They tell me it’s National Sandwich Month. I’m ready to celebrate, as I’m a carboholic and wrapping food, especially cheese, in bread is sort of my favorite thing. I think I can get into this. Let’s celebrate.
August also means it’s time to go back to school. When I was a teacher this meant that the rest of my life completely fell apart. After the slow long summer evenings, the shock of returning to work left me exhausted. Putting my high heels back on left my feet stupid tired. Cooking dinner was pretty much the last thing I wanted to do. Grilled cheese seems doable. And delicious. And almost as comforting as a pillow.
And here’s a crazy thing. This grilled cheese has a vegetable. What? Yes, that’s spinach in there. Between two slices of melty provolone is a blend of ricotta, parmesan, and chopped spinach. You’re gonna have bulging forearms in a second. Watch out!
This grilled cheese has all the gooey wonderfulness of a calzone without that whole yeast dough folding baking taking forever making your kitchen hot thing. Plus, dipped in tomato soup, as all grilled cheese sandwiches should be, it’s almost like dipping your calzone in marinara sauce. And there’s crunchy bread. It’s pretty awesome.
Happy Sandwich Month! Crunchy, gooey, wonderful. Do it!
- 1 box frozen spinach, thawed
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 clove garlic, finely chopped
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 10 grinds pepper
- 2 shakes ground nutmeg
- 1 cup ricotta cheese
- 1/3 cup shaved parmesan (or grated, use what you have)
- 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
- butter, softened
- 8 slices sandwich bread
- 8 slices provolone
- Ring out as much water as possible from your thawed spinach.
- In a skillet, add oil and heat to medium. Cook garlic for about a minute or until you start to smell it.
- Add spinach and break it up in the pan. Season with salt, pepper, and nutmeg and cook until heated through.
- In a small mixing bowl, mix spinach and garlic, ricotta and parmesan cheeses, and oregano. Adjust seasonings if needed.
- Place a slice of provolone on one piece of bread, spread two or three heaping spoonfuls of spinach ricotta mixture over bread. Top with another slice of provolone and then your second piece of bread.
- Butter the outside of one piece of bread and place your sandwich, butter side down, in a skillet over medium heat.
- While cooking, butter the outside of the other side of the sandwich.
- Cook 3 to 5 minutes per side.
- Cut in half, dip in soup, and see how far you can stretch your cheese.
Don’t miss my all time favorite, cholesterol sandwich.
Freaking yum! And yeah, even before you identified it as such, I was all, “What?! Renee put spinach in her grilled cheese?!” You are full of surprises, my dear. A veggie-hater, and then you go for spinach, a veggie royal. 🙂
When I was writing this post, I thought, “Hey, this is something I could make for Monica!” Glad you liked it. 🙂
OMG I could dive right into this!!
Mahalo! It’s rare that I eat something with vegetables, so you know it’s gotta be good.