Tag Archives: Lemon

Pizza With Sautéed Leeks, Grilled Mushrooms and Goat Cheese Whipped with Lemon Zest

This summer we have introduced a new tradition in the Amazing Sandwich home – Pizza Cook-off Fridays. What started as dinner with a friend who came over to show us how to make pizza on the grill, has morphed into my new favorite evening of the week. The basic concept is this: get some friends together, Anders and I provide the dough and competitors bring their favorite wines and toppings for 3-4 hours of trash talking, ardent pizza making, even more ardent eating, and just a wonderfully good time.  So far, we’ve had some awesome creations: classic margarita with fresh tomatoes from our respective gardens; pesto with grilled mushrooms; feta with hummus, grilled pork and finished with tahini drizzle; smoked salmon with thin lemon slivers; apricots with prosciutto and arugula. But my favorite so far was one entry from last weekend: sautéed leeks with garlic, grilled oyster and shimeji mushrooms, buffalo mozzarella and then topped with dollops of a whipped goat cheese/lemon zest blend and sprinkled with fresh thyme.  It was divine. I mean really…it was soo good it bears repeating – it was divine!  We whipped the goat cheese with a fork, added some lemon zest and bit of olive oil.  After baking in the oven, it was so light and creamy and the lemon just gave it the perfect amount of tang.  I can’t wait till Friday – we might just make this one again.

Leeks with grilled shimeji and oyster mushrooms and topped with whipped goat cheese
Leeks with grilled shimeji and oyster mushrooms and topped with whipped goat cheese

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Four Tomato Caprese Panini With Buffalo Mozzarella

Ever heard of the four cheese sandwich?  Typically this sandwich involves an abundance of cheese with little smidgen of veggies.  A few weeks ago, we decided to turn that recipe upside down and make the four tomato caprese panini.  Thanks to overshopping (yet again) at the annual Tomato Mania, our garden has quite a variety of this summer necessity.  If only the variety was matched by abundance.  Sigh!  This year, we have been outdone by the garden pests who have made off with most of our yield.  Poor Anders. In anticipation of this annual raiding, early in the season he stocked the pantry with peanut butter – the bait of choice for our Have a Heart trap.   Months later, we are out of peanut butter and tomatoes.  There are some very fat well fed squirrels and rabbits running around Poway right now and they owe it all to Anders.   How they managed to get to the PB without springing the trap is beyond me.   Ocassionally, (grudglying, we suspect), they left us a few, from which we were able to have a few tomato meals – like this sandwich.

Four Tomato Caprese Panini With Buffalo Mozzarella
Four Tomato Caprese Panini With Buffalo Mozzarella

You can use any combination of tomatoes you wish. We used: white oxheart, brandy boy, Mr. Stripey and XXX.  It was delish, so much so that after eating his mammoth sandwich, Anders begged for another.  After eating his second sandwich, he was nearly comatose on the sofa.  Sweet reward for me… that and hearing him declare, “this is hands down the best panini I’ve ever tasted.”

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Sandwich Roll With Tomatoes, Crayfish Salad, Basil, Parmesan And Sautéed Leeks

A fantastic sandwich, using the highly undervalued leek. That’s right. When is the last time YOU cooked with leeks? That’s what we thought. We made the rolls specifically for this sandwich, they have a center (which you can’t see on the photos) of pesto-infused dough. It was a grand experiment, but in reality they didn’t rise quite as expected. This was our best specimen of the lot.

Sandwich Roll With Tomatoes, Crayfish Salad, Basil, Parmesan And Sautéed Leeks
Sandwich Roll With Tomatoes, Crayfish Salad, Basil, Parmesan And Sautéed Leeks

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Grilled Salmon With Fava Beans, Parmesan And Radish Sandwich

This sandwich was really just a quick lunch-snack to keep us going through a long day of yard work. Putting down the gloves after weeding the tomato garden we found a bit of leftover grilled salmon from the night before, some veggies, and voila, a sandwich was born. When I grew up in Denmark, my mother tended to make the same sandwiches day after day. Liver pate sandwich, potato sandwich, Russian salad sandwich, chocolate sandwich (dessert). Rinse, repeat. Now, with this blog, we have made literally hundreds of different sandwiches, and I wonder what my childhood would have been like with that kind of variety. It’s so easy to have fun with sandwiches, so don’t get stuck in the same humdrum, live a little 🙂

Grilled Salmon With Fava Beans, Parmesan And Radish Sandwich
Grilled Salmon With Fava Beans, Parmesan And Radish Sandwich

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Carne Asada Steak Sandwich With Tarragon Garlic Spread

When you live close to the Mexican border, you can’t help but be inspired by the fantastic Mexican cuisine. San Diego has to some extent adapted many of the traditional Mexican dishes and turned them American. The burrito, nowhere to be found in Mexico, is an American invention that pervades the fast-food culture here. That’s not a bad thing by the way, since I happen to love a good burrito (the best in town can be found in Del Mar at the Mucho Gusto joint). Carne asada is truly Mexican, and is usually flank steak, spiced up. The one we used is from a local butcher that makes his own spices, and it’s very very good, oh yes, veeery good.

