I stumbled upon an interesting discovery at the specialty cheese section the other day: sun-dried tomato cheese! I love both cheese and sun-dried tomatoes. However, I have never never tried them together as part of one product, and I was very curious to see how this cheese would taste like.
I am a self-confessed cheeseaholic – as you know, I use cheese in lots of dishes, both sweet and savory, and cheese is a main ingredient in all of my panini. Meanwhile, my use of sun-dried tomatoes in oil has been rather limited so far – I mainly put them on top of homemade pizza, so there’s definitely room for improvement and experimentation in this regard.
I got the cheese wedge and went home to try it. I was expecting it to taste sharp, but that was not the case: the cheese was rather sweet, and there was a demure touch of salt coming from the tomatoes. I had just bought some imported prosciutto from the local Italian grocery store, so pairing the cheese with the delicate prosciutto came up naturally. I went back shopping and bought some sliced Genoa salami, fresh bread and a few buns. My recipe for an Italian-inspired sandwich was now complete 🙂
Ingredients
6 slices sun-dried tomato cheese (I sliced the cheese myself, so the slices looked rather chunky!)
6 slices Genoa salami
6 slices prosciutto
1 Italian bun
2 dill pickles
Cut the bun in half and scoop out the middle. Distribute the cheese slices evenly on the bread. Put three slices of Genoa salami on top of the cheese on each half bun, and then press gently. Fold the prosciutto and put 3 slices on each half bun. Slice the dill pickles lengthwise and put the slices on top of the prosciutto, on the half bun that is going to make the basis of the sandwich. Place the other half and its accompanying ingredients on top. Press the sandwich gently and let it “rest” for about 5 minutes.
This is how the preparation process looks like:
Cut the sandwich and serve it with extra dill pickles on the side.
The sandwich was tasty and also filling, which was great because my husband needed all the nourishment he could get after another hard day at work. The dill pickles brought a much-needed crunchy element which made the sandwich stand out texture-wise, while the Genoa salami complemented the silky and noble prosciutto beautifully. To me however, the sun-dried tomato cheese was the star ingredient of the sandwich, which added a distinct flavor to the whole ensemble.
There are two things I learned while making this sandwich: 1. That sun-dried tomatoes work really well in a cheese; 2. That I should definitely use sun-dried tomatoes more in my cooking. Fun times and lots of experiments coming up in the kitchen, that’s for sure 🙂
Leave a Reply