Creole Crumble Panino

This is my first Bloggo Posto, and it's one of my favorite panino recipes yet. It's called a Creole Crumble because is Creolish and because "Crumble" makes it an alliteration, which is catchy. You'll sound cool to all your chums.

Ingredients:
Some red bell pepper, some onion (preferably red, but do whatever you like. I like red best because it's most flavorful, and for this recipe it's nice to be able to taste all the distinct flavors), a mushroom or two, cheese, Creole seasoning, and most importantly, a Lousiana Hot sausage. Most of the ingredients are pictured below. You can't tell from looking, but the red onion is oozing and smells bad. That's okay for this recipe; in fact I think it might even help. You'll notice the perfect panino-shaped bread. I made that bread specifically for panino-purposes. Later I'm gonna show how I make it even more panino-friendly. If I find the perfect panino-bread recipe, I'll post it, but until then use whatever tickles your pickle. Or not.



Procedure:
Dice all your vegetables and your sausage, making sure to put equal amounts of everything into your bowl (you should have a bowl out at this point. A cup works in a pinch), except you can lay the sausage on a little heavy, if you're of that inclination. It should look like the picture (the stuff in the bowl, not the bowl itself)


Now that you've made a mess of perfectly good-looking vegetables, you're probably wondering how you're going to salvage the sausage. The answer is that you're going to sautee the whole bowl of stuff (again, not the bowl itself, but the contents of said bowl) and it'll end up tasting good. You'll see when you get there. You only need a little bit of butter; you don't want it to get too greasy (but if, like me, you have a really bad pan, put as much butter as you need so that the stuff doesn't stick to the bottom) As you sautee, don't be shy with the pepper and salt. If you look at the next picture, you'll notice that I'm taking time away from stirring specifically to put on pepper. Pepper is very important.


Sautee until it has had time to sizzle in the sausage-juices and looks somewhat uniform in color. Don't worry if you don't like hot stuff (well, you should worry that you're insane and will never fully appreciate the wonders of that which is food, but you shouldn't worry about being bothered) because the hotness of the sausages should spread throughout the sandwich, making the whole experience milder. Scrape the brown stuff (the stuff that used to look nice until you cut it up and threw it in a pan) onto your panino-bread. A tip for all beginning Panino Artistes: don't be afraid to pile the panino-stuffing high. When you close the panino machino, it'll squish almost anything down, so you can put mountains of stuff in there and still end up with a manageable sandwich. In the next picture, you'll see that I didn't put all that much stuff in there. I could've balanced twice that amount and still have a structurally sound panino.

Yum. But don't eat it yet, it's still just a sandwich. It must be sealed and panino'd before it will become a real panino. The sealant is basically just cheese, but it can be anything that will melt and then solidify halfway. I used cheddar, but mostly because I didn't have swiss or provolone. I'd be open to using something even more fancy than provolone, but I don't think I've run into anything more fancy. Anyways, you wanna cheese it (I once had the job of cheesing omelettes while my boss cooked them. He would say "Cheese it, Cheezit!" and then laugh, and then after a while he'd say it again when someone new was watching. Therefore: I am an expert in cheesing things) and then when it's been properly cheesed, you're almost done. All that's left is to put it in your machino, but first, you can't skimp on the Creole seasoning. I've actually replaced my salt shaker with a Creole seasoning shaker. It's just that life-changing. Below you will see the Creole seasoning above a cheesed panino. (By the way, the Panino Machino should be warmed up by now. Sorry if I forgot to mention it before)



Now it's time. Hopefully you've restrained yourself long enough to put the sandwich in the Panino Machino, but if not, I sometimes have the same problem. It's okay to make another one, especially if you're on a diet; this way, you can say that you only made one, while really you've eaten two. Anyways, brush the sandwhich lightly with Olive oil on each side, and then put it in and look through the little crack to see if the cheese has melted. Once the cheese melts, turn the dial to the hottest setting, and wait for the perfect golden color, then open the Machino, put your panino on a plate, and serve with cold Pepsi.