broccoli raab (and salami) sandwich

I have recently fallen back in love with salami, translucent, thinly sliced salami.  My broccoli raab is also ready for harvest.  Last night, linguine with sauteed broccoli raab and mizuna, for lunch today this sandwich:

  
Those are actually some raab thinnings.  I scatter-sowed about two zillion seeds (seeds I collected after a couple of my raab plants bolted last summer) which wasn't wise.  The first couple rounds of thinning were brutal affairs.  I probably culled, i.e. killed, five hundred plants, rudely ripping out with thumb and forefinger clumps of 50 at a time.  That short of mass plant death doesn't bother me, though.  What bothered me was how much time it took, over several culling sessions, to thin the plants down to a somewhat respectable population density.  Much better to start seedlings indoors and place them out or just spend the time directly sowing individual seeds in an orderly fashion.  Anyway, thinnings on hand and needing a sandwich badly, I decided to pair up the raab with some Genoa salami and a nice bageutte.  

I toasted the bread so it wouldn't be chewy.  It's cool and rainy here today and the air is very moist, air which ultimately surrounds everything including bageuttes.  I also slathered a lot of butter on the bread, added very oily raab (sauteed in ample olive oil, with garlic), and the result was a succulent, even drippy sandwich that was salty, buttery, a wee bit bitter, and spicy thanks to the ample mustard.  Basically, a strong sandwich.

I completely recommend this sandwich.

tuna salad, rain

Tuna salad...what is there to say about it?  

I had a pretty mediocre tuna salad sub from Primo pizzeria in Hadley, MA...

Then, like two minutes ago, I finalized consumption of this baby.  Why people don't make good tuna salad?

Mutant genes? 

Juniper Festival Catering

A few months ago I was asked if I'd want to do some catering.  I said sure, yeah, and the dollar signs rolled around behind my eyeballs.  With gardening season coming on, the idea of extra cash in my pocket turned into huge barrels of composted chicken shit, strong tomatoes, and all the other stuff that comes from a well attended garden, which is something that can be done on a shoe string budget, but a shoe string is a shoe string, and so I accepted the offer.  Time went by, the menu was planned, a constant tape loop of things to-do played in my mind.  Delivery day, I woke up at five in the morning and made twenty-seven feet of sandwich.  

The trouble, though, with catering the occasional party, or in this case, small press festival, is that, if you don't have business relationships with distributors and purveyors, well, you're kind of forced to pay retail prices for all your supplies, and that hurts.  Nonetheless, I wanted to give the guests the best food that I reasonably could, and that meant, tearfully at times, watching my profit margin take a nose-dive.  All the same, I feel like I did pretty well, especially considering the guests scarfed down 27 feet of sandwich, three enormous assorted pickle platters, 10 bags of Hungry Ghost crackers, and about 20 lbs. of hummus I'd made from scratch the day before.  Oh, and some fruit.  

Notice the conspicuous lack of those ugly, black plastic catering trays that are a standard of the catering biz?  Yep.  For that I must thank my sweetie, the proprietor of Pinch, for she let me borrow some stoneware that gave my spread a certain je ne sais quoi that upped its class factor and lent to the food the respect it deserved.  It's really a shame to put beautiful food on ugly plastic, but then, with the average caterer, it's sort of a moot point: ugly food goes on ugly surfaces.  

blizzard hoagie

It's 12:41 in the PM, and I haven't had a single thought today.  I wrote a couple sentences about mental midgets, but I erased them on the grounds that the expression "mental midget" is a violation against political correctness, though what sort of voilation it is I am not exactly sure.  In any case, it snowed yesterday, and I shovelled my ass off.  The various weather experts said that we got 12 inches of snow, but I am quite sure they are wrong.  It seemed a lot more like 18 inches to me.  In some places, notably the sidewalks, the snow was two feet deep on account of the plowing.  Up and down the street, men with snowblowers made poor time because the snow was too deep for their machines.  Rick Bramucci, the man who plows our driveway, was still out plowing after nine PM.  He attempted to plow our drive in the morning but the cars parked in it thwarted him.  We would have been buried.  Around lunch time I put my shovel down and ate this three-egg sandwich.  It was too dry, not enough butter or cheese.  Nonetheless, I consumed it while looking out the window and reflecting upon the snow storm.

