I've decided that panini-making is a lot of fun in a social setting. Everyone gathering around the grill, assembling made-to-order sandwiches (or, in many cases, watching me assemble their sandwiches to order), anxiously waiting to see those grill marks and melted cheese. I had a little bit of a crowd in the kitchen this past weekend, with my husband Mike, my sister Angela, my sister Julie and her husband Jay in town. They were all game for my latest Panini Happy Classics foray - a new twist on bagels and lox. Want to skip ahead? Click here for the final recipe.

Smoked Salmon Bagel Panini - Attempt #1

• Bread: Bagel (everything)
• Meat: Smoked salmon
• Cheese: Whipped cream cheese
• Condiments: None
• "Goodies": Tomatoes, red onions, dill-watercress salad with balsamic vinaigrette

THE INSPIRATION: When I want to make something for Mike that I know he'll really enjoy, I can never go wrong with bagels and smoked salmon. It's his "desert island" meal. And when it comes to this meal, he's pretty much a purist - sesame bagel, not toasted, (a lot of) whipped cream cheese from the tub and a good layer of salmon. Never capers. On occasion he'll ask me to blend up a salmon-cream cheese schmear. So I thought he might appreciate a panini version of his fave. Plus, I'm still on a round panini kick.

THE PREPARATION: I envisioned these bagel panini with nice dark grill marks, and I knew that to achieve them I'd have to have flat surfaces...which do not come naturally with puffy, tubular bagels. So my first task was to create some flat surfaces. First, I split an "everything" bagel - freshly procured from Einstein Bros. that morning - down the middle lengthwise, as I normally do, and then I went to cut off the top and bottom edges. Problem! The bagel was so soft and malleable that it was rather difficult to cut off the edges off the bagel halves without endangering my fingertips. I managed, but I wouldn't advise this method. Note for the final recipe: cut off the edges first and then split the bagel in half.

As I mentioned, my husband foregos any accoutrements when it comes to prepping his bagels, but when he orders them in restaurants I've noticed they're often served with rings of red onion and tomato. So I thought I'd include those on this sandwich as well. For the tomatoes, I removed the seeds to minimize the chance of wet bread, per Tip #4.

Next was the dill-watercress salad. I actually was inspired to include a salad after reading this post on the Cookthink blog - what a great way to incorporate greens on a sandwich with a little acidic kick! I pictured something with a small leaf and watercress seemed to fit the bill. The suggestion for adding dill came from my mother-in-law and I concurred - salmon and dill go so well together. So I washed a bunch of watercress and loaded it into a large salad bowl. Judging from the quantity of leaves, I thought 2 tablespoons of chopped fresh dill ought to be enough to disperse throughout the salad.

Then came the dressing - I wanted to do a balsamic vinaigrette. I did a little research and found out that the typical ratio for a vinaigrette is 3 parts olive oil to 1 part vinegar. Looking at my greens in the bowl, I thought I might need about 1/2 cup of dressing. I had to talk this one aloud at length with Angela to get the proportions right: to break 1/2 cup down into a 3:1 ratio translated to 1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons olive oil and 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar (my head really spun on that one - I was a liberal arts major!). Additionally, I wanted a little garlic in there as well as capers - even though my husband doesn't really like them, they're pretty traditional companions to bagels and lox so in they went. I seasoned the vinegar mixture with salt and pepper and then whisked in my olive oil to finish the vinaigrette. Zesty!

THE CONSTRUCTION: As I often do, I brushed the outer sides of the bagel halves with a little melted butter - not a lot, just enough to ensure a little color and crispness upon grilling. I spread a generous amount of whipped cream cheese inside both halves of the sandwich. On the bottom half, I added several rings of red onion, then about an ounce of smoked salmon (basically enough to cover the bagel) and a few slices of tomato. I closed up the sandwich and loaded it onto the grill at medium-high heat (375 degrees).

The beauty of this type of sandwich is that since the cream cheese is already in a soft state, all I needed to do was get a nice toast on the bread. Two minutes and thirty seconds was all it took. I removed the sandwich from the grill and prepared it for the final step - inserting the dill-watercress salad. I turned the sandwich upside down, removed the bottom bagel half, piled on some salad and closed it back up.

THE RESULTS: Happy faces (and mouths) all around! I served the smoked salmon bagel panini with a little fruit salad and some OJ. My panini-testing guinea pigs loved how the bagel came out nice and toasty on the outside while still soft on the inside. Julie mentioned that she actually appreciated that I'd cut off the top and bottom edges as it made the sandwich less "bready" than others she's had. Angela commented that the salad "made the sandwich". And even my purist husband appreciated my somewhat embellished version and gave it his stamp of approval. What more could I ask for?

