I love a good
leftover sandwich, so after whipping up
shrimp rémoulade the other night, I made sure to save some shrimp and sauce for a second dinner, sandwiched inside a crispy, sweet baguette. The flavor of the rich, robust rémoulade against the flaky French bread and cool, fresh shrimp was so yummy I wish I'd made sandwiches the first time around, rather than just serving the baguette on the side.
The recipe is equally easy as a from-scratch sandwich or a leftover reinvention. As with the rémoulade recipe, you can make the sauce a day in advance and let the taste intensify over time.
San Francisco's
Roxie Food Center is an unassuming corner store, located on an unlikely residential block, that's rumored to have remarkable sandwiches. I've been meaning to try it for months, so a few weeks ago I made a special trip just to get my jaws around one these sammies.
Though the store has all the usual varieties of bread and cold cuts, I'd heard great things about the Dutch crunch rolls, which are topped with a sugary, salty crust. The mere thought of the salty-sweet bread combined with jalapeños and pickles made my mouth water, so I ordered a ham and swiss sandwich, dressed with everything and warmed in the oven.
Not all of you were loving my last
vegetarian sandwich, so I thought I'd try again with a recipe inspired by a recent trip to San Francisco's (appropriately named)
Panini. Perfectly pressed in a warm panini grill, this sandwich taught me several lessons about making smushed sammies. First, I never think to put avocado on a hot sandwich, but it held up well in the heat and added a deliciously creamy texture.
Sandwiches stand out for different reasons, and it often has nothing to do with gourmet ingredients or fancy sandwich shops. Sometimes, a sandwich tastes good because of the memories it evokes — hence, the proverbial PB&J like mom used to make. Other times, it's more about the sandwich experience than the sammie itself, as is the case with this week's 'wich.I recently organized a goodbye get-together for some friends who are moving cross country.
With all this talk about
Chinese barbecue and
dim-sum Olympics parties, I've had Chinese food on the brain. So on my last trip to the farmers market, I picked up some Chinese broccoli, a yummy in-season green that tastes like a cross between asparagus, broccoli, and bok choy. After making a tofu stir-fry, I refocused the remaining ingredients into an elegant vegetarian sandwich.
I've let
Nancy Silverton's Sandwich Book languish on my desk for too long, so this weekend I finally decided to make a recipe from this famously excessive sandwich collection. (Stay tuned for a full cookbook review.) Since I was having friends over for a casual dinner, I avoided the more labor-intensive recipes in favor of a simple but delicious sandwich that would showcase the fresh tomatoes I bought that morning at the farmers market.
This PLT — pancetta, lettuce, and tomato — is a variation on the classic BLT (from New York's
'Ino) using Italian
pancetta and arugula. Silverton's book is designed so that, if you choose, you can prepare each ingredient without shortcuts — for instance, braising artichokes rather than buying jarred ones or even making bread from scratch.
Food often tastes better on camping trips; it takes so much effort to make that I'm usually starving by the time I eat. Because I first tried
Trader Joe's carnitas while roughing it, I had to revisit this tasty pork at home. Dare I say, it was better than I remembered.
Not only is the
Reuben one of my favorite sandwiches, but it's also sort of magical, since it takes three ingredients I'm not wild about (corned beef, rye bread, and thousand island dressing) and turns them into deliciousness. But since I rarely eat thousand island dressing, it ends up spoiling every time I buy it to make Reubens. So to meet my latest craving for this classic sandwich, I altered the recipe slightly, replacing the dressing with spicy mustard and the corned beef with pastrami.Pastrami is actually a variation on corned beef that involves smoking the meat.
When it comes to
sandwiches — or anything, really — it's hard to go wrong with
melted cheese and tomato. Add a few leaves of fresh arugula and chicken cooked to moist perfection on an outdoor grill, and you've got a hot sandwich that showcases the best flavors of the warm months.
I enjoyed this melted panini on a recent weekend away with friends, where the house we rented handily had a panini maker. Better yet, it had a charcoal grill (which I do not have), so I got the rare treat of a sandwich made with chicken grilled fresh over charcoal.
Perhaps it's no surprise that when I host a party, I like to serve some type of sandwich. (You know, like a
Caesar wrap at an Ides of March party.) The easiest thing to do is make one long party sub then slice it into individual servings. If you're serving the sandwich as a way to soak up booze (which is often the case at my parties), you can't go wrong with a salty but simple combination of salami, cheese, and pickles.
