Tomato and Basil Sandwich

Seeing as we were rolling into tomato and basil at the time where I made this sandwich (about a month ago), the making of this was not that inspired. But it's cooking within the season. Which is good. Tomatoes in February taste like crap. Tomatoes right now, and especially organic tomatoes, taste like tomatoes should taste. Not like water and fertilizers.

Anyways, there's nothing magical about his sandwich, just tomatoes, basil, mayonaise, unbleached multigrain bread, and onion sprouts which are the king of sprouts in my opinion. Way better than that rabbit food alfalfa. The real beauty of this sandwich is in the dehydration by osmosis of the tomatoes. I've said it before but let me say it again: tomatoes which have been drained of a bit of their water content are better. Just slice, spread in a colander, salt and let sit. They concentrate their flavour by losing some of their water. Genius, non?

Here's a photo of the amount of water you can extract from just one or two tomatoes. Enough to make a tomato and basil sandwhich basically. This is about 3 tablespoons!

Goat Cheese, Cucumber and Turkey Sandwich

I had a bunch of mild ingredients in my fridge that needed to be got rid of. Leftover from the previous Saturday's market was half a small wheel of mild goat cheese. This particular local craft cheese has an almost bocconcini-like mildness but the softened texture and muted tang of goat cheese. It's very light tasting and was a natural match for peeled and thinly sliced cucumber along with sliced deli turkey. I added just a few little dollops of pesto on top of the turkey and sandwiched the whole in plain crusty white bread. Lightly toasted, this sandwich is very light and almost feminine in quality. Maybe I should slice the bread thinner and remove the crusts to make is even more gentle. Next time I guess.

Italian Giardiniera and Chicago-style Beef Sandwich

There were alot of Italian descendants where I used to live in Sudbury which meant that there were alot of Itialian products available. Cannolis, good quality deli meats and cheeses, and canned goods. Amongst these I discovered giardiniera which is basically vegetables pickled in oil and vinegar and spices. Here in the non-Italian Atlantic Maritimes, there is no giardiniera in the stores. So I decided I’d make my own. Part of the whole “I want to can stuff” phase I seem to be in right now.

The recipe was easy to find thanks to the internet. It doesn’t quite taste like the product I used to buy but it’ll do. You can find the recipe I used at the following internet address http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Hot-Italian-Giardiniera/Detail.aspx.

To go with my homemade giardiniera, I had to find a recipe. What I found in my research is that giardiniera was popular amongst Chicago Italian immigrants. Though they didn’t eat much meat in the old country, they crossed the Atlantic and found a bunch of hearty, burly carnivores who required that every worker eat excessive amounts of protein. The result (and I’m not being very historic here) was the Chicago style Italian beef sandwich. This is basically a mountain of thinly sliced roast beef, loads of giardiniera all atop an Italian style roll and dipped in the jus of the roast beef. Supposedly this soggy sandwich is some people’s reason to get up in the morning. And though I’m sure my attempt was far from the original, I can admit that it was pretty damn good. I wish I could remember what I put in jus for stewing the beef. I know there was a can of tomato sauce, beef stock, probably grainy mustard, etc. But it was good. Though I didn’t take enough meat for myself – we had an unexpected dinner guest – I still enjoyed the sandwich. Especially when I made a mess of dunking it in my bowl of delicious beef jus.

Smoked Herring Sandwich

Looking at this photo some of you might think that it looks delicious. "Doest mine eyes see pickled onions?" you may wonder. "And smoked herring! How delightful!" Well to think such thoughts might be right in certain circumstances but not here. No, this sandwich was a class-A dissapointment. It's not the flavour pairings; that is to say that it's flavour failure is none of my fault. No the fault here lies in the quality of the fish.

Truth be told, the appropriate name for this fish would be "oversalted herring" and not "smoked herring". I'm sure herring is delicious but the amount of salt here was quite literally disgusting. Like when there's so much salt that you're getting the sweats, there's a problem.

If, however, you do find good quality smoked herring or pickled herring or canned herring, here is what I recommend you pair it with to make a fabulous sandwich: 1) a good quality dark rye bread; 2) strong russion style or honey dijon mustard; 3) onions pickled in malt vinegar England style. With strong flavours come other strong flavours to make a strongly flavoured whole. The trick is to make everything shine and not put anything in there that would simply go totally unnoticed. It's robust cooking. Thump your chest and call yourself Bif. Har. Har. Har.

Mushroom Sarnies and Mixed Seafood Soup...Yum!

I've had Portobello's sitting in my fridge for a bit and I really wanted to make a sandwich I got from one of Jamie Oliver's shows a few years back; it was from the time I attempted to go vegetarian. He called it a Mushroom Sarnie...I guess this is just a fancy word for sandwich in British lingo.

Though Jamie cooked his mushrooms in the oven, I decided to go with the barbecue. I just oil my grill, place the portobellos gill side down for about 2 minutes, flip them over, spoon on a generous helping of butter and cook till dripping and loose. That red stuff you see is the butter that goes with the portobello. I've included the recipe below. After that, you just serve the cooked portobellos on rye bread with Dijon mustard and watercress or any type of lettuce. I like this recipe cause it really showcases the meatyness of portobellos. I've seen a chili recipe once where the cubes of beef were replaced by cubes of these wonderful thick mushrooms. (By the way, when you buy your portobellos, remove the woody stems before you put them in your bag...just a little cheapskate trick ;)

My girlfriend also decided to make a mixed seafood chowder with that. Here in the Maritimes they sell relatively cheap packs of mixed seafood that sometimes look as though some young trainy was filleting the fish. This particular mix had haddock, lobster, scallops and really tiny shrimp. They sometimes have salmon, trout, crab and other seafood in there. It's scraps really.

The chowder (seen in front there) includes in order of cooking: bacon, cubed carrots, potatos, onions and celery, fish or chicken stock, fresh thyme, oregano and parsley. You can also add cream but this tends to make for a heavier soup and it is summer after all. We sadly didn't have any fish stock and so the seafood was confused by the broth. A sort of surf and turf thing.

Sun Dried Tomato and Chili Butter

8 oz (1 cup) butter, softened

4 sun dried tomatos

1 red chili (I used a cherry chili)

garlic

leaves of 3 fresh thyme sprigs

sea salt

pepper

1. Stick it all in a food processor and blend or chop ingredients and fold them into butter