Grilled Mediteranean Vegetable Sandwich

Here's another restaurant favorite that I felt like trying at home - the Grilled Vegetable Foccaccia Sandwich. From the menu, it looked relatively easy to make. Bake some bread, marinate and grill some veggies, make a quick spread and what you have is one satisfying cheap meal. Here's the breakdown ..

1 loaf ciabatta or foccacia bread
Fontina and/or mozzarella cheese per taste (I used spicy Cabot pepper jack cheese)
1 portabello mushroom, sliced lengthwise
1/4 eggplant, sliced and then halved
1/2 onion, sliced lengthwise
1/4 green and red bell pepper each, sliced lengthwise
Handful of fresh spinach leaves
Few slices of tomato
1/4 tsp mustard
Homemade Spicy sundried tomato aioli chutney

Vegetable Marinade:
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1/2 tbsp mustard
Salt and pepper to taste
1 shallot or red onion, diced very finely

1. Mix the ingredients for marinade together in a small bowl. Then coat the vegetables with the marinade. I marinated the eggplant in a separate bowl. The veggies were marinated for a short time, about 20 minutes. If you have the time, the longer the better.
2. Next, grill the veggies in a nonstick skillet. WE used the cast iron skillet that we have, and they marinated in about 3-4 minutes on each side.
3. While the veggies were marinating, toast the bread in a preheated oven for about 5 minutes. Take the bread out, but leave the oven on. On one side of the bread, lay out the cheese. On other side, lather on the sundried tomato aioli chutney. Place the bread back in for 2-3 minutes to melt the cheese.
4. After the bread is nice and toasty, layer the following on top of the melted cheese: spinach, tomato and grilled vegetables. Lastly, apply a few dots of mustard and close your sandwich.
5. Serve your Grilled Mediterranean Vegetable Sandwich with a Greek salad and you are good to go!

One quick note and shoutout: The vegetable marinade is nothing more than some balsamic vinegarette salad dressing that I made the day before. Who knew it would serve a dual purpose. (It was B's idea to marinate the veggies.)

This sandwich tasted absolutely scrumptious. Not only that, it was super-filling. I've never tasted the one on the CPK menu so I have no idea how this compares. Since our version turned out so well at home, I think we will be having this quite often. The only thing we would change, though, is maybe leave the eggplant out. B found it bitter. I couldn't tell and actually liked the addition of the eggplant. I guess we will see what happens next time. For now, here's another look at the yummy goodness!!