Carne Asada Steak Sandwich With Tarragon Garlic Spread
Carne Asada Steak Sandwich With Tarragon Garlic Spread

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Sandwich With Smoked Salmon And Cilantro Mayonnaise

How many ways can you make a smoked salmon sandwich?  It turns out there are many – or so my search on Tastespotting revealed.  Tastespotting is pure visual food pornography – some awesome photos of really great food with popularity driven by the online food community. We love it and have had a few of our own creations featured there.  Sometimes I am just starved for inspiration. When we first started this ambitious blog, I thought coming up with 100 sandwiches would be itself an epic feat. Now as we approach the 200 sandwich mark, I marvel at some of the creations that we have come up with. Anders’ Big Bad Wolf Burger is one such marvel.  As you can imagine, with this many sandwiches behind us, it becomes increasingly difficult to come up with a creative (and postable) sandwich.  When those moments happen, I turn to the Internet.  Today it was Draganabakes by way of  a photo on Tastespotting.   That recipe included a shallot mayonnaise. With the abundance of cilantro from my last run to the grocery store, I decided to whip up some cilantro mayonnaise instead.

Smoked Salmon with Cilantro Mayonnaise Sandwich
Smoked Salmon with Cilantro Mayonnaise Sandwich

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Crab Cake Sandwich: Toasted Focaccia With Crab Cake, Roasted Garlic, Lettuce and Lemon

I love a good crab cake, so naturally ever since we started this blog I’ve been dying to make a crab cake sandwich. Last week-end we had out-of-town visitors begging us to make some amazing sandwiches, so I thought that would be a good time to try it. One of our friends is Indian and an ex-vegetarian so naturally this had better be good or else he might snap back (he didn’t 🙂 ). When you make anything fishy, it’s almost impossible to add too much lemon, so we made sure to soak these sandwiches good in lots of lemon juice. The slice on top is just for show and is a classical Danish garnish back home.

The focaccia was baked by Wendie, and we highly recommend making more bread at home. It’s a lost art these days, but the smell of fresh bread in the house is priceless.

Crab cake Sandwich: Oven Roasted Focaccia With Crab cake, Roasted Garlic, Lettuce and Lemon
Crab cake Sandwich: Oven Roasted Focaccia With Crab cake, Roasted Garlic, Lettuce and Lemon

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Appetizer of Avocado With Lemon/Olive Oil/Cilantro Dressing

Wendie bought these avocados for a salad, and I couldn’t resist the temptation to toast some bread and make a few avocado appetizers. Some would call them mini sandwiches. They’re dead simple and very refreshing when the weather is hot and you have a Sunday evening on the patio with a glass of red wine and Clapton and Bob playing in the background.

Salted Avocado With Lemon Appetizer
Appetizer of Avocado With Lemon/Olive Oil/Cilantro Marinade

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Liver Pâté Sandwich With Toasted Walnuts And Sautéed Leeks With Lemon And Grilled Zucchini

Call me crazy, but I just love the dark brown parts of liver pâté. I realize that may not be the preference of most other sane people, but what can I do against such deliciousness. So these pictures may not do full justice to the wonderful slice of Maria’s liver pâté, but I can assure you that once you bite into this little black diamond, your buds will thank you.

The sautéed side of zucchini with garlic and lemon matches perfectly the sautéed leeks and roasted walnuts.

Liver Pate Sandwich with Roasted Wallnuts and Sauteed Leeks and Squash
Liver Pâté Sandwich With Toasted Walnuts And Sautéed Leeks With Lemon And Grilled Zucchini. The side of the pâté got a little dark, but inside it's moist and good.

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Ham And Prosciutto Sandwich With Goat Cheese, Roasted Garlic And Blueberry Guacamole

“A Winter’s Sandwich”. Granted, in San Diego, winter is when the temperature drops to 50 degrees, and a storm is when we get 2 inches of rain and traffic slows down to 63 mph. We have it easy. This is a sandwich we made mostly from leftovers, some ham, some prosciutto, and half an avocado. We have pretty good leftovers I guess. It was an excellent afternoon in the low winter sun, with a warm sandwich and a glass of red wine in the swing. Life’s good.

Ham And Prosciutto Sandwich With Goat Cheese, Roasted Garlic And Blueberry Guacamole
Ham And Prosciutto Sandwich With Goat Cheese, Roasted Garlic And Blueberry Guacamole

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