Category Archives: Food

All food entries

Burger with Roasted Garlic Mayo and Caramelized Onions

This burger looks quite simple, but the onions make it very moist and delicious while the roasted garlic gives it a great taste. This is definitely one of our favorite burgers so far. In the next few weeks our kitchen is being renovated, and we’re not sure how we can keep up our frantic sandwich making pace. We will have access to an outdoor BBQ with a side stove, and… restaurants. Idea for BBQ sandwiches/burgers that can be easily prepared with no kitchen would be highly appreciated 🙂

Burger with Roasted Garlic Mayo and Caramelized Onions
Burger with Roasted Garlic Mayo and Caramelized Onions

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Chicken Salad Sandwich with Beet Root

Beets are, at least here in SoCal (Southern California) a much ignored root. I’ve heard countless locals sneer at the very mention of it, claiming it taste like soil, and wondering what in the world such a thing could be good for. Well, dear neighbors, here is a sandwich that the beet is perfect for. Make your own chicken salad, and cut a slice of pickled beet root on top, and it’s just fantastic. It add lots of color to an otherwise drab sandwich. By the way, we highly recommend not buying the pre-made cardboard chicken salads in the grocery store, when it’s so easy and cheap to make. It also tastes a lot better by the way. Interestingly, I have no recollection of my mother ever making any such thing, and the first time I even remember having a ‘chicken salad’ is buying one in a grocery store after moving to a dorm in college. I wonder what my mom did with all those chicken leftovers, come to think of it?

Chicken Salad Sandwich with Beets
Chicken Salad Sandwich with Beets

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Tarragon Salad Dressing

Salad dressing, you say, how does that have anything to do with sandwiches? Well, one of our culinary experiments resulted in a delicious ham sandwich using this dressing as a spread.  Anders loves tarragon. I mean, he really loves it. In our love of gardening, we’ve made many attempts at growing this delightful herb but to no avail. As I write this, there is a plant languishing on our patio in complete defiance of all the love, attention and desperate hope that has been directed at.  But I digress. Lucky for us, we live close to a neighborhood grocery that sells fresh tarragon when in season, and when not, they sell huge bags of the dried stuff.   And when life gives you tarragon, why not make a tarragon salad dressing?

So here’s the recipe:

  • 1/4 cup olive oil
  • 1/4 cup white balsamic vinegar
  • 1 tsp whole grain mustard
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 2 tsp dried tarragon
  • 1 tbs honey (or to taste)
  • kosher salt
  • fresh pepper

In a small bowl, combine vinegar, mustard, garlic and tarragon.  Mix well and taste. Depending on how well aged your balsamic vinegar is, you might not need the honey. The one we use is on the lower side of the price point and so does need a little help to soften the flavor.  Add honey, if needed.  Slowly drizzle in the olive oil, whisking continuously. That’s it. We’ve make this dressing quite a lot and find that as good as it is freshly made, it tastes even better the next day after the tarragon has a better chance to infuse the dressing with its flavor. It works great as a dressing, tossed with boiled/baked new spring potatoes, grilled veggies and so many more.

But since this is a sandwich blog after all, the sandwich incarnation can be found here in this “Pepper Ham Sandwich With Tarragon Salad Dressing, Cheese, Roasted Garlic And Smoked Paprika.

Sun-Dried Tomato and Basil Hummus Recipe

It’s easy to buy hummus in a store, but it’s almost as easy to make it, and much more fun. This is a call to action; stop buying hummus!

All it takes to make are chickpeas, lemon juice, olive oil, tahini and garlic. Plus, add sun-dried tomatoes and you have sun dried tomato hummus. We use fresh cilantro or parsley as a topping, with a few roasted pine nuts, and you got yourself a really affordable and amazing appetizer dip. Naturally, we will be using some of this on our upcoming sandwiches :-).

Hummus with Sun Dried Tomatoes, Parsley and Roasted Pine Nuts
Hummus with Sun Dried Tomatoes, Parsley and Roasted Pine Nuts

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Sautéed Zucchini with Garlic and Lemon

This being winter, we thought we would provide a recipe for a summer garden favorite. And no, we do not find anything incongruous about this. What better time to start dreaming about the goodies of summer than now when the cold seems interminable. Okay, so as people lucky enough to live in San Diego which is as close to weather perfection as it ever gets in the US, we do not really experience winter – at least not of the snowmageddon variety.  Anyway, one of the veggies that will reward you with copious production is the zucchini. Two plants can produce enough for a family of four for the growing season. With our limited space, we’ve regretfully stayed away from it. Our rationale – we have a well stocked market within 2 minutes walk of our house and it’s pretty hard to give up tomato space.   So since we love zucchini but don’t always have it growing in the garden, we are so happy to be able to purchase was needed.

