On a very cold Saturday morning two weekends ago, we left our cozy, warm cabin in the North woods of Wisconsin to visit the Cable Natural History Museum, in downtown Cable, WI.
After visiting the temporary museum and looking at the hole in the ground where the new one is being built, we decided to stay and have lunch at the Brick House Cafe—the only restaurant in town. I wanted to have a hot lunch on such a cold day and ordered a hot sandwich-- the Roast Beef Panini with Dijon, pepper Jack cheese & sweet roasted red peppers, grilled on potato bread, sourdough, or dark rye.
This sandwich was so delicious that I wanted to make it at home, about a week later, using a recipe from the bettycrocker.com web site called Beef-Pesto Panini. To that recipe I changed the cheese to pepper Jack and added the roasted red bell pepper from a jar and ended up with another great sandwich.
I prepared my homemade sandwiches, just like a grilled cheese sandwich—in a regular skillet with a little melted butter. Since I don't own one of those special panini grills (electric or the stove-top type), I tried pushing down the sandwiches with a lid that was smaller than the skillet to make up for my lack of using the special pan. My sandwiches tasted great even without the grill marks.
I checked a Sur La Table catalog and found two of them: the electric Breville Ikon Removable Plate Grill for $199.00 and a stove-top Mario Batali Chianti-Red Panini Grill and Press for $89.00. Both of these seemed really expensive just to get grilled sandwiches with grill marks.
Have you tried either of these pans or a different one that you like? Are they worth the money?