 
Growing up in a Chicago suburb, I was always impressed by the neighborliness that a good snow storm could whip up in the people who lived around me.  Not everyone owned a snow blower, but it was customary for those who did to clear a neighbor's sidewalk once they'd finished clearing their own.  Same for the old: you simply did not allow an old neighbor to shovel his own walk or driveway.  They could come out afterward and srpead some sand, but that's about it.  Yesterday, this was happening all around me.  I was shovelling the sidewalk of a building across the street, which I do for pay, when a neighbor pushing a borrowed snow blower came shuffling down the sidewalk and attempted to help me out.  He had to quit because the snow was too deep for him, but I appreciated the gesture.  Later in the afternoon, once I'd cleared our driveway so that the plow could come through, our neighbors offered their driveways to us so that we could temporarily park our cars there.  It was a lot of snow, and dealing with it would have been impossible without teamwork.  Today, happily, we can go back to our independent lives.   

Obligatory Update, My Specialties

Last night fellow poet & editor of Brave Men Press approached me in the calm, low-slung manner that is unique to men who are frequently clad in plaid and said, "tell me about your specialties; you got any specialties? you must have some specialties."  We were standing around, waiting for the double-bill, Michael Earl Craig and Natalie Lyalin reading to begin.  I hadn't eaten more than two slices of peanut butter toast all day, though I'd been around several dozen deviled eggs and 49+ weiners all afternoon.  Specialties?  Yeah, I had some.  A pulitzer prize winning poet scooted past us in a poncho that had the famous lines from his most famous sonnet embroidered on the back in gold thread.  "Soon as the last roses shudder in November he dons that puppy."  I had to hand it to this editor: he was an astute watcher of high end poets and their wardrobes.  "My specialties?" I said, sidling one inch to the left to avoid a particularly obese raindrop.  "I suppose my Specialty of Specialties is the Midnight Special."  He was aroused by the name alone.  Even his ears appeared to be wearing a flannel.  

This Midnight Special appears to be situated upon a grilled cheese.  A little out of the ordinary, but not in violation of the basic premise: a cheese and bread foundation with a fried egg and some sauteed shredded cabbage on top.  I've done variations that include a bagel with cream cheese, ones with shredded kale that's been sauteed in bacon grease, ones with an additional layer of refried beans, and so forth and so on.  One of the only crucial elements is the runny yolk.  You gotta have the runny yolk.  You want that yolk and that cabbage to mingle.  Seep into the bread.  "The Midnight Special," I said, but then I was caustically interrupted by a gruff poet in a cravat. 

 

Local Burger

The restaurant business is precarious.  Restaurants open and close.  Some for the better.  Sometimes a restaurant opens, and the owners and the management really have no idea how to run a restaurant, and sometimes, they don't even really know how to cook.  I can think of one new restaurant in town (i.e. Northampton Massachusetts) that, if it manages to survive, well, I'll be damned.  On the other hand, Local Burger is about as fine an operation as I have ever seen, and I'm prepared to defend that statement.

The menu at Local Burger is deliciously simple.  They do burgers and fries, and a few other things, and they do them well.  I don't mean to say that they do everything right--I think the maple-syrup mayo they pair with their sweet potato fries is horribly misguided, and I also think that they need to get their buns up to room temperature before serving them, but that's not my point.  My point is, I really appreciate how simple their operation is.  They are smart.  Their inventory is compact and, I imagine, easily managed.  Too many places try to do too many things.  When I see one of those sprawling menus, I think, Oh God, another restaurant without an identity.  I also wonder how they keep all those ingredients fresh.  

