Sing it with me........Meatball Sandwich......

Well it all starts with a little stroll down to lunch lady land.  Hoagies and grinders, hoagies and grinders, navy beans, navy beans, Meat Loaf Sandwich...........While the song may be silly tom foolery, this sandwich is serious business.

We stopped into Labriola Bakery for lunch the day after Caroline's 7th birthday party and her dinner of choice, spaghetti and meatballs.  In typical Erin fashion, she made a large bucket of range balls worth of meatballs (hey its cold and grey in February and I've got the golf itch, cut me some slack).  The upside to her excesses is an abundance of left overs to work with.  As we waited in line to order I noticed all the wonderful looking loaves of bread behind the bakery counter at Labriola.  A quick nudge and a little point later Erin knew I wanted her to pick up some bread for the meatball sammiches that were on the menu that evening.

I am a firm believer that a good sandwich starts with great bread.  Some consider it just a vessel but I say good bread is a work of art.  We grabbed both the demi baguettes and some asiago cheese loaves.  Pictured below is the start of my sandwich with the cheese loaf.

You'll notice I've carved a little tunnel through the middle of my bread.  I love bread, more than most and likely more than I should but a proper sandwich is all about the proper blend of meat, cheese and bread.  As such, I've pulled out a fair amount of the doughy innards of my cheese loaf.  This makes for not only a little less bloat in the sandwich but also I nice trough to anchor the meatballs in.

The next step is laying down the gooey blanket to hold a meatball with.

Soft mozzarella cheese, hot giardiniera and some freshly grated sharp provolone cheese.  Pop it under the broiler for 2-3 minutes and we are ready to start building.

Time to add the goods.  I like to slice the meatballs in half and layer them into the sandwich.  No rolling around and also allows me to get about 40% more meat into my sandwich.  Cover them in some home made meat sauce and top with grated parmesan reggiano and pecorino romano cheeses.

The only thing missing now is a nice glass of red wine and we are all ready to eat.  Anything Italian and red would work fine but we did a nice hearty Zinfandel as the fruit really stood up nice to the meat and spice in our sandwiches.

The final product.

Toasty bread, oozing cheeses, hearty meatballs in red sauce and you can see the oil from the giardiniera soaking into the bottom of the bread.

Mange, Mange Mange.

Now I'm motivated to cook tomorrow!!

Tuesday's meatballs become tonight's pizza

So yesterday's pizza dough project resulted in us making a double batch of the sacred yeasty wonder.  With my travel schedule taking me to DC this week and last nights amazement at this dough, we decided to double down tonight and make pizza again for dinner.

Seriously, it's not just me pushing this one.  Our almost 7 year old daughter does not like pizza crust, until last night that is.  Normally when we eat pizza she gets to the crust and tosses it on my plate.  She was doing that last night, when Erin and I both prompted her to try this new crust.  Being the good kid that she is, she trusted us and tried it.  A big smile spread across her face just before she pronounced, "I like crust!" She ate all of her crust and even asked Erin to cut the crust off one of the slices still on the cutting board as she was getting full and only wanted to eat the crust.  This morning while I was making her PBJ&B toast she asked me, "Dad, when do I get to eat more of that pizza crust?"  I chuckled and replied, "Stick with me kid and we'll go places."

One of the benefits of having a wife who is an amazing cook is a fridge that is better than a pirates booty when it comes time to look for new topping ideas.  As we cleaned out the fridge with garbage day looming, the leftover spaghetti and meatballs from earlier in the week seemed like a good starting place for tonight's pie.  I pulled the meatballs out of the sauce and sliced them up into 1/8 to 1/4 inch thick slices.  We decided that we would take this pie to spicy town and grabbed a jar of Rubino's hot giardiniera relish.  Using the traditional sauce here is how it got started.

Next stop was the fresh mozzarella followed by both of the hard cheeses.

Five minutes on the thin cookie sheet at 550 degrees, then we slid it directly onto the stone for 10 more minutes to finish it off.

Spicy giardiniera combined with savory home made meatballs.  Wow.

It's a good thing we made it to the gym both days this weekend!!

Mange Mange Mange