Somewhere out there, people are making meatballs with no meat, which seems oddly disturbing to me. At least call them something else :-). This sandwich, however, has genuine meaty meatballs (danish Frikadeller), plus no less than two cheeses, and a bit of the brilliantly hot Chinese black bean chili sauce which we have found really useful for sandwiches when used modestly.
When all you want is a quick snack, this is a tasty in-between meals treat. The yogurt cheese and the capers make a nice pairing for the smoked salmon, and that’s really all there is to it. Very easy to make if you are hosting a party, or have friends dropping by, as long as you have prepared the yogurt for the yogurt cheese the day before.
Continue reading Cracker Topped with Yogurt Cheese, Smoked Salmon and Capers (Appetizer)
After making Parmesan crisps a few days ago, I had a visions of sandwiches all somehow incorporating the crisps. Well, some turned our better than other, and here we stick to what we think are the amazing ones. This one is with a favorite ingredient, mashed potatoes, topped with a bit of sun dried tomato pesto we threw together (recipe to come), green onions, a few leaves of sweet basil from the garden, and of course the Parmesan to top it off.
By the way, if you have read a lot of our recipes, you’ll notice quite a few are on ‘rustic white bread’. For us, this means homemade bread made from more than 90% white flour. It may have extras, such as olives, cumin seeds, blue cheese, etc, but it’s essentially a white bread. What makes it rustic is that it looks, well, rustic. We’ll post a recipe later, but it’s quite involved and usually takes between 1-3 days to make, including sometimes pate fermente, biga or levain.
This sandwich we have named “Bambi” because she seems to be strutting her stuff all over the place, hoping to get picked up.
We love lavash crackers, and I mean really love them, and we’ll typically eat them just plain. Sometimes though, it’s good to add a little extra, and since we were grilling vegetables yesterday, we thought this little appetizer would be a great way to use the lavash. In this case we didn’t score the lavash before baking so instead we broke it into large rustic pieces. That’s another great way of presenting them, and of course with bigger pieces comes the opportunity to layer other ingredients on top.
Continue reading Lavash Cracker Appetizer with Olive Tapenade, Grilled Squash and Roasted Garlic
What do you do when life gives you fried chicken? Well, our answer is to make fried chicken sandwiches of course (What else would you expect from this blog). This is a great ‘leftover’ sandwich for the day after, and as you can see we added a little bit of everything (including pasta, which we can consider optional, but we had to try). If you wonder why the cheese is melting up, it’s because we toasted the bread opened, and then put the top on :-). This is also one of those sandwiches that require an extra hour on the treadmill afterwards, so proceed at your own risk.
This is an old favorite of mine, going back to my college years. At my dorm, one of my friends’ dad worked for a large company that delivered meats and groceries for supermarkets. As a result, they were sent huge amounts of samples, which they stored in two large freezers. When he visited the dorm, he filled his car with samples for us all to enjoy. This included giant steaks, fast food pizzas, and meats of all types. So while my life up until then consisted of pizzas and chili, this was a challenge. You can’t just plop a steak in the microwave and eat it, so all we could really do was learn how to cook it right. As a consequence, our ‘kitchen’ began evolving some pretty advanced culinary tastes, and soon started to realize that there is more to life than fast-food pizza, and cooking is not really all that hard. One of the results of that time is this dressing, which we made to accompany a batch of frozen falafel. It’s easy, and complements both the falafel, but also meats very well. We will be using it in a few sandwiches soon to be released.
Continue reading Paprika Yogurt Dressing with Red Bell Peppers, Curry, Mustard and Parsley
I always loved the concept of being able to make our own cheeses, I mean, imagine the possibilities! Beer cheese, roasted garlic cheese, extra smelly poppy seed cheese, and then reality usually sets in. I have no clue how to make ‘real’ cheese, and while that may be a project worth pursuing someday, it’s not something you can whip together Thursday night. This is when Yogurt Cheeses comes in handy. Not really a cheese, they are easy to make, very light, and you can add whatever stuff you like. Oh, and they taste great of course. The recipe is dead simple, the cheese is cheap (if you’re on a budget), and you can use it for appetizers, snacks or just plain cream cheese sandwiches. Enjoy.
Continue reading Homemade Light Yogurt Cheese with Green Onions and Roasted Garlic
This kafta sandwich is very spicy due to the black bean chili. We wanted to create something with more ‘umph’ to it, but also something fresh. So we came up with adding lemon and yogurt dressing to take the edge of the chili, and the combination really worked well. This sandwich will make your hair grow long and strong, and turn boys to men and men to sheep. It also goes well with any episode of Law & Order.
At our favorite shawarma shop on Strøget in Copenhagen, known as Shawarma #1 (presumably because the address is at #1, but also because it was the first shawarma shop in Copenhagen anno 1980), one of our favorite sandwiches is the kafta burger. When ordered, you must wait patiently while the patties grill for 10-15 minutes and frequently ask yourself “did they forget me?” In 20 years, they have never forgotten me, and the wait is always worthwhile.
Living in San Diego, we wanted a way to re-create our own version of the kafta burger. So, we created this recipe, which is a mix of several other recipes found online. We wanted our own unique blend of spices; More spicy, more parsley, and of course with fennel.
Open faced sandwiches can be beautifully stacked creations, but when squeezed into a lunch-bag, carried by 10-year olds biking to school in a backpack and thrown in a community refrigerator, open-faced sandwiches may not be the first choice of lunch.
Not so for my mom. She was a firm believer in open-faced sandwiches and made them as if I was eating at home, except, she wrapped them tight in cellophane wrap before stacking them in my lunch box.
As you might image, the end result was not always… appetizing. Cod roe sandwiches with remoulade and fried onions turned into cud roe salad with wet soggy onions. A once tantalizing potato sandwich with mayonnaise and green onions turned into something wet and soggy, almost like paste.
This sandwich, a cod roe creation, is my own personal rebellion against my childhoods school sandwiches. I reject the cellophane wrap method, and embrace exuberance.
Continue reading ‘The Hallelujah’ Cod Roe Sandwich with Parmesan Crisp