Look at the burger!  Look at those fries.  Both are excellent, but I must admit that the burger pictured here was undercooked, not because I'm afraid of a little pink, but because my burger was a bit on the cold side, which is unusual at Local B, and probably the result of a sloppy cook.  Even so, I'm a loyal customer.  I'm a loyal customer because I like they way they do things.  They're smart and fast. Instead of sliced onions, the onions on the burger are chopped.  And instead of lettuce leaves, shredded lettuce.  This way, the line cooks can just chuck the lettuce and onions onto the burger and be done with it.  It may only save a few seconds per burger, but those kinds of decisions are signs of an operation that knows what it's doing.  And I haven't even mentioned their locally sourced, grass fed beef. 

Mini Sandwiches, White Bread

Operating under the assumption that "anything mini is cute," and hungry from an afternoon of installing fences to fortify my garden against idiots who would plod across it in their boots, I sat down to make some miniature cheddar and jalapeno sandwiches with the miniature pain de mie I'd made from scrap dough earlier in the week.  As the ever popular Julia says about pain de mie, it's "essential for professional-looking sandwiches," and these mini sandwiches, apart from their default cute status, are definitely professional-looking.  At least to me they are.  

Notice the dime and the tiny blue rubber band.  I included them to establish scale.  Unfortunately, as is always the case with these blogs, it is impossible to establish flavor with a snapshot.  On the other hand, you can always take my word.  

 notice: the bread is buttered

These mini sandwiches were definitely not mini in flavor.  Riffing on the cheese and pickle sandwich, I thinly sliced some creamy cheddar and chopped up some pickled jalapenos.  Wow!  What pizzazz those peppers added to this classic sarnie!  I'm serious, kiddos, these puppies were delicious.  Sadly, unless you're willing and able to make pain de mie at home, your options for having one of these babies are quite limited.  You can hunt around all you want, but you will probably not find bread like this anywhere.  The popularity of this type of sandwich bread has been quashed by the California-bred, minimum eighteen-grain Healthy Lifestyle Police.  Bah on them and bah on the entire west coast.  Let them take their dense, spelt-heavy sourdoughs and fall into the ocean and live among the mollusks, the ocean trench bacteria, and the one-eyed angler fish.  That's what I say, and that's what Julia would say, too, if she were still alive.          

Tuna Melt

This is my second tuna melt of the day AND my second tuna melt of all time!  I have turned over a new leaf, and there is a tuna melt under it.  Now I would like to repeat "tuna melt" three times---tuna melt, tuna melt, tuna melt---for it is through repetition that we come to understand the nature of bliss. 

 
Or just how to make a really killer tuna melt.  Here's the universal secret for bliss:

Start with excellent ingredients, and treat them excellently.  You cannot go wrong.      

shoe string fries (and tuna mayo)

When you miss someone, and that someone is in a city known for good food, and you are in a small town that likes to think it's known for good food, and you are sitting around in your apartment, and you wish that that someone was with you, right now, sitting beside you and digesting her food, apart from endlessly browsing pictures of her on the internet, there is one sure-fire thing you can do to bring her closer: you can make shoe string french fries to go along with your tuna mayo (and that's English for tuna salad).

 
First of all, let me say that the new blogger is awesome!  Look how huge that photo is!  Look at those shoe string fries!  No matter where you are, you cannot get shoe string fries like those at any restaurant anywhere.  Not in Paris and certainly not in New York City. 

Now it just occurred to me that I don't have too much to say about this lunch, except this: tuna salad in a buttered and pan fried, split-side hot dog bun is way awesome.  The particular bun pictured above is maybe too wimpy for tuna mayo, but that is not important.  What's important is that the someone mentioned above will take one look at my lunch, and a small magnet will rotate inside of her.  A small magnet will rotate inside of her and, like a Muslim stopping and turning east at the call to prayer, she will stop in her tracks somewhere and, for a moment, as if pulled by the magnet, face home.  At least, I would like to think so.

