Philly Cheesesteak Sloppy Joe Sliders

I love cheesesteaks.  I've even been to Philadelphia before but not tried a cheesesteak.  I think it's to preserve the cheesesteaks I actually eat as somewhat authentic.  So anyway, I saw this recipe on Pinterest and got super excited.  I think this is an okay recipe but not nearly as amazing as I'd built it up in my mind.  Also, I want my sloppy joe's to be nice and sloppy.  This was more of a loose meat sandwich (which is a terrible name for a sandwich because nothing sounds appetizing about loose meat) so they were messy.

The original recipe comes from Blogchef.net and I opted not to make the cheese sauce, instead I just put 1/4 of a slice of provolone on my sliders.

Ingredients:

1 Tbsp olive oil
1 lb ground beef
1 onion, chopped
1 bell pepper, chopped
1/4 cup steak sauce
1 cup beef broth
salt and pepper
slider buns
provolone slices

Heat olive oil in a large frying pan over medium heat.  Add ground beef and cook until mostly browned, breaking up pieces.  Add the chopped onion and bell pepper and cook until the onions become soft.  Add salt and pepper.  Stir in steak sauce and beef broth and simmer until slightly thickened, probably 7 minutes.  Taste and add more salt or pepper if needed.  Scoop onto slider buns and top with 1/4 slice of provolone cheese.

Recipe from blogchef.net

Thanksgiving sandwich

My company gives us a free turkey in December.  Because we were travelling for the holidays, I didn't have a chance to make the turkey until this past weekend so we're eating Thanksgiving sandwiches in February.  Wheatfields Bakery in my hometown makes this amazing sandwich with turkey, mixed greens and cranberry sauce on their Walnut Sage bread that is truly a work of art.  We don't have a Wheatfields here so I made my version of their sandwich and it turned out pretty well.















Ingredients:

Turkey breast
artisan bread (this is La Brea Rosemary Olive Oil bread I found at Kroger)
mayonnaise
spicy brown mustard
Ocean Spray whole berry cranberry sauce
baby spinach

Warm up your turkey so it isn't fresh-from-the-fridge cold.  Spread mayo on both slices of bread and the brown mustard on one of the slices.  Put the turkey on the mayo/mustard slice, then cranberry sauce and baby spinach.  Put your other slice of bread on, slice it in half and devour.  This is one of those super simple dishes that packs quite a bit of flavor.  And it was nice to have the sandwich in February because I had some time to de-turkey a bit from the holidays.

Hot turkey and cheese

Originally I had planned to make this post several days ago, but I got home Wednesday night and my bread was moldy... and I was too lazy to go buy more. Today I wanted to fulfill my sandwich fantasies. I wanted to make a fancy sandwich and had lots of grand ideas so I decided that a panini was the way to go. Because panini is such a fun word.

I wanted to model something on the ham, brie and apple sandwich at Dean and Deluca. I love that sandwich.  So to make it my own I used turkey (not pictured), and some really sharp cheddar cheese, sliced a little apple and then I broke out the Foreman... (...dirty dishes artfully cropped from the shot...)

I grilled that sucker up and it looked quite tasty!

And it was pretty good, but it didn't live up to what I thought I was making. What I originally intended to be a fancy, fruity panini turned out to be a plain old hot turkey and cheese sandwich. Meh face.

I think where I went wrong was heating it up. The warm apple just didn't taste like much of anything. I actually think that the sandwich would have been better cold, then the apple would have still been crisp and the cheese would have still been sharp. And maybe ham would have been a better choice than turkey. Or something that wasn't cold cuts from a package!

So I give it about a C... not bad, but I wouldn't make it again without some further experimentation.