Inspired by Jamie Oliver’s book “Jamie’s Italy” this is one of our favorite appetizers so far this year. It also looks beautiful. The crunchy toasted pane siciliano bread and the smoothness of the eggplant (or Aubergine as we call it in Denmark), goes very well together and fills your mouth with flavor and adventure. Eggplant seems to be largely a forgotten vegetable in the US, at least in SoCal (Southern California), and really it’s a wonderful ingredient in many dishes. People, wake up and smell the eggplant!
We love caprese salads so much we had Phil’s BBQ change their menu and serve it at our wedding (They did a great job too). So, it should come as no surprise that we had to try and turn the art of the caprese into a sandwich. A panini sandwich to be exact. It has all the classic ingredients: Mozzarella, tomatoes, basil, olive oil and balsamic vinegar. For the bread we went with our own homemade pesto-sourdough bread, but any regular sourdough will do just fine.
Living close to Mexico means there is a constant influx of great Mexican cuisine. Carne Asada is one of those things that are very popular in San Diego, and it is essentially a long slice of skirt of flank steak, usually marinated or rubbed, and then grilled. It is fantastic when done right. Wendie got us a couple of these steaks, and of course I had to go make a sandwich out of them. I opted to add some ‘green stuff’ from the local farmers market on the bread. We call it ‘green stuff’ because we don’t really know what it is, but the guy that sells it swears by it. It tastes a bit like spicy tabbouleh without the couscous. In any case, substitute with pesto and all shall be well. The greens on top are called “micro greens’ and are also from the farmers market. These taste very lemony, and I wish we had more precise name for them, but alas, ‘micro greens’ it is.
Sandwich With Carne Asada, Cucumber, Feta, Cherry Vinegar, And Radishes
I miss plantains. For those who don’t know, it is the larger cousin of the banana. Unlike the banana it is typically cooked before eaten. I suppose one could just peel and eat it like you would a banana, but that would just be… well, wrong. My favorite way to enjoy a plantain is to fry it and simply eat as a side dish. Unfortunately, along with my strong accent, one of the things I lost in moving to San Diego is the ready availability of plantains.
Two weeks ago, I had a meeting in a neighborhood in San Diego known for it’s “ethnic’ population. Ehem… let me pause here to continue my fight against the application of this terminology. Why is this term reserved for non-Caucasians alone? Are they by some miracle of biology without shared cultural heritage that underpins the term ‘ethnicity’? But I digress, linguistic misapplication aside, I was lucky to be in an area of town with a fair share of Vietnamese and Filipino supermarkets.
As I drove through I remembered a plantain dish I once had in a Filipino restaurant many years ago. “Dare I hope?”, I wondered. I was not disappointed, I came out of the supermarket with a huge green plaintain. It took about one week to ripen, and the cooked fruit was a key ingredient in Anders’ breakfast last week Saturday.
(The other half found its way in a plantain flambé – my take on the banana flambe, something I am unable to make because of my one-woman boycott of the US commercial banana industry).
Last summer we went on vacation to Greece, to the island of Lesvos. We were prepared to taste amazing foods, local delicacies and great tasting salads. Our friends have told us enough stories about the Greek islands that we were rather excited to taste the cuisine. Honestly though, it was a bit of a letdown. The island seems to have gotten a bit ‘touristy’, and the food was usually bland. It wasn’t bad per se, it was just not very interesting. After two weeks eating all over the island, we did find a restaurant on the last day of our trip which was actually great, but that was the exception. Given the less-than-satisfying culinary experiences, we did find one simple dish we kept returning to; The greek salad. It is a salad with a simple dressing, topped with a gigantic block of feta cheese. We decided to combine this a little with the pan seared feta dish called saganaki. We roasted a slice of feta in the oven, and placed it on top of a simple salad on toast. The result was amazing, and here is the recipe.
So many things have happened the last month, it’s hard to recap it all in one sandwich post… Let’s see… We got married and had a wonderful ceremony and party in our own back yard (fixed up for the occasion) with Anders’ sister Birgit as the Deputy Marriage Commissioner (for a day). What a fantastic day it was, lots of friends, family and food, but alas, no sandwiches. It turns out after much thinking that teaching everyone to make sandwiches would be too much work, as would assembling any great sandwich for 70 people. Instead we opted for Phil’s BBQ and some of our own appetizers. The sandwich below is pre-wedding, from back in March when we still had time to do daily sandwiches, and had a kitchen to do them in. It’s a wonderful turkey sandwich with a great old Rembrandt Gouda Cheese on top, and a chili-sauce kick to it.
Turkey Sandwich Recipe With Salsa Verde And Rembrandt Cheese
As our kitchen renovation draws nearer to its conclusion, and after having lived for weeks now with a dusty house, no kitchen, a fridge in the garage, and the top of our washing machine as our kitchen counter, we remember this sandwich from our ‘old kitchen’ days. This is made from a great chicken Wendie made which we turned into ‘chicken salad #2‘ and added to a fresh slice of roasted garlic bread with capers and Parmesan on top. We also torched the Parmesan a little to give it a golden look, and to achieve the oddly comforting feeling of warmth near the top of the sandwich. Saturday we are getting married, so the frequency of posts have significantly eased of as our backyard weddings draws nearer. We will post lots of sandwiches after the wedding 🙂
We always are looking to try new ingredients on our sandwiches, and for a while we have been thinking of ways to use melon. Melon can provide a little sweetness and also a little bit of crunch (Depending on the ripeness of the melon of course). It’s fresh, so we added it to smoked salmon to really enhance the sense of ‘freshness’ one wants from fish. The mascarpone-pesto was really a way to ‘water down’ the pesto to not overwhelm the rest of the sandwich, yet provide more depth to the taste experience. We like ‘depth’ in our food, as well as ‘height’ (We are making sandwiches after all).
Mascarpone Pesto With Smoked Salmon Sandwich Topped With Honeydew Melon
Saturday: Wake up. Shower. Get Dressed. Breakfast now, NO, kitchen remodel. Drink milk, drive to Escondido. Get mulch and rosebushes, look at avocado tree. Back, unload, Costco. Gas, Bank, Home. Hungry, NO, kitchen remodel! What to do? This. Simple, good, easy, fast, out the door again…
Black Forest Ham Sandwich With Goat/Roquefort Melt And Parmesan
Leftover chicken is fantastic. Carefully pick all the little pieces of meat off, and make yourself a nice chicken salad. It’s very easy and simple, and we quite frankly look forward to the day after the roast as much as the roast itself. We have fallen in love with pepitas seeds (aka pumpkin seeds): These seeds are fantastic on sandwiches, as they provide some ‘crunch’ and taste great on top. We find them to be very under-utilized and the next experiment will be to try them on pizzas. We already know they work wonders on Lavash crackers. Posting this recipe makes us long to have a kitchen again, as currently everything we have is torn out and dumped. Over the next four weeks, we hope our fantastic contractor will be done building it back up, with lovely Calacutta marble counter tops and custom cabinets. Ahhh dreams…
Chicken Salad Sandwich On SourDough With Anis Tomato Sauce, Fried Onions And Pepitos Seeds
