This is the first of two posts of sandwiches from the Big Island of Hawaii, where I recently spent 10 days soaking in a little taste of tropical paradise.
On our first full day on the island we headed out to the Waimea Farmers Market to pick some produce and check out the other local offerings.
The first thing we noticed after getting out of the car was the thick, lustrous smell of bacon! That instantly reminded me that we had not had breakfast, and we cut a path straight towards the smell. As it turned out the bacon was being fried up at a stand run by Mai Bacon, a local outfit that specializes in fresh bacon, produced from local, organically raised pigs. In order to entice passers-by to purchase thick slabs of bacon, the proprietor was offering BLTs made fresh, for $3 each. I should of got two...
Fresh, crisp lettuce, extremely juicy tomato, an avocado aioli, and a generous portion of that fragrant bacon all piled up on a bun made for a great breakfast sandwich. I overheard the fella running the booth say that he buys all the ingredients for the sandwiches from other stands at the market, which I think is very cool. All in all, one of the best BLTs I've ever had.
Also, I should mention the Gorgonzola Rosemary Focaccia we purchase from a local bakery's stand- wow! Talk about some kick-ass bread. Paired up with mango, papaya, local citrus and Kona coffee, we had some great breakfasts for the next couple of days.
Man, this one was so good I took a bite before it could get its photo taken. I was not disappointed.
This is pretty straightforward sandwich. I made it on the pane toscano that I baked in the previous post, and built up on a solid foundation of dry-cured ham. Prosciutto is probably my favorite of the cured pork options, and one we've already seen once or twice on this blog. I put a couple of slices of cheese down. Muenster. Some thick sliced greenhouse tomatoes and then layered some veggies on top of the prosciutto. For some crunch, I went with a yellow pepper, threw on a few sprouts, and rounded it off with some marinaded spinach (red wine vinegar, olive oil, stone ground mustard), which is something I've been really into lately.
For those of you unfamiliar with early '70s AM gold, this post is all about the bread. As bread is an integral part of the sandwich, I think its only fair that we devote some time to talking about it. The following is a photo essay with some commentary covering a recent day of bread making. Both the recipes came from the oft-mentioned Il Fornaio cookbook. One was the pane toscano recipe (shape enhanced) and the other a traditional focaccia. So scroll down to the video at the very bottom, start the song, and enjoy the photos.
Now, I'm not going to tell you that making bread is easy, and doesn't require some effort, but its so rewarding that you'll never go back. Here's my biggest beef with store-bought bread: the ingredients. Good quality bread only really requires 4 ingredients: flour, yeast, water and salt (and the salt is even somewhat optional). Compare this ingredient list against what your buying at the store and you will likely be shocked at what you see. That said, with subtle variation in the amounts of those ingredients, shapes, rising times, etc...you can create an extraordinary amount of different breads.
The part of bread making that consumes the most time is waiting for it to rise. The recipes from the Il Fornaio book almost all call for a "sponge" starter, which is basically water, yeast and flour that is allowed to sit over-night to get the yeast activated. Most of the recipes involve multiple rising periods, ranging from 1 1/2 hours to 45 mins at a time.
After you get through 2 rising periods, its time to shape your loafs. That's the Pane Toscano recipe getting shaped in the last 3 photos, and here it is covered by a towel after shaping, rising for the final time. Don't forget to preheat your oven!
Here's the focaccia getting prepped to bake: olive oil, and some dimples. By the way, this is the time to use your good olive oil (the one I'm using was a gift from the Natch, NoMans other contributor).
I bake all of my bread on a "stone," which is essentially an unglazed paving square, that you leave in the oven all the time. It works great for pizza as well. In this photo you can see a large stone on the bottom rack, plus an arrangement of smaller unglazed tiles on the top. Before you throw the dough in the oven, give it a few mists of water, this helps the bread to "jump" to a nice fluffy texture, and also aids in crust formation. I usually pre-mist, mist when I put the bread in, and again after 5 mins or so.
Here's the focaccia coming out of the oven:
For the Pane Toscano, I like to cut some slits on the top, and the rub a little olive oil in to them:
Here's the last loaf coming out of the oven:
Not a bad haul for a days worth of baking...
First things first- with all that fresh baked bread, you better make a snack.
First, cut some thin strips of focaccia. Then crush some garlic onto a plate, mix it with some olive oil, chiffonade of basil, grated Parmesan cheese, and dig in!
I have come to find bread making to be a great Sunday activity, one that I actually look forward. I hope all of you sandwich fans out there will give it a shot. There are plenty of great recipes out there, and honestly, bread is pretty hard to mess up.