 

If I Was a Sandwich

It's not that I've stopped eating, nor that I've stopped cooking. It's not even that I've stopped taking pictures and video of eating and cooking. It's that I've been eating a lot of the same things, and this blog isn't really about endless lentil burritos (or maybe it is).

Anyway, the other day I made a bacon sandwich before class. I had a couple minutes before I needed to head out the door, so I picked up my uke and sang a couple lines of praise for my sandwich. Then I went and taught class. It was evaluation day. I sat out in the hallway while my kids filled in bubbles with #2 pencils. When class ended, I headed directly home to write a song about sandwiches. This is the song I wrote. It needs some work (and some more verses/sandwiches), so my ears are open...


If I Was a Sandwich

grillin' poet burgers

Thursdays are sandwich days. I'd write something lively about these burgers, but I'm depressed. Oh wait, I shouldn't write that I'm depressed on my blog because then my sister will call and ask me if I'm ok. I'm not depressed. I'm elated. How could I not be elated? Summer is almost over, and it's been a god awful summer.

cheese toasty

This could be the most perfect sandwich of the summer. And yet, it is not a sandwich at all! It's a cheese toasty! Why do I call this a cheese toasty and not an open faced sandwich? Because today we are going to talk about Hitchcock. That is, Hitchcock would call this a cheese toasty, i.e. because he's British and rotund, and so cheese toasty it is.

Some people call him Hitch. The End.

cheese and pickle, half sours

The cheese and pickle sandwich is a summer classic. This particular sandwich was created with half-sours that fermented on a bookshelf, homemade mustard I whipped, and some cheddar. The astute reader will also observe some granary bread from Bread Euphoria, and the really astute reader will observe some Hellman's--when you bring out the Hellman's, by the way, you bring out the best.

Good work, reader. You won. You observed everything. Now observe this:


Pictured above are four pickle spears, fermented and fresh. The fresh dills are on the right, and the half-sours are on the left. It reminds me of that song by Johnny Cash, The One On the Right Is On the Left, which goes a little something like this:

Well, the one on the right was on the left
And the one in the middle was on the right
And the one on the left was in the middle
And the guy in the rear was a Methodist

BLT!

I am going to come right out and say that BLTs are amazing. A friend of a friend said that the best part about a hamburger is when the hamburger grease meets the ketchup. Well, the best part of the BLT is when the bacon and the bacon grease meet the tomato. The other best part of the BLT is when the bacon and the tomato meet the mayo. That leaves the question of the lettuce. What kind of lettuce?

In the past I swore by arugula, but I have since stopped swearing. I'm not f***ing kidding. The classic diner BLT uses Iceberg lettuce, but during my pretentious phase I questioned this. I thought there was no place in the world for Iceberg, but I was wrong. There is a place in the world for Iceberg lettuce--actually, there are many places--and one of them happens to be on the BLT. It is fine to use baby mustard greens (above) on your BLT, but Iceberg provides the necessary crunch.

brandywine, getting ripe

I am a member of the Iceberg generation. Just wanted to say that. Also: my first batch of half-sours are ready. The pickle pictured above is a fresh, unfermented dill pickle, i.e. made with vinegar not chemistry, and therefore not as magical. Watch out for the half-sours, they're coming!

midnight special: spiced beans, cabbage and egg

Sometimes I wake up beside a half-eaten sandwich. Sometimes I wake up alone. Whatever the case, I always wake up--it just keeps on happening--and often my belly is full when I do. Last night I came home from the bar, wrote several poems, none of which I remember nor care to, and then decided that I should absolutely make myself this sandwich. Spiced kidney beans, granary bread from Bread Euphoria, a slathering of cream cheese, shredded raw Hadley cabbage, and one Diemand Farm egg, sunny side up.

