic vinegar.
3. Cover this slice of bread with a layer of jamon.
4. Then, over the jamon, place a layer of roasted vegetables, allowing the vegetables to overlap slightly.
5. Finally, place three slices of mozzarella on top of the vegetables. Top with second slice of bread.
6. Place sandwich on the panini maker and toast until the bread is crispy and cheese is fully melted.

Naptime Notes:
Naptime Recipe Props: Everyone loves a warm sandwich and this one fits the bill. I encourage you to explore the flexibility of this recipe. Try different vegetables or cheeses, or, if you are a vegetarian you can omit the meat altogether.
Naptime Stopwatch: This meal took about 15 minutes from start to finish. Assembling the sandwiches takes about 3 minutes, then the toasting takes about 7-9, depending on your sandwich maker.
Naptime Reviews: A panini ranks right up there with a grilled cheese, an ideal comfort food. We all loved it, including my daughter. I know we will leave this kitchen tool where it is easily accessible.