People are always warning against reinventing the wheel, and I think that is sound advice; wheels don't need reinventing. But as a metaphor that phrase rings pretty hollow, as some tried and true "things" need to be rethought every now and then. That's where the Side Pork, Greens and Tomato sandwich comes in.
Now, for the record I love a good BLT, but there is nothing wrong with branching out from tradition. For those of you who are not well versed in your cuts of pork, Side Pork is the same cut as bacon, the difference being that bacon is cured, while side pork is fresh.
I fried it up a pan with a little bit of olive oil, and made sure to cook it until it was good and crispy. I whisked together some crushed garlic, olive oil, red wine vinegar, and a splash of lemon juice to make a dressing, and then lightly coated some fresh spinach with it, and set it aside while the pork cooked.
The bread for this sandwich was again a Pagnotta, but this time I prepared a version of it using wheat flour, which gives it a little coarser texture. While the greens were marinading, and the pork was frying I slipped the sliced bread into the oven to melt some smoked gouda. I was thinking that since the pork wasn't cured like bacon, the addition of a smoked cheese would help round out the flavor profile. After that, just a couple of slices of tomato (salted and peppered, of course), and then you put all together. I have to say the side pork had a different texture from bacon, a little bit chewier, which I found quit enjoyable, and the marinaded greens really tied the whole thing together in a way lettuce never would have been able to.
Heya No Man fans, I just put this bountiful beauty together last weekend and I figured it would be perfect to share.
Firstly, the warm and sunny Oakland temperature allowed me to fix up the meat and veggies on a traditional charcoal fire grill. Please excuse the separation of meat from veggies. Not my first choice, but the wife insists that they cook at different rates and should be separated. I like to get everything mingled together, but the separation keeps the temperature controlled so the veggies don’t sweat out all their crunchiness.
The meat is lamb tri-tip that was soaked in a simple red wine marinade (burgundy wine, salt, pepper, onions and rosemary) for an hour or so and then seared on the grill for about five minutes a side. As Sandwich always preaches I let the meat rest for 10-15 to complete cooking. The veggies were just the traditional kabob stuffs, red pepper, yellow pepper, onion and mushrooms. I spread the bottom of carpet slipper with some olive oil and threw that on the grill for a few seconds.
The sauce you see dripping down the sides is a tzatziki. I wish I had made this myself, but it’s store bought. It’s really easy to make. Just mix together some Greek yogurt, minced garlic, grated cucumbers, olive oil, salt and pepper and some lemon juice. I also put a layer of crumbled feta on top of the sauce to give it a good bite. This was good for two solid meals of food. Now if I only had a picture of Tom Selleck and a waterfall...
Ham and cheese is a true classic, but this version adds a few updates which move this sandwich out of cold cut drudgery and into the realm of culinary delight.
I started with some homemade Pagnotta bread (again the recipe from Il Fornio), one slice of which received a nice slather of cream cheese. The cream cheese may seem to be a bit extravagant of an addition to a ham and cheese sandwich, but here it serves two useful purposes. First, it provides a nice bed on which to anchor the cucumber slices (they don't slide out when you bit down this way), and second, it gives the sandwich a really nice texture by sort of tying everything together.
The other slice of bread gets a dollop of mustard, here I'm using Groetje's spicy brown (which is a great all-natural, no preservative, spicy as hell brown mustard). I covered the mustard with two slices of sharp New York cheddar, on top of which I piled some greens. Here is a tip you can apply to almost all sandwiches: marinade your greens! Basically, I made a quick vinaigrette of red wine vinegar, olive oil, and 1/2 tsp of the spicy mustard. Then you just mix the greens around with the vinaigrette, and plop them on the sandwich, you'll probably be surprised what a difference this makes! You don't want the greens soaking or dripping, just coat them a little.
Then all you need is a couple slices of tomato, and a few thin (thin!) slices of ham. I love to get my deli meat (always get it at a deli, never buy prepackaged!) at a local grocery store, Goodrich's. They always show you the first slice for thickness/thinness approval, they have high quality staff and products, and you can get a great deli sandwich for about $4 with your choice of meat, cheese, bread and fixings!
So, I've lately become aware of some awesome sandwich related content that is floating around the etherwebs, and I've decided that from time to time it would be fun to share some of these items. So in that spirit, here are a couple of sites that I find enjoyable.
Scanwiches- basically just what it sounds like, dude's scanner must be pretty gross...
This next one involves two parts. First, open this link and start the song. Second, open this link in a new tab, then just scroll down and enjoy. I realize I'm being somewhat cryptic, but it'll be more fun this way. Thanks to Shooter for this link, it is amazing!