Glory be, hosanna in the highest. Let me tell you about the spiced beans:

Spiced beans (your choice):

First and foremost, these spiced beans are a variation on the re-fried bean recipe I've been honing since oh-seven. Classic re-fried beans, or frijoles refritos, are usually made with pinto beans and lard. My hunch is that because dry pinto beans are cheaper per pound than any other bean, and thus the most-wallet friendly bean, they are thus the basis of this staple food. But let's face it, all dry beans are cheap, so there must be other reasons, and so some deductive reasoning tells us that pinto beans are probably (a) the most readily available bean, or (b) that pinto beans become ultra smooth when fully cooked, i.e. perfect for re-fried beans (which is a mistranslation; it really means "well fried" beans), or that (c) none of this really matters and I am simply enjoying typing. Right, spiced beans...

It is best to start with dry beans. Soak your beans over night and drain the soaking water in the morning. If you have houseplants, which is not a mistranslation, reserve the bean water for your plants.

Rinse and drain your beans until the water runs clear. Add enough cold, fresh water to your beans to cover them and then some. If you wish, add some garlic cloves, peppercorns, and a bay leaf to your pot (they bay leaf will make your beans more digestible), bring your beans to a boil, let them boil for a few minutes, reduce the heat to low, cover and simmer until finished, stirring ocassionally. DO NOT SALT YOUR BEANS UNTIL THEY ARE FULLY COOKED. If you add salt too soon, their casings will become tough. Salt your beans appropriately when they are still hot. Stir.

In a large, heavy pot or big cast iron skillet, sautee onions, chili flakes, black pepper, and whole spices: coriander seeds, cumin seeds. If you use a variety of chili flakes, you will get a "rounder" more complex flavor.

When your onions are somewhat caramelized, and when the aroma of your spices is unbearably amazing, go ahead and toss in some chopped garlic if you like. When the garlic (if using garlic) becomes aromatic, dump in a pile of beans and enough of your cooked bean water to cover them--you want them to look like little islands, bobbing in a beany sea--and simmer them on medium heat until they are almost dry. Then add a pretty good hunk of butter. Don't be shy. The butter will make your beans smoother. Finally, add some honey or agave syrup. Here, be shy. You don't want to make candy. You want just enough sweetness to take the sharp, metallic edge off your spiced beans. Finally finally, if your beans are dry, add more liquid or butter. If you want to mash some of the beans--highly recommended--do that. You will be happy. Eat them and go directly to bed.

oh, p.s., I now use whole spices instead of ground spices in this recipe because their flavors still permeate the beans, but you also get delightful little pops of flavor when you chomp into a whole coriander or cumin seed. And one could always experiment with other whole spices.

Scratch fritatta sandwich

Tomorrow is big food day. Tomorrow is tomato fish stew. Tomorrow is burgundy bean soup. Tomorrow is booze. Tomorrow is cornbread. Tomorrow is dinner party. Today is lunch. What lunch? Where lunch? Me need something quick. Me shred potatoes. Me heat oil. Me crack eggs. Potatoes into oil. Real hot oil. Turn brown. Then thyme. Then eggs. One minute, bang under broiler. Five minutes. Toast bell ding. All done.

Sandwich construction. Man slice egg. Man halve toast. Man notice similar shape. Triangle shape. Man brain do something. Man brain double check. Man brain agree with man brain impulse. Man act.

Sweater. Nice sweater. Egg rescue? Hot sauce? Hot sauce rescue? Not on sweater!

Salad Nicoise Sandwich

As I move into my middle years, sprightly on some days, cruel and ponderous on others, the hat-load of sayings and quotations that will become my sayings and quotations becomes daily more clear. Denial is not just a river in Egypt made a good show, but alas, I dumped that one in Indiana. On the other hand, "an egg without salt is like sex without sin" continues to be a favorite, perhaps because I did not fully understand the equation until I sat down to eat this salad nicoise-sandwich lunch.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since purpled thy nail? No, I have merely taken a salt-less bite of a soft boiled egg. It tastes good, the egg, but it does not zing! and zing is important. Salt brings the zing! I move onto the sandwich. Like a skier, I move onto the slope of olives. Like a jet skier, I bounce on the jugular waves of the caper berry, and like a mountain climber, I jetty and grapple with the sheer rock of the cornichon, the blandishments of the world below me, the heavy sea of tuna in oil, the mellifluous ringing of tuna in belly.

