Grilled Cheese with Spinach and Pancetta

I've made this recipe twice-- it's that good! Thank you, Giada! Here is the recipe: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/giada-de-laurentiis/grilled-cheese-with-spinach-and-pancetta-recipe/index.html with video! So you can watch her make it. Watching someone first helps. Of course this episode was for a children's party and that's where my taste buds are at! You can serve this as a grown up grilled cheese or as a kiddie grilled cheese-- how cool is that?! Grown up because it is more than cheese, butter, and bread. Kiddie because of the hidden spinach in there (one lady wrote under the comments section that she told her daughter these were special princess fiona sandwiches-- how cute!)

This is pretty easy to make but you use a lot of things so the clean up part takes a while. A food processor is a must in this or else it is really hard to combine the cheese and the spinach. I bought a block of cheese and shreaded it by hand because a) it's cheaper b) gave me a little arm workout! I had to cut this recipe down to serve two (basically 1/2 a cup of everything instead of 2 cups). Still worked out well and you can change this recipe up to fit your preferences. You can change the kind of cheeses, use one or many different cheeses, use bacon instead on pancetta, etc. A quick tip, I put the pancetta it some paper towels to soak up the grease, rolled up the paper towel and smushed it-- makes the pancetta crumble easier. The recipe also says to use a panini maker to grill the sandwiches but you can just use a pan (like you do with regular grilled cheese). I used my george foreman grill (love it!). If you have a george foreman grill and want to use it with this recipe be careful because they cook really fast-- less than two minutes-- with the grilled already heated.

Something new: I had never heard of pancetta before this year-- I'm also excited to be learning about new food in this project! Pancetta taste almost exactly like bacon and has the same texture (both come from a pig). Even though I've never heard of it before, you can find pancetta at most grocery stores --I've found it with the deli meats. Of course it's good but the down side is it's a little pricey (probably because it's not used much over here-- it's used in Europe). Even Giada's Aunt said she uses bacon over here instead of pancetta because bacon is more avaliable.

Health Thoughts: This recipe calls for a whole stick of butter and vegetable oil which is a lot of fat. I used a just tablespoon of butter the first time I cooked this dish to make sure the mixture would spread, which it did. I tried it the second time just using a bit more than a tablespoon of vegetable oil and no butter and the recipe still worked out well! If you are looking to save some calories I would nix the butter!

Enjoy! I sure did!

Here's the pretty princess fiona sandwich!: