I do not understand why panini (plural?) are meant to be so great. I don't know if you've read 'Is it just me or is everything shit' but it does bemoan the rise of overpriced toast. Panini is quite definitely the emperor's new toast.
If you ordered any meal in a restaurant - let's say a moussaka or a cheesecake or a caesar salad, with beautiful fresh ingredients and combinations of flavours and textures, and they brought it to you smooshed to a depth of 4mm with 240 degree centrigrade oil dripping out the sides you'd rightly have a little tantrum. You'd say something to the effect of 'Garcon! Noooo! What the flump did you do to my food?' And the correct answer would be 'We killed it for you.'
In the UK we like to buy slices of the that super soft white bread with no discernible nutrients. Nimbostratus like our Summer. As a girl I loved to roll a slice into a tiny ball in my hand. But I was told off for that, as well I ought to have been. Bread should not be smooshed. It is a crime against bakery.
4 comments:
I do not like panini, either. They seem to me like a bastardization of good old fashioned grilled cheese, but more expensive.
Guilty, sort of. For the price of three loaves of bread, I buy eight paper thin "sandwich thins". In my defense, they are high in fiber and low in carbs, and I'm not likely to eat half a loaf of bread if I don't have it lying about.
I used to squish the white bread too, but I'd squish it flat with the bottom of my cup and call it Eucharist. My parents had no problem with this.
Gina - grilled cheese is called cheese on toast. Really it's sort of toasted cheese on toast.
Christina - Sandwich thins? I must google this forthwith...
Your post made me laugh, and reminded me of this diner-type joint in the wretched town of Princeton, New Jersey which I endured for much of graduate school. I mean, I endured the town. Not the diner so much.
They'd been in business forever but decided to get with the times and stop only serving burgers and pot pies and chicken steaks and other foods vaguely reminiscent of the 1950s. So they busted out the panini, and ordered a new sandwich board sign to plop out on the curb to commemorate the occasion. It read: Homemade "paninis" served all day.
[image here: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_8CBMotmaWfA/SuZ4e5Y-ROI/AAAAAAAAEh0/yXCYOIL1IbU/s640/IMG_1577.JPG]
It was as if the whole concept of the panini was so mind-boggling to them that they had to put it in unnecessary scare quotes. And pluralize it two-fold.
I am sorry I don't know how to turn that image into a fancy, clickable link. Now who needs to get with the times? This lady does.
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