The duck proscuitto panino that wasn’t

You’ll remember a few weeks back, I had an adventure in food and bought a cured duck breast (otherwise called duck proscuitto).

The one thing I wanted to do with this duck proscuitto was make a panino with smoked mozzarella and fig jam. So I went to Honest Weight Food Co-op, to find those two ingredients, and also found another ingredient that would work perfectly on my conception.

I put together a version with the same components but real (Boars Head – as real as I was going to get) proscuitto for Cassie, since she really didn’t like the duck proscuitto.

I sliced the smoked mozzarella and duck proscuitto nice and thin.

Got a loaf of sourdough bread from Cookie Factory in Troy, NY. (Mistake # 1)

I sliced the bread nice and thick, and added the fig jam to each internal side. I laid out the mozzarella on one side, and the duck proscuitto and arugula on the other.

I sandwiched this together and brushed both surfaces with olive oil.

Then I tried a technique that people on the Food Network have been claiming works like a charm. I heated a frying pan over medium and a cast iron pan on medium, and, once hot, put my sandwiches in the frying pan and used the cast iron pan to weight them down. (Mistake # 2)

Within 20 seconds, my sandwiches burned to an oblivion, and I didn’t get to eat my creation.

To explain the two mistakes above further, using a sliced bread didn’t provide enough insulation to keep it from burning. A successful panino uses a bread that has a good crust on the sides to be grilled. Lesson learned. Also, the cast iron pan was probably way too hot when I went to do this. Alright, lesson learned.

I used the rest of the bread, which was basically the ends, to make sandwiches (not grilled) for dinner that night.

It was delicious (perhaps the fig jam was a little sweet, but how could I know that when looking at it in the store?), but it would have been much better with the cheese melted and the fat from the proscuitto slightly rendered.

Next time, I guess. Or maybe not. Who knows?