This little side dish is so simple, tasty and healthy. It is just bursting with flavor that we almost want to do a little dance as we eat it. Yes, it is that good.

Lime Squash Sauteed in Olive Oil and Garlic with Parmesan
Lime Squash Sauteed in Olive Oil and Garlic with Parmesan

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Pepper Ham Sandwich With Tarragon Salad Dressing, Cheese, Roasted Garlic And Smoked Paprika

One of our crazy experiments finally paid off. The addition of the salad dressing to this bread takes this simple sandwich to a whole new level. The bread, after toasting, is moist but yet crunchy. The dressing adds a ‘zing‘ to the ham. This sandwich reminds us of Woodstock: a mixed bag of nuts making sweet music together. Feel the love, add the dressing!

Pepper Ham Sandwich With Salad Dressing, Cheese, Roasted Garlic And Smoked Paprika
Pepper Ham Sandwich With Salad Dressing, Cheese, Roasted Garlic And Smoked Paprika

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Roasted Duck Sandwich with Valdeon Cheese, Cranberry Relish And Green Pepper

Roasted duck is a great treat, although the price for a duck in Poway is ridiculous. This is a sandwich we forgot to post dating all the way back to Christmas 2009. The cranberry relish was homemade, and just went perfect with the Spanish Valdeon cheese and the duck. For all you kids out there, it is very likely this was in fact Donald Duck. We’re sorry, we really are, we just couldn’t help ourselves (he was delicious).

Roasted Duck Sandwich with Valdeon Cheese, Cranberry Relish And Green Pepper
Roasted Duck Sandwich with Valdeon Cheese, Cranberry Relish And Green Pepper

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Potato Sandwich With Corned Beef Coleslaw, Spinach And Lemon, Dubliner Cheese And Garlic Ciabatta

After making our Costco Sandwiches (of which one is part of the March 2010 Costco Connection magazine), we still had some leftover corned beef coleslaw… And as the saying goes, “Naked Women Learn To Make Sandwiches and Trade for Clothes,” so we whipped up this little beaut. We love potato sandwiches, and we find that adding the cheese below the tomato changes the way the flavors hit the mouth when you bite into the sandwich. You are not immediately overwhelmed with cheese, but rather you have a chance to taste the potato before the coleslaw and cheese takes over. The pumpkin seeds in the coleslaw are fantastic by the way, and we’ve started to add pumpkin seeds to several of our sandwiches and pizzas with great success.

Potato Sandwich With Corned Beef Coleslaw, Spinach And Lemon, Dubliner Cheese And Garlic Ciabatta
Potato Sandwich With Corned Beef Coleslaw, Spinach And Lemon, Dubliner Cheese And Garlic Ciabatta

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Ciabatta with Rembrandt Extra Aged Gouda, Jamaican Logwood Honey And Smoked Paprika

Combining something sweet with something spicy is an old tradition that has come back into fashion. It is no longer uncommon to see chili-infused chocolate in grocery stores, and the reason is of course that it works. We bought some amazing honey in Jamaica, which brings the best out in this great cheese, the Rembrandt extra aged Gouda. The smoked paprika takes it up a notch. The simple life.

Ciabatta with Rembrandt Extra Aged Gouda, Jamaican Logwood Honey And Paprika
Ciabatta with Rembrandt Extra Aged Gouda, Jamaican Logwood Honey And Paprika

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Meatball Sandwich With Tomato Sauce, ‘Præstost’ Cheese – On Demi-Baguette

When I was a kid, one of my absolute favorite things about visiting our summer cottage in Sweden was the prospect of Swedish meatballs. Not just any Swedish meatballs, but a specific brand. We would always stop on the way to the house to get provisions at the local grocery store chain, and I remember running down the aisles to find the meatballs. My mother would cook them on a frying pan until they were quite dark, but not really burned. She would use lots of butter (where we use olive oil), and we would all sit and munch on meatballs and mashed potatoes while the house warmed up. Good times!

So, it was with great surprise I found one day these very same meatballs were being sold in the local Ikea in San Diego. What are the odds! Celebrating my Swedish childhood, I decided to create a Swamerican (Swedish-American) sandwich. I still prefer the meatballs without condiments – just by themselves, but as sandwiches come, this wasn’t half bad at all !

Meatball Sandwich With Tomato Sauce, 'Præstost' Cheese - on Demi Baguette
Meatball Sandwich With Tomato Sauce, 'Præstost' Cheese - on Demi Baguette

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