Tuscan Pesto Chicken Panino

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At 5:50 p.m., my husband asked me, “Is there a plan for dinner?” And I stared blankly at him. Thirty minutes later, we put this on the table:

I will post the things we put on it, but I do hope you realize the point of this post is to show you how to produce something fabulous with what you have on hand (and it WAS fabulous–eyes-rolling-back-in-my-head fabulous!) You could substitute any number of ingredients and still end up with something delish.

Tuscan Pesto Chicken Panino:

We started with some day-old foccacia bread that we had acquired from Panera Bread Co. (You could make it a baguette or some other nice French bread, doesn’t have to be day-old.)

We cut it horizontally in half, then smeared it with some homemade pesto (you could use canned pesto, or alternately, some sun-dried tomato spread, or even just plain pizza sauce.) We stuck this under the broiler for a few minutes until the edges of the bread were starting to brown, then removed it. Meanwhile, we sautéed strips of chicken breast in olive oil with garlic and onions and a splash of red wine and another splash of balsamic vinegar; then we spread the cooked chicken on the foccacia. We also put black olive halves (which you could skip, should you despise olives.) And over all this, we sprinkled shredded mozzarella and Romano cheese. The panini went back under the broiler for another 3-5 minutes until the cheese was bubbly. When they came out of the oven, Kirk drizzled the remaining juice and onion/garlic stuff on the bottom of the pan where the chicken was sautéed over the top of the panini. We served immediately, and commenced to making those delighted and inarticulate “MMMMM!” noises.

A few extra ideas: we could’ve made our own pizza dough for this, and the cooking would’ve taken a bit longer. We were hungry, and the foccaccia was sitting there begging to be used, so we didn’t. We also could’ve toasted a few pine nuts in a dry pan and thrown those on top–see above reason for not doing it. We could’ve skipped the mozzarella. We could’ve used a tomato-based sauce or even a white sauce or Ranch dressing instead of the pesto. We could’ve used pepperoni or ham instead of chicken breast. We could’ve added vegetables. This was a wonderfully fast and delicious meal that felt really fancy and ooh-la-la, but it only took about 30 minutes from start to finish.

Laura

P.S. Dumb little pet peeve: “panino” is the singular for “little bread”. “Panini” is plural. Some restaurants bill bread like this as “a panini”. Please, people, use the correct Italian! I want “un panino” or “molti panini”. You can’t order a singular panini! Thank you, from all of us Type-A linguists in the crowd.

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