What a dork! I do apologize. Salad nicoise sandwich. Mine lacked red onion, a classic accompaniment to boiled eggs. Now, I cannot be totally sure, but an educated guess tells me that the salad (and thereby the salad sandwich) takes its name from Nice, France, the place where all the components of the salad are readily available: capers, olives, eggs, tuna, cornichons. I held fast and denied the Dijon mustard, though the trucking industry did attempt to cram some onto the roadway of baguette. Sweet, white bread, crusty delerium, how I love thee. Cloistered in these living walls of jet (skies), I digest your goodness with some rich cafe! Au revoir, my little peeps, au revoir!

Jono

Cabbage and bacon sarnie

With egg, with egg. We are creating a mantra here, and it's WITH EGG.

This is actually one of my favorite sandwiches. The egg is not actually necessary, but it improves the sandwich a lot. To be specific, the broken yolk finishes the sandwich.

This morning I made an unfortunate decision: no runny yolk.

THE FOLLOWING SANDWICH CAN BE PREPARED THUSLY:

Cook bacon on medium or medium-low heat to render the fat. Saute the shredded cabbage in the bacon fat. Meanwhile you are toasting your baguette (or other bread product) and cooking your egg in another pan. Butter your bread and slap it all together. A little trick I learned is this: intentionally break your yolk before eating the sandwich. Then, turn the sandwich end-over-end to spread the yolk among the sandwich components. Watch the edges for spillage. Drops of yolk on linoleum break my heart. Don't break my heart.

Here is the full-frontal plate shot, tweaked out:

Now I must venture into the world to clear my head and drive my blood. As they say, the force that through the green fuse drives the flower, drives my green age. You know?

Landlord sandwich

I'm all about simultaneity. This morning, upon noticing a frigid element in the house, I notified my landlord of the situation via e-mail, popped some bacon onto the stove, shoved a foil-wrapped baguette into the toaster oven, and headed to the cellar to check on my laundry. I put 15 minutes on the dryer and peeked at the boiler. Tapping on the well-designed pop-out drawer produced a control panel with rubber buttons, an LED display, and a booklet. I turned to the trouble-shooting section and my phone chirped. That's one quick landlord. A trouble-shooting discussion ensued and I said, at least now I know what the fuck error message H7 means! Then I returned to the kitchen only to find, not bacon, but cinder chips. When the hallway smoke alarm burst into hissy-fit mode, said landlord conversation abruptly ended and I climbed onto a chair to disengage the shrieking brat device. All things calm, I plunked my leftover Tortilla wedges into the bacon grease and resumed sandwich construction. When the boiler man shows up, I will shadow him and get this place toasty before Birdie comes home from NJ. Peace

Bacon and egg sandwich

Sometimes, when the house is empty, when the cool blue light of recent snow planes through the opened mini blinds, sometimes what you want is a cheap-o, bacon and egg sandwich and a nice clementine for breakfast at 2 PM. A loyal fan and friend called from Germany the other day to complain about the disappearance of the videos from this blog. I am always happy to receive his phone calls. He always pays and never says a thing. This is friendship. One day I will not be poor and I will return the hours. Until then, here are some shots of my sarnie.

The morning began with a phone call from work, a phone call I did not answer. I sat down at my desk and did my grading, and grading, as you know, makes me want bacon sandwiches. Today I added two eggs.



Now nobody can tell me that I do not eat, though lately I have not been eating well enough. In any case, this sandwich needs no explanation. This is not Sandwiches 112. If you don't know how to toast bread and cook an egg in bacon fat, you can come to my house and I will teach you in person.

In the meantime, for time is always mean to those who put things off too long, here lies the remnants of my late breakfast. So long, dispatched loveliness. We will always have Paris.

p.s. the video, my friend, is on Nude and Incredible, or will be soon