Food 'n Flix -- Cuban Sandwiches and Lava Cakes (FF Appendix # 6)

Food 'n Flix is a group of bloggers who get together every month to watch a movie, and then head into the kitchen and mix up something inspired by the flick. 

There is always room for another pillow in front of the tellie, and another chair around the table. So if you're a blogger who wants to join in the fun, please feel free to jump in at any moment.

 March's Flick was chosen by Camilla from Culinary Adventures with Camilla.  She has chosen Chef.

I thought of making this grilled cheese sandwich:

I mean listen to the sound of that crunch!!! Look at how  that cheese melt pulls/strings out of the sandwich when he takes a bite!  (for some reason I couldn't embed the scene where he makes the grilled cheese.  It was AWESOME!!)

I LOVED THIS MOVIE!!

It was a great choice.

I couldn't make up my mind between Cuban Sandwiches  (obvious choice, I know) and Lava Cakes (because my good friend Mitzi makes them all the time and they are a great dessert!)

So I decided to do both. 

Believe it or not, I had never had a Cuban Sandwich before.  They were great.  I roasted a small pork roast and I finally got to use my grill press!
Which is a big thing since I paid for it about  6 months ago, but have never used it.

As I said-- I just loved this movie!!

It was such a feel good movie-- and if you're a foodie, you are in for a treat.

It's like foodie porn--watching this movie.

In the simplest form, it's about a high end chef who leaves his job and buys a food truck.  But it's so much more than that--it's about relationships too, between friends, parents and children, and wives and husbands.

It's good.

And yes, you will want to eat some amazing food after watching this.

A  recent conversation  at my house about being a foodie:

I made shrimp scampi the other night and I left the shells on the shrimp

(I did it to be ornery to the Handyman, but it does add more flavor)

2 of my sons and 1 daughter-in-law were also having dinner with us.

Handyman is complaining about having to remove the 'easy-peel' shells himself.

I say  foodie in a sentence.

One of my kids says "What is a foodie exactly"

I point to the Handyman, who is still complaining ... "he is not a foodie. He'll even eat a cheesecake out of a box"

I point to me... "I'll cook a roast with a bone-in because that's where you get most of the flavor--from the bone"  (Handyman hates to carve around a bone too).

Me/mom=foodie

Handyman/dad=non-foodie

Or something like that. 

He does like my cooking tho.

And he loved these Cuban Sandwiches!

As did I.

The recipe for these sandwiches is very simple.

Cuban Sandwiches

Compiled from many Googled sites, all are exactly the same, except some have mustard.

I chose the mustard.

1 pork roast (you can Google how to marinade and roast Cuban style if you'd like.  This one didn't say much about that, but I noticed in the movie, they did a marinade.)

I used this from Taste of Cuba dot com:

Ingredients:
4 slices of ham
4 slices roast pork
3 slices of Swiss cheese
3 or 4 pickle slices

Yellow mustard (not spicy or dijon)
1/3 cut Cuban bread hard crust (or French bread)

Instructions:

If you can get your hands on fresh, crusty Cuban bread, that would work best. But if not, you can also use a 12 to 16 inch loaf of French Bread, cut in half.

Cut your bread lengthwise into two pieces. Spread mustard on the inside of each half. Layer the ham slices on one piece of bread, then top with the roasted pork. If you don't have sliced pork, "pulled" style roast pork will also work (some restaurants heap it on). Add Swiss cheese on top of the pork, and then add the pickle slices.  Place the other piece of bread on top.

You have two options for cooking your sandwich if you are using an electric sandwich press.  The first option is to use cooking spray on the press before placing the sandwich inside. The tastier option is to brush soft butter on the outside of both pieces of bread.  You will find that it's much easier to spread the butter on the outside of the bread before you actually start adding meat.

Place the sandwich inside of a pre-heated Cuban sandwich press, and press down firmly until the cheese has melted, and the bread is slightly hard to the touch.  If you don't have a press, you can place the sandwich in a hot skillet on the stove, and then press the sandwich down with another frying pan.  Some people, believe or not, use a brick wrapped in tin foil when nothing else is available. 

When finished, the sandwich should be flattened down to less than half the original size.  Slice the sandwich diagonally across the middle, so that you have two triangle-shaped wedges. Buen Provecho! Serves 1.

Yummy!!

Moving on to my 2nd choice from the movie--

Chocolate Lava Cakes!

For the 3 of you who read this blog, you will remember that I have a homemade cookbook, which we will call The Friday Friend Cookbook, complete with recipes sent in by my good friends, far and near.  I call them the Friday Friends.

And I am in the process of making every single recipe in that cookbook and blogging about it?  (See that here) and then talking mostly about my friends, and not so much about the recipe, because, let's face it--I like them a lot!

Anyway,  this recipe should have been in that cookbook, but wasn't.

so I am adding it to an appendix.

This is the 5th one that should have been in my cookbook, but wasn't.

Mitzi's Lava Cakes.

I had to laugh, because in the movie, the critic suggested that Lava Cakes were kind of 'hum drum' fare.

I beg to differ!!

These are great.

And easy to make.

I accidentally cooked mine a bit too long.

Mitzi never, EVER cooks her's too long.

She has just the right amount of 'lava'.

 FF Appendix #6  (those recipes which should have been in the Friday Friend Cookbook, but weren't)

Mitzi's Chocolate Lava Cakes

inspired by the movie Chef for Food 'n Flix

She has the addition of instant coffee, which I think is a great taste combination,  chocolate and coffee.

So these are like little molten mocha cakes.

In Mitzi's own handwriting...

In a weird turn of events --- I noticed that Mitzi says she got this from Taste of Home Cooking School in 2008?

I blogged about that.   

In October 2008!

I'll wait till you click on that link.

Isn't that too funny?

Now you can meet my friend Mitzi!

You can click here to see all her posts.

And then you will see that she is an outdoor girl!

I have posts/pictures of her with a snake, with fish, and with birds.

So I thought I'd go back about 9 years to the time we set off to find a waterfall in Northern Nevada!  It's hard to do, but we managed.

We went on a hike to Horse Falls.

The Handyman fell. He fell onto his thumb.  He couldn't do much all day, but he never complained. But if you look in the pictures,  you'll see him holding his hand funny.

Oh...this is about Mitzi, NOT the Handyman.

~grins~

Us before the hike

We were empty nesters

The Storms were not

They had two little boys to take along.

I was up for that, because while I do like to hike, I am slower than everyone and I figured with a two 1/2 year old and a baby, I wouldn't be the slowest.

Hiking in Nevada looks like this...

Beautiful!

Both the waterfall in Nevada and Mitzi!

Funky thumb!

I think he has ice on it ---in the hand he's holding the cup in.

He seriously jammed it bad!

And that's my story!

For Food 'n Flix

and 

for my Friday Friend!