Make summer sandwiches more exciting with these delicious recipes
It’s mid-afternoon in New York. We’re out of sorts, groggy after our flight, and our stomachs don’t know what time it is. Should we keep going until the evening meal?
That seems wrong, as one of the first things you want to do when you get here, apart from gawp at the skyline, is take a bite out of it. An all-day place near our hotel is on my to-try list.
Soon we’re settled on barstools with glasses of iced tea, a jar of sour pickles as big as a fire hydrant and a red-haired waitress who exemplifies American service – she can’t do enough for us.
On the menu there’s a ‘bodega’ egg sandwich with American cheese and roast-tomato sauce; a Cubano – mustard- spread bread filled with ham, pork, cheese and dill pickles; one stuffed with buttermilk-fried chicken, pickled okra and slaw with jalapeños… We don’t talk, just smile at the prospective deliciousness.
The fried-chicken sandwich, when it arrives, has warm meat – crunchy on the outside and melting within – slaw that’s cold in temperature but hot with chilli, a thick buttermilk dressing that drips down the sides and a little garden of crisp okra pickles. We sigh.
The thing about American sandwiches is that they don’t hold back. Think of the classics: a Philly cheese-steak sandwich with its beef, peppers and melting provolone, a sloppy joe or a New Orleans po’boy with deep-fried oysters.
‘Always go one more,’ seems to be the rule but, moreover, Americans get the point of a sandwich – contrast. If you were eating fried chicken, slaw and okra without the bread, you’d have to put a bit of everything on your fork to get the contrasts.
In a sandwich, where you layer the ingredients, you get them in each bite: crispy with soft, hot with cold, spicy with soothing.
Of course, Americans aren’t the only good sandwich-makers. French sandwiches are at the other end of the spectrum; the French offer restraint – pâté with cornichons or ham and Gruyère in lengths of skinny baguette.
They stick to classic combinations. The Provençal pan bagnat – basically a tuna niçoise in bread which is then weighted so the flavours mingle – is the only example that’s complex.
Still, the fillings in even the simplest sandwiches are considered. My favourite is always jambon beurre with cornichons. The crust on the baguette shatters, the dough is soft, the thickly spread unsalted butter is creamy against the salty pickle and the ham. It’s a little masterpiece in four ingredients.
You do have to consider the bread as well as what goes into it. Often, American sandwiches come in a fairly bland, slightly sweet bun. The bread isn’t supposed to shout, just offer softness.
But Scandinavians – masters of the open as well as closed sandwich – have the biggest range of breads at their disposal and they factor in its flavour. It’s not unusual to see Scandinavians eating sandwiches at breakfast in hotels; filled with herrings and raw onion or gravadlax and cucumber.
These are not all-singing, all-dancing sarnies but, made with coffee-enriched black bread or dark rye studded with seeds, they taste of the earth and the sea and are as satisfying as a sauna followed by a dip in a cool lake.
A sandwich can be as great as any main course you slave over. You just need to think about its components. The thing a sandwich shouldn’t be is fuel.
One made with tasteless bread and a thin, unseasoned filling says, ‘I don’t value anyone – not myself, and not you.’
Every sandwich here has an identity and each – from the simple ‘French’ one to the American-style offering with fried chicken and miso mayo – offers contrast, the thing every cook is constantly considering.
