As the end of the spring term comes to an end so does the school year. This blog post is the final one for the Humanities class in my freshman year. It is also the third and last post for the class Food For Thought. This action project took place in some little time and not so long after the previous AP for this class. In this unit we have studied the different methods of farming and we watched the documentary Food Inc. In Food Inc. we began to learn about the industrial production of food including some of the negatives and positives that come from it. We learned about how food has changed and what different ingredients are in food and what the are in our food labels. In this unit we also has a small taste test of different foods we found in our kitchen and how to describe them by not saying they are just delicious which would be very useful in the action project. This action project focused on how to determine whether there is a difference in taste between organically and non-organically produced food, and between fresh and processed food. We were asked to find a dish that had some significance to us that could be found from a restaurant and additionally recreated in our homes. The dish I chose to work on for this AP was a turkey club panini from a restaurant chain a block and a half away from my house.
Take-out Version:The first part of this Action project was to identify a food we enjoy and can recreate. The food I chose is a turkey club panini. When I was first introduced to this sandwich I had tried it at the Great American Bagel restaurant just down the street from my house in Chicago. The Great American Bagel is a private owned restaurant franchise that started in 1987. They sell different types of house-made bagels and cream cheese as well as sandwiches, salads, and other foods revolving around bagels. The turkey club panini is my favorite dish on their menu but I enjoy many of their bagels. The bagels that they produce have a range of different flavors and styles. They have the usual plain, poppy-seed, and wheat bagels but they also have some really good bagels like the blueberry, cinnamon raisin, the everything bagel, and jalapeno cheddar. Great American Bagel also has many different types of cream cheese. The turkey club panini I get includes turkey, bacon, tomato, and provolone cheese. I also get the sandwich on a plain baguette. When looking at this panini you can see the nice even line splitting the sandwich in half and how all of the ingredients are neatly stacked on top of one another. You may also see some steam coming off of the sandwich if it has just been presented to you. I did not have the liberty to do this because of our current global pandemic which keeps us from dining in. When scanning over the panini before taking the first bite you may hear the sizzling of the cheese against the bacon or the turkey. Every bite of the panini makes you hear a soft crunch as you break through the bread and into the middle of the sandwich.
Describing the Ingredients:
The Bagel
n this panini the bread was slightly crispy on the outside and you could see the light grill marks on the crust after it had been pressed. On the inside the bagel was very light and fluffy. When biting into the sandwich it would be nice and chewy and the bread would soak up the flavors from the other ingredients in the middle. The bread wouldn’t become completely soggy but only enough to chew on the bread alone and be able to taste a soft mixture of the cheese, tomato, turkey, and bacon juices.
The Meat
The meat in this sandwich would be the bacon and the turkey. The fresh turkey is evenly sliced and layered. The juices from the turkey and bacon are blended together and seep into the bread and cheese. The one slice of bacon per half of the panini and the layered few for the turkey were even in flavor but unique tasting in their own way.
The Cheese
The provolone cheese can become an icing on the cake that completes the proteins in this panini. It is softly melted into the bagel and the other insides adding a combination of flavors and not just one per ingredient that you taste.
The Tomato
The tomato is a hint of sweetness that allows the panini to stray from being completely meaty or full. The freshness of the tomato is what makes the sandwich a delight. The two thin cut slices make its presence not too overwhelming but enough to extract the sweeter flavor in the sandwich. When eating the panini very soon after it has been prepared, the cool taste of the tomato that is still adjusting to the cooked temperature is a nice contrast in the different tastes one can get from the panini.
My Homemade Version:
Take-out Version:The first part of this Action project was to identify a food we enjoy and can recreate. The food I chose is a turkey club panini. When I was first introduced to this sandwich I had tried it at the Great American Bagel restaurant just down the street from my house in Chicago. The Great American Bagel is a private owned restaurant franchise that started in 1987. They sell different types of house-made bagels and cream cheese as well as sandwiches, salads, and other foods revolving around bagels. The turkey club panini is my favorite dish on their menu but I enjoy many of their bagels. The bagels that they produce have a range of different flavors and styles. They have the usual plain, poppy-seed, and wheat bagels but they also have some really good bagels like the blueberry, cinnamon raisin, the everything bagel, and jalapeno cheddar. Great American Bagel also has many different types of cream cheese. The turkey club panini I get includes turkey, bacon, tomato, and provolone cheese. I also get the sandwich on a plain baguette. When looking at this panini you can see the nice even line splitting the sandwich in half and how all of the ingredients are neatly stacked on top of one another. You may also see some steam coming off of the sandwich if it has just been presented to you. I did not have the liberty to do this because of our current global pandemic which keeps us from dining in. When scanning over the panini before taking the first bite you may hear the sizzling of the cheese against the bacon or the turkey. Every bite of the panini makes you hear a soft crunch as you break through the bread and into the middle of the sandwich.
Describing the Ingredients:
The Bagel
n this panini the bread was slightly crispy on the outside and you could see the light grill marks on the crust after it had been pressed. On the inside the bagel was very light and fluffy. When biting into the sandwich it would be nice and chewy and the bread would soak up the flavors from the other ingredients in the middle. The bread wouldn’t become completely soggy but only enough to chew on the bread alone and be able to taste a soft mixture of the cheese, tomato, turkey, and bacon juices.
