the sandwich report

yesterday, we went to canteen on mass ave for lunch. the BLT was a marvel. thoroughly browned and ultra-crisp hot bacon, decent tomato thinly sliced, snappy leaves of bright chilled romaine, avocado, red onion shavings, pepper mayo and a vinaigrette, on a warm, split-griddled iggy's focaccia roll. additional saucing in the form of a soft-yolked fried egg. $9.35 after tax: execution success.

getting off at the wrong stop meant a short walk through downtown boston. on a bright, warmish winter day, this was not a hardship. on the way, i passed by foumami ("the asian sandwich bar") and stopped for a sandwich made on shaobing, a variety of chinese pastry. freshly made, shaobing are marvelously flaky and tender. they become tough and untasty if allowed to cool or if reheated in anything but a quick, dry oven. so it was for foumami's shaobing, pulled from a holding oven set at 170F. the bread was not rescued by the filling, an uninteresting clump of thinly sliced chilled pork loin flavoured with cilantro sprigs and some shaved cucumber. $8.51 after tax: execution failure.

in the north end, galleria umberto was selling out of its last items. i missed the pizza (by one slice!), panzarotti, and the arancini but managed to snag the last ham, salami, and ricotta calzone. it was milky, faintly salty, richly savory. $4.25 after tax: execution success

and then i spent a lot of someone else's money at the store we all dream of working at, buying some rather interesting stuff.

hot tomato

rye and oat sourdough, lentils, roasted eggplant, squash, and peppers, tomato, thai basil.

8-step program

that's not butter.

the chemical sandwich

"every hour is banh mi hour, if the sandwich is eaten within five minutes of it being made. There is something close to alchemy when the baguette is still hot and has lent its warmth to the pâté and the sausage, while not wilting the cilantro or cucumber spears."

monique truong, in the wsj.
she echoes some early rumblings about sandwich theory.

sandwich theory

here in the northeast, it is a clear nearly-spring morning (we have to say that, in case it actually still is winter) and the dawn chorus has just been and gone. i am up at 6.20am, for reasons that will be detailed anon, and have just breakfasted on a toasted burrito of my own confection (turtle beans, chipotle morita, aged cheddar, avocado, cilantro and red onion, cholula, on a wheat tortilla). i could eat these every day, they're so tasty.

today, i made a tactical error: i folded the herbs and cold avocado into the burrito and toasted everything slowly on cast iron. i had forgotten that, in some things, there is an absolute minimum number of steps required for satisfactory results. when added only at the end, the cilantro, onion, and avocado in one of these toasted burritos are the requisite cold and crunchy counterpoint to the soft, warm cheese and beans.

which brings us to theory. great sandwiches almost always have contrast. few of the sandwiches i love are uniformly one or another temperature, which is why most of the truly great sandwiches must be made to order and consumed instantly. the two top of mind are: 1) the grilled english muffin, sweet butter, honey, and sea salt; 2) the toasted focaccia or sweet baguette, olive oil, cheddar, tomato, scallions, black pepper.

1) has to be cold and rapidly melting butter, cold honey, salt, blazingly hot muffin. 2) has to be a warm, crusty (but still tender) bread, thinly-sliced, ripe, cold tomatoes, thinly-sliced, cold scallions, cool or room-temperature cheddar, olive oil, and lots of fresh black pepper. this is also a sandwich that can only be eaten satisfactorily standing up at the kitchen sink, with crumbs and juices raining down as you go.

backlog

the city block that makes you either yearn to live in ny or run screaming from it

a happy new year to you. the inbox is back down to fewer than 10 emails and i am wearing a clean shirt. these two are not insignificant achievements.