Get the final recipe!

Check out more from the Panini Happy Classics Series:

• An Ode (or Two!) to California (BLT)
• The Taste of Childhood (Peanut Butter & Jelly)
• This Panini is "In Da Club" (Club Sandwich)
• In Search of M. Croque (Croque-Monsieur)
  
  
  
  
  
  

Oh wow. If you thought the road to my Chicken, Apple & Raspberry Panini was long and circuitous you're not gonna believe what it took to work out my fish sandwich recipe! I started out looking to pay tribute to my current hometown, San Diego, but somehow made my way thousands of miles east to the Caribbean. This is going to be a two-parter - on account of it took me a second kitchen session to arrive at the right combination. Keep with me, it ends well! Want to skip ahead? Click here for the final recipe.

Baja Fish Panini - Attempt #1

• Bread: Sourdough
• Condiment: Lime dressing
• Meat: Tilapia
• Cheese: Pepper jack
• "Goodies": Cabbage

THE INSPIRATION: San Diego isn't exactly what one would call a "food town", but there's at least one menu item we can claim with pride: fish tacos. Actually originating in Baja California, Mexico, the typical fish taco consists of a corn tortilla with breaded white fish, cabbage and a creamy dressing. Ralph Rubio, the founder of the Rubio's Mexican fast casual restaurant chain is often credited with popularizing the fish taco north of the border and it has become a local favorite. So I wanted to use the fish taco as inspiration for a panini recipe.

THE PREPARATION: "To bread or not to bread?" As I mentioned, the fish in fish tacos is usually breaded. Outside of chicken parms, I can't recall too many occasions where I've had breaded items on a sandwich, so I thought I'd better test out whether breaded fish would work well or not. In Attempt #1, I went without the breading. I brushed a tilapia steak - I went with tilapia because it's often serving-sized, readily available and relatively inexpensive - with olive oil, seasoned with salt and pepper, and squeezed a little lime juice on top.

Now, in my previous panini recipes I've always pre-cooked fillings on the stove or in the oven, but it occurred to me that with fish I could actually use the panini grill in the prep phase! So onto the grill went the tilapia at 350 degrees - it took about 2 minutes and 30 seconds to get cooked through and juicy. That's about as fast as the microwave!! But a microwave won't give you grill marks :-)

Next, I worked on my condiment: the fish taco sauce. I did a little research and it seems the most typical recipe for fish taco sauce calls for equal parts of sour cream and mayonnaise and some lime juice.

THE CONSTRUCTION: I whisked together the sauce and spread some onto a slice of sourdough bread. Then came about 1/2 cup of coleslaw mix (no sense in shredding my own!), the grilled tilapia, a slice of pepper jack cheese (for a little heat as well as an adhesive) and another slice of sourdough bread. I brushed some olive oil on top to make it extra crispy and flavorful.

I cleaned off the panini press and put the sandwich on to grill for about 5 minutes until the top was crispy and golden and the pepper jack had melted.

THE RESULTS: Only okay. It was too wet - the downside to a juicy filling like tilapia, I learned, is that the moisture can make bread a little soggy. The pepper jack featured prominently...too prominently, I tasted it more than anything else. My husband commented, "I taste pepper", which let me know that the freshly ground black pepper I'd seasoned the fish with was also nonharmonious. This sandwich had lots of issues - I could sense I was going to be a while longer in the kitchen!

Baja Fish Panini - Attempt #2

"To bread or not to bread?" I had to ask the question again. Perhaps the moisture of the tilapia could be "contained" within a breaded shell? I decided to give it a try, dipping another piece of tilapia first in a beaten egg and then in some Japanese panko bread crumbs. I like panko crumbs because they're crunchier than the finer bread crumbs we more often use. The texture could be great in the sandwich.

With the breading, the tilapia took a little longer to grill - closer to 6 minutes. Still not bad!

I built the sandwich again in the same manner as in Attempt #1, substituting the breaded tilapia for the grilled fish.

THE RESULTS: Well, it wasn't nearly as wet...but it still didn't really taste that great. It needed some punch. The pepper jack definitely provided a kick, but it needed another complementary kick - a sweet kick perhaps? The cabbage also wasn't really working for me. Raw cabbage may bring a nice fresh, crisp texture to a fish taco, but on a grilled sandwich the now-cooked cabbage was rather bland and soft. Not exactly what I was going for!

It was now time to feed the baby again and I was out of sourdough and ideas. I resolved to think on it overnight and continue testing ideas the next day. I will make this fish panini recipe work!

See how this "fish story" ends - check out Part II.