The Meat
The meat in this sandwich would be the bacon and the turkey. The fresh turkey is evenly sliced and layered. The juices from the turkey and bacon are blended together and seep into the bread and cheese. The one slice of bacon per half of the panini and the layered few for the turkey were even in flavor but unique tasting in their own way.
The Cheese
The provolone cheese can become an icing on the cake that completes the proteins in this panini. It is softly melted into the bagel and the other insides adding a combination of flavors and not just one per ingredient that you taste.
The Tomato
The tomato is a hint of sweetness that allows the panini to stray from being completely meaty or full. The freshness of the tomato is what makes the sandwich a delight. The two thin cut slices make its presence not too overwhelming but enough to extract the sweeter flavor in the sandwich. When eating the panini very soon after it has been prepared, the cool taste of the tomato that is still adjusting to the cooked temperature is a nice contrast in the different tastes one can get from the panini.
My Homemade Version:
When I first went to the Great American Bagel I ordered the turkey club panini just to try it out. I thought it was very interesting that someone thought of putting an ordinary sandwich on a bagel and turning it into a panini. After taking the first bite I began to feel this was a well made sandwich. My history of a turkey club panini isn’t very long but I really enjoyed the sandwich and started coming back to the restaurant every so often. The panini became one of those dishes that you order every time when going to a restaurant you enjoy. For this action project we were asked to create our own copy of that dish we selected. For my version of the panini I used the same ingredients as the original recipe but switched out provolone cheese with swiss because I didn’t have provolone cheese. This was a good experience for me because I was helped with using our grill and learning how to grill bacon. The bagel I used was not in the same baguette shape the original panini is but it was close enough. I started out by grilling the bacon since that would take the longest to make. Shortly after the bacon was finished I began to lightly toast the bagel. When that was finished I added the cheese and turkey to both sides and put that back in our toaster oven. While that happened I cut some of a tomato for the sandwich and when everything was done I put the panini together and took a nice picture. Most of the ingredients in the dish are fresh and the turkey is minimally processed which means only a small amount of the company is creating their meats industrially. This is connected to one of Michael Pollan’s food transformations which is quality to quantity.
After the panini was complete you could see how the ingredients were neatly stacked with a precise cut down the middle. There is a warm, welcoming aroma that greets you when picking up the panini. The taste reminded me of the original sandwich. Even by only taking a soft bite into the panini, you could break through the bagel and the ingredients in the middle with ease. The toasted bagel was only slightly crispy at the very center on the top and the rim of the inside had a small crunch. When the whole sandwich was together the cheese began to slowly melt into the bread and tomato. The bacon had a rough texture but from grilling off the fat, the bacon had a more meaty flavor. The juices from the tomato blended smoothly into the turkey. The cheese also stretched from the panini after taking a bite and pulling the sandwich away.
I still prefer the panini from Great American Bagel but the recreation that I made looked really good and I want to make it again. I really enjoyed how my version turned out. I did not expect that I could make the sandwich look similar to the restaurant’s panini but I managed to get close. The biggest difference between the two dishes was the change in cheese on my part. I did not have provolone cheese so I had to use swiss cheese and that isn’t too far off from each other. I would recommend having the actual panini from the Great American Bagel restaurant just because they use their own bagels and there are a few different bagel types to choose from as your bread. I did not have a panini maker and used a toaster oven so having a panini maker used for a panini is better than not having one. The turkey club panini isn’t very hard to make and is quite simple to put together so if you want to make it on your own it is completely doable.
I had a lot of fun working on this AP. It was a little rushed being right at the end of the term and I wish that a little more time would have been available to make this feel complete. I enjoyed the taste test with my peers and it was cool to see what foods they had chosen to try out by themselves. It would have been better if we were in our actual school building but we are still in the midst of the global pandemic and it is not fully safe to have the school in full function. It is sad that this is already the end of the school year. I feel like this term went by much faster than the other two but we have not had as long workdays during the week and we are being educated through video calling. I enjoyed this term and I especially enjoyed my freshman year at GCE. It has been a wonderful experience and I can't wait to go back for year 10 in a few months time. The time off during summer will definitely be a good break though. Thank you for reading.
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| My Panini, GS 2020 |
I still prefer the panini from Great American Bagel but the recreation that I made looked really good and I want to make it again. I really enjoyed how my version turned out. I did not expect that I could make the sandwich look similar to the restaurant’s panini but I managed to get close. The biggest difference between the two dishes was the change in cheese on my part. I did not have provolone cheese so I had to use swiss cheese and that isn’t too far off from each other. I would recommend having the actual panini from the Great American Bagel restaurant just because they use their own bagels and there are a few different bagel types to choose from as your bread. I did not have a panini maker and used a toaster oven so having a panini maker used for a panini is better than not having one. The turkey club panini isn’t very hard to make and is quite simple to put together so if you want to make it on your own it is completely doable.
I had a lot of fun working on this AP. It was a little rushed being right at the end of the term and I wish that a little more time would have been available to make this feel complete. I enjoyed the taste test with my peers and it was cool to see what foods they had chosen to try out by themselves. It would have been better if we were in our actual school building but we are still in the midst of the global pandemic and it is not fully safe to have the school in full function. It is sad that this is already the end of the school year. I feel like this term went by much faster than the other two but we have not had as long workdays during the week and we are being educated through video calling. I enjoyed this term and I especially enjoyed my freshman year at GCE. It has been a wonderful experience and I can't wait to go back for year 10 in a few months time. The time off during summer will definitely be a good break though. Thank you for reading.
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