This flatbread sandwich takes a page out of a steakhouse’s playbook, with juicy sautéed mushrooms, melty blue cheese, and steak, steak, and more steak. I ask you: what’s not to love about that? Oh, don’t forget a little leaf of bitter radicchio, just to add some crunch and offset the richness of everything else.
Since I’ve been growing radicchio in my garden this year, every time I’d visit, I couldn’t help but notice the plants just weren’t turning that deep shade of ruby red I’ve always loved. Instead, the meaty leaves were a very intentional pale green, even though they felt and tasted like radicchio.
I called up my best friend Michele, who was generous enough to share the seeds with me this spring. As it happened, the seeds she planted never came up in her garden, so that wasn’t much help in solving the mystery. Then she sent me a picture of the seed packet she had ordered. It turns out that this particular variety of radicchio was a little known type, Castelfranco, an heirloom plant, known for its…pale green leaves. (The ruby red variety you commonly see is called “Chioggia,” in case anyone wonders.)
Now that we knew what was growing, I decided to pick as much as I could before the lettuce bolted, or went to seed. What a meaty, thick leaf! And bitter, too, just like other kinds of radicchio I’ve tried.
We had so much, I had to add some to our impromptu dinner last night, made from leftovers from the weekend: a flatbread sandwich piled high with all the decadent flavors my better half loves. Don’t get me wrong, I love a stinky blue cheese as much as he does, and Cambazola melts so wonderfully that it’s a shoe-in for this steak recipe.
Run-of-the-mill button mushrooms can be sautéed in water or broth and added to salads, wraps, pizzas, all through the week, so those giant boxes you see at the store needn’t be intimidating. Just cook ’em up and save them for the week.
Sometimes, there’s nothing more satisfying than a sandwich, and a whole grain Foldit makes quite a nice sandwich indeed, turning leftovers into a gourmet meal in almost no time at all. We use a grill, grill pan, or a panini press to grill our sammies, depending on our mood, the time we have, or if it’s raining out. Nothing will get in the way of our flatbread sandwich hunger.
-Amy at Flatout
