I'm told this is an Amalfi sandwich

Yesterday one of my hard-core foodie friends, Jill, posted a photo on Facebook of her Amalfi sandwich from Paninoteca Maggio in Santa Ana, Calif. (We're friends from my newspaper days -- she works at the Orange County Register -- and now have even more in common because we each have a blond male toddler.)

The Amalfi has proscuitto, tomatoes, mozzarella, mixed greens, basil pesto and a balsamic glaze on ciabatta roll.

It sounds pretty good, right? I thought then, "Hmmm, I could make that myself," and tonight I decided to do just that.

Mine's a little simplified, unfortunately. I only had sandwhich bread, which I toasted. The only tomatoes I had were the cherry variety, so I quartered them and marinated them in balsamic vinegar (because I didn't want to take the time to creat a glaze). I didn't have any greens or lettuce on hand, so I skipped that. I used proscuitto cotto (which is cooked, as opposed to proscuitto crudo, which isn't, although I don't know which kind the original sandwich had), local mozzarella (which I almost always have on hand) and pesto (which I literally always have because Owen can eat it by the jar).

The result wasn't super-pretty -- those little tomatoes were super-messy -- but it was dang good.

Want to be inspired by Jill, too? Often her work appears in the Orange County Register's Food section (scroll down to the Eating In section of the main page).