1. new year's resolution: spend holidays doing only uninteresting and restful things. the presence of small animals and spirituous beverages of high quality are permitted.
2. jewish weddings: congratulations to the kaplammers, and particularly to david hammer for using the word oikos in his tisch lecture! the wedding involved plenty of food and dancing in circles. the renegade california contingent (table 2) tried and failed to introduce hexagonality into the proceedings.
3. the best sandwich of recent months: the restaurant school special at koch's deli, just down the street and around the corner from julian's house in philadelphia. corned beef, honey turkey, brisket of beef, hot pepper cheese, cole slaw and russian dressing or mustard on a hoagie roll. an unholy combination of many meats and cole slaw (which i had previously avoided in sandwiches for introducing unnecessary and unemulsified liquid). no photo, as it was consumed too quickly. perhaps the pulled roast pork sandwich with garlicky greens at dinic's (also in phl) would have been even better, but dinic's was sold out and the comparison thus awaits a future visit.
4. single malt scotch: a stellar glass at zuni cafe in 2005 converted me to calvados. julian's ardbeg 10 year did me for single malts. these tasting notes seem to me wildly off-base: this stuff has the scent of syrup made of rock sugar and pandanus leaves.
5. old friends: are the easiest ones to grouse with. helps if they have good scotch and live close to a great deli. [thx julian]
6. eating prodigiously: i ate with the alpha hound in jackson heights a few days ago. the experience left me nearly prostrate, but also happily stuffed with fried watercress, fresh korean tofu, fenugreek paratha, russian milk chocolate, and a pint of guinness, among many others. the food was good, the conversation was better. this is his contribution to the art of rating food (i think the inclusion of reference OJ is what tips it into brilliance).
7. banh mi: have i complained before that cambridge has no (not one) vietnamese sandwich provider? not long ago, there was a small cafe on massachusetts avenue just south of porter which had a beautiful, minimal banh mi for $2.50. i went there once before it closed, to be replaced by a bakery selling undistinguished and overly-sweet cakes and pastries. while in the big apple, i loaded the nyt banh mi map onto my phone* and finally made it to baoguette on murray hill. for $5, the cilantro was wilted, the daikon and carrot pickles were limp, the bread was not crusty, and there was too much stuff inside it. crushed, i slunk back to boston where, at the tail end of a grocery run in chinatown, i accidentally picked up the best banh mi i've had in years: cilantro leaves plucked off the stems, a freshly-toasted baguette with an open crumb, a thin smear of pate and a shaving of ham, crisp pickles, and a scattering of finely-chopped hot chilies ($3 at lu's sandwich shop, on knapp st in boston. you can buy a bangle or some gold bars in the attached jewelers should the mood strike).
8. the shake shack: was closed when i went by on new year's eve. smart people. their frozen custard is a riff on ted drewes from st louis, which sometimes i dream about (part 3 of my encounter with ted drewes, part 2 and part 1 are the preamble). this is the shake shack custard calendar: M gianduja, T blood orange, W salted caramel, Th roasted peanut, F carrot cake, Sa mint chocolate chip, Su cinnamon toast. i would go back every day.
9. pourovers: newly possessed of a hario burr grinder and pourover cone, and a bag of barismo kagumoini, i fabricated a canvas filter with some scrap #10 and bookbinder's linen this morning and am anticipating good things tomorrow. apparently barismo has become one of the new epicenters of the artisanal coffee roasting movement. this is unsurprising but pleasant.
10. precipitation: there is nothing like a persistent snowfall to make you feel good about having lots of oranges in the house, a large mug of coffee, and 200 pages of hermann hesse to go.

* why does the iphone not have native mymaps support?

sourdough success

after a few false starts, i've figured out the activation schedule on this starter that's been growing for almost two weeks. last night, a nice sourdough loaf; today, a killer grilled cheese sandwich.

another perfect sandwich

thin-sliced roasted cauliflower, grilled zucchini, tomato, and charred green onions, with black pepper and olive oil, on toasted ciabatta.

ice cream

ice cream is deeply satisfying in the tropics. you cannot delay or otherwise draw out the eating, it melts so quickly after being removed from refrigeration.

here in the motherland, it can be purchased (for a dollar) as a small brick sandwiched between two pieces of baked wafer from an umbrella-shaded pushcart. there must be hundred of these carts, all tended by wizened individuals with old knives sharpened to the point of concavity, and the stuff all comes in paperboard-wrapped blocks from the same creamery (it may still be magnolia)--always sweet corn, red bean, yam, coconut, and raspberry ripple. a decisive cut, then the cardboard skin is peeled off with the tip of the knife. specialty bars and the like can be bought, but where is the charm in those? sometimes, if you're lucky, you encounter a cart that additionally carries a vat of singapore-style neapolitan: strawberry, chocolate, and sweet corn. (yes, really.) this you can only purchase in a stacks of tiny spheres in a wafer cone or in sandwich form, wrapped in a slice of soft bread. i made an ice cream sandwich at the ranch this summer, only to be met by retching and gagging noises all evening long from faithless unbelievers; it may be an acquired taste.

there's a reassuring continuity here: flavours, carts, wafers, knife-wielding old men and women, haven't changed since the 1980s. years ago, one of these pushcarts used to wait on coleman street, outside the old anglo-chinese primary school and ambush us on our way to the MRT station at city hall with a tootling horn and the promise of ice cream.

faith in darwin's restored

they are just down the street, so are convenient for lunch on those days when i have so many seminars that i end up in william james all day slumped on the fifth-floor couches. they were in a downward spiral the last few times i was there, but maybe they have reversed the curse. the restoration sandwiches:

1. roast turkey, arugula, cheddar, and honey mustard sandwich on a crunch roll
   
2. softly-scrambled eggs, bacon, and avocado on toasted 7-grain

caffeine and a sandwich

a highly-caffeinated 4 hours in seattle.

first stop was the espresso vivace at e denny and broadway to get some of emails out of the way, make a call, and wake up at a window counter made of blue volga granite. like any institution, vivace makes much of its history and the space (a large, high-ceilinged room sparsely populated with tables and chairs) reminds me of the original peet's coffee on walnut/vine in berkeley. apart from a wide selection of literature about coffee-making, vivace distinguishes itself by celebrating the latte art of its baristas. particularly beautiful latte art is commemorated with framed and dated photographs on the walls of the cafe (also turned into postcards on sale for a couple of dollars), and it appears to be a badge of honour to be placed on the wall. my latte was excellent (with velvety, micro-foamed steamed milk) and a perfectly symmetrical heart of a rich, rust-red hue; it was made by someone who was very proud of having just gotten her first wall photo (2nd column from the left on the east wall, left side, 2nd from the bottom). before leaving, i got a single-shot espresso just to see how much they were able to preserve the caramelised sugars in their roast; it was probably the sweetest, least bitter espresso i've ever had.

with two hours remaining, i wanted to get lunch at salumi, the fabled cured meats place in downtown seattle run by mario batali's father, armandino. on the way there, i passed stumptown roasters on pine street and was unable to resist stopping in for my third coffee in 2 hours (latte, also excellent), then walked the rest of the way to salumi feeling brittle, as if sudden motion might have unfortunate consequences.

southern aspect of the seattle public library, from 4th ave

on 3rd avenue, i joined a crowd of walkers leaning into the wind as they walked south, and nearly missed the light yet massive angularity of rem koolhaas's seattle public library, which stacks are arranged in an unbroken spiral climbing many stories up into the prismatic volume of the building. i ducked in for a quick look and took a long series of escalators up to the reading room at the top of the library. the inside was as crystalline as the outside, and filled with medium-toned wood paneling and plenty of matte aluminum, lime green paint, glass, light, and high ceilings. it felt a lot like being inside the fortress of solitude, except with more books and lime green paint.

just down the street, the line outside armandino's was relatively short but glacially slow, and i was bookended by people who had never been there but had seen it on the food network. counter staff came out periodically to pass round small dishes of cured meats for the people in line to try: winter salami (with cracked black peppercorns), finocchiona (with fennel and black pepper), lamb prosciutto (a dark and translucent ruby colour). 45 minutes after getting in line, i got a hot braised oxtail sandwich with peppers, onions, and salsa verde on a baguette-shaped section of bread that actually tasted much more like damper than baguette. the crumb was dense and a pale grey, with large crystals of gluten and only a few airspaces; the crust was firm with only a light crunch. the oxtail had been braised for so long that it had fallen apart into small shreds bound together by a light marinara sauce. very nice.

grilled cheese sandwich

around 11pm every night, i experience and succumb to the urge to make a grilled cheese sandwich. specifically, slices of light seeded rye or sweet white bread and an 1/8" slice of extra-sharp, crumbly cheddar dusted with cayenne and fresh-ground black pepper, grilled without butter on a cast-iron griddle. (previous incarnation!) my obsession with sandwiches perhaps verges on the pathological. when i was at the goog, colleague nate and i would sometimes go for days on sandwiches alone; he went to michigan and ann arbor is home to the legendary zingerman's reuben*, so also has Strongly-Held Views about sandwiches.

the only acceptable cheese to use is an extra-sharp cheddar--wrapped slices of "american cheese" are only tenuously identifiable as cheese and are almost certainly a crime against nature. when trader joe is too far away (he carries english coastal cheddar, aged over a year and filled with inclusions of calcium lactate; also inexplicably inexpensive), cabot makes a much more widely-available extra-sharp white cheddar, available in 2-pound blocks. after years of careful experimentation, i have concluded that large chunks of firm aged cheese are best stored wrapped in a single layer of unbleached paper toweling or muslin inside a sealed ziploc bag, wherein they will last for up to 6 weeks without diminution of quality.

please pistol-whip anyone who makes a grilled cheese sandwich out of wonder bread for reasons other than pure irony (that also being the sole contingency in which "american cheese" is acceptable). here in cambridge, we rejoice daily in iggy's bread of the world. they make, apart from very good artisanal breads, industrial-size loaves of rye, sourdough, and sweet white. i've never found these in stores but have discovered A Secret Location where i get these loaves thin-sliced for half-price.

* its fame is such that it even has merch: