I’m sure you won’t mind if we step away from the panini grill for a moment…to focus our attention on chocolate chip cookies! If you’ve ever tasted the thin, crispy, buttery, I-defy-you-to-stop-at-just-one chocolate chip cookies from Tate’s Bake Shop then you know what a treat the lucky winner of today’s giveaway is in for.

I had heard so many great things about Tate’s Bake Shop, based in Southampton, New York, from my blogging friends that I was eager to finally try them myself. They really are that good – refreshingly simple, traditional chocolate chip cookies made with quality ingredients. I’m not usually a dunker, but these really are the type of chocolate chip cookies that beg for a tall, cold glass of milk. Anything that will allow you to stop and savor them for a little bit longer (because the temptation to just devour these is very strong!).

Tate’s Bake Shop would love to send one lucky reader their Valentine’s Day Cube Tower (pictured above). Each box holds approximately 7 cookies. Read on to enter the giveaway…plus get a $10 coupon code to shop at the Tate’s Bake Shop website.

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Big Game Week on Panini Happy continues with sandwiches to honor the New England Patriots!

You won’t believe how many different ideas I toyed with to represent New England and pair well with New England clam chowder. Panini Happy Facebook fans suggested lobster rolls, fried clams, even a deconstructed New England clam chowder on Boston brown bread (I especially liked that creative one). In the end, I arrived at Grilled Cod Sliders on Parker House Rolls. Inside I’ve dressed them up with a little bacon, lettuce and tomato as well as homemade dill tartar sauce.

Cod has deep ties with New England. I never even thought about it before but did you know that Cape Cod was named for the volume of cod found in Massachusetts Bay? A carving of a codfish, known as the Sacred Cod, hangs in the House of Representatives chamber of the Massachusetts State House in Boston, symbolizing the importance of the fishing industry in the state.

Any fluffy dinner roll would work great for these sliders, but if you want to keep the New England theme going, buttery Parker House rolls like the ones I baked are the way to go. They originated at the Parker House Hotel (also the birthplace of the Boston Cream Pie) in Boston in the late 1800′s. I followed the recipe from Joy the Baker, but there are also some great ones from King Arthur Flour and The Pioneer Woman.

Many thanks to Kelly from Evil Shenanigans and Lisa from Lisa is Cooking for the tartar sauce ideas they shared with me on Twitter. Kelly’s sauce base combined with the flavors of pickle juice and dill from the recipe Lisa shared makes a pretty amazing condiment to go with fish!

In case you missed it, I shared football-shaped Pastrami, Aged Cheddar and Peperoncini Panini earlier this week in honor of the New York Giants. May the better team win this weekend!

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It’s that time of year again – Big Game Panini Week! Each year I create sandwiches in honor of each of the teams playing in the Super Bowl. A reader, Joanne, suggested on the Panini Happy Facebook community that since this year’s matchup between the New York Giants and the New England Patriots is a “chowder showdown” the sandwiches should pair well with Manhattan and New England clam chowder, respectively. It sounded pretty logical to me!

Tomato-based Manhattan clam chowder can definitely hold its own alongside the bold flavors in these Pastrami, Aged New York Cheddar and Peperoncini Panini. You can’t help but think “deli” when you think about New York City sandwiches. One of the city’s most famous is Katz’s Deli, where they’ve been serving their prized, enormous hot pastrami sandwich for decades. Here, I’ve matched pastrami with some sharp aged New York cheddar, tangy peperoncini (aka sweet Italian peppers) and a bold homemade horseradish sauce on pumpernickel. For fun, I decided to cut the bread into football shapes and decorate them with more of the horseradish sauce. I’m strongly tempted to invite people over to watch the game on Sunday just so I can make these again.

New England fans: get ready to see what I grilled for your team later this week!

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It was a happy accident that I ended up making tortilla chips on the panini maker. I was actually grilling tostadas when I noticed how crisp the tortillas got from just a little oil on both sides and 90 seconds on the grill. I essentially had one big circular chip. So I cut a tortilla down into triangles and played around with some seasonings until – voilà – I had some truly snackable, tasty homemade tortilla chips (with pretty grill marks, too!) in a matter of minutes.

Of course, then I needed a dip.

Presenting the best guacamole I’ve made to date: Grilled Tomatillo Guacamole. I finally figured out the not-so-secret ingredient that makes my favorite restaurant guac, from El Nopalito in Encinitas, especially fresh-tasting. It’s the tart, green tomatillos. I defy you to spot the tomatillos in these photos. They’re completely camouflaged amongst the avocados. But you can taste their presence in that je ne sais quois kind of way. To dial down the tartness a little and coax out the sweetness I grilled the tomatillos for just a few minutes on the panini maker before mixing them into the guacamole.
The next time you’ve got people coming over, bring out your homemade, grill marked tortilla chips and this mouthwatering tomatillo guacamole for a truly special treat.

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Panini Happy is four years old this week! And since I always bake my kids a cake on their birthday I decided my blog ought to have one too. Of course, it’s a sandwich cake!

Introducing the smörgåstårta! If you haven’t seen one of these before, it’s a Swedish sandwich cake with layers of bread separating creamy fillings. I can’t remember where I first heard of them but I’ve been aching to make one for the longest time. If you run a Google image search you’ll be amazed at the wide range of incredibly creative smörgåstårtas out there. In the end, I decided to make the recipe from Saveur, which is filled with smoked salmon and smoked herring mousse. Read on to see what goes into making one of these party showstoppers!

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Happy New Year, everyone! I hope you had a great time over the holidays. Mine were spent relaxing, eating and catching up with a whole lot of family, which is my favorite way to celebrate (really!).

I thought I’d kick off 2012 with putting something a little on the lighter side on the panini maker – Grilled Angel Food Cake with Lemon Curd. Something really cool happens when you grill angel food cake: the outside gets ever-so-gently crisped and practically dissolves on your tongue like cotton candy. It transforms an otherwise average, store-bought cake into something far more appealing…especially when you top it with some sweet-tart homemade lemon curd.

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It’s back! My 10 Best Panini Mini Cookbook – 2011 Edition is ready for you to download…for FREE! Whether you just received a panini maker for the holidays or you’ve been a Panini Happy reader for years, I hope you’ll enjoy this little holiday gift from me. It’s available for a limited time – from now until January 31, 2012.

Know anyone who got a panini maker for Christmas? Share this with them!

So what’s inside these 19 pages?

• Recipes and photos of the 10 best panini and other non-panini items I grilled this year, based on reader popularity and my tastebuds
• Helpful grilling tips, excerpted from my Panini 101 series

3 Easy Ways to Download the 10 Best Panini Mini Cookbook – 2011 Edition for FREE:

“Like” Panini Happy on Facebook.
Visit the “10 Best Panini” tab on the Panini Happy Facebook page. While you’re there, why not “Like” Panini Happy? Already “like” me? Awesome! Visit the Facebook page and download away!

Subscribe to Panini Happy via E-mail.
Don’t miss a recipe! Get Panini Happy delivered straight to your e-mail for free – click here to sign up for e-mails. You’ll find the link to the 10 Best Panini download in  your confirmation message (the one with the subject line: “Activate your Email Subscription to Panini Happy”). Already a Panini Happy e-mail subscriber? A link to the download should appear in the footer of the message you’re reading right now!

Subscribe to Panini Happy via RSS.
Add Panini Happy’s feed to your RSS reader and you’ll see a link to the 10 Best Panini download at the bottom of each post. Click here to subscribe via RSS.  Already an RSS subscriber? A link to the download should appear in the feed footer right now!

(NOTE: You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open the minibook file – if you don’t have it, you can download Acrobat here.)

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Fruitcake isn’t typically high on my holiday wishlist, but after trying out today’s Panettone Panini with Prosciutto and Mozzarella I think that may have to change.

I was first introduced to panettone, the Italian fruitcake, around this time last year when I interviewed Martha Stewart’s executive director of food and entertaining, Lucinda Scala Quinn on my other blog, Cooking On the Side. Among the many ideas Lucinda offered for serving panettone was an off-the-cuff suggestion of making panini out of it with prosciutto and mozzarella. I waited all year for the next holiday season to come around to give this unique combination a try.

If someone gave you a fruitcake for Christmas this year, you’ve got to try this. The sweet candied fruits in the panettone just love being paired with the salty prosciutto. It’s an absolute flavor blast, I loved it. These sandwiches would probably be just as good cold, but if you grill them you get the benefit of that nice stretchy mozzarella in the middle. I definitely have a newfound appreciation for fruitcake!

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I don’t know exactly how many panini recipes I’ve posted featuring cheddar and apples (four come to mind) but it’s got to be one of my favorite combinations. I couldn’t help but come up with yet one more once I read this Rosemary Apple Butter Grilled Cheese post on Framed Cooks. The addition of fragrant, woodsy rosemary sounded just brilliant.

I sought to integrate this perennial herb into my latest cheddar-and-apples panini in two ways. First, I tossed together some rosemary candied pecans to add a little sweet crunch and gentle heat (I spiced them with cayenne as well) to the sandwiches (caution: these pecans are very addictive!). Second, I grilled it all on buttered rosemary bread.

I’m sharing the recipe for these Cheddar and Apple Butter Panini with Rosemary Candied Pecans over on Herbivoracious today – be sure to check out my guest post!

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