Sandwiches
Corned Beef Sandwich the Right Way
There are several hurdles for the novice dry sausage maker: preservatives, patience, and precision. Fermented, dry sausages (salamis, sopppressata, etc.) take a long time, and, more to the point, must be hung in enclosed areas varying in temperature and humidity. It’s like trying to perfect a golf swing inside a tiny room. And so we made corned beef.
Homemade corned beef is simple and satisfying in the manner of any successful project: brine and simmer a brisket. The sole sticking point being the use of aforementioned preservatives, which are optional anyway, since grey corned beef is as tasty as pink corned beef. But a few tablespoons of pink salt profoundly boost one’s pride.
Any respectable corned beef lover knows that it belongs in one place: between two slices of good rye bread. To fry it up in a pan as hash or serve hot in a stew is a betrayal of all that’s pure and right in the world. Back to the sandwich, for once I have no opinion, as both are great: 1.) mustard (cole slaw optional) 2.) as a Reuben-warm, under a blanket of melted Swiss, sauerkraut and a smear of Russian dressing.
I tend to order (in this case, serve at home) corned beef with mustard because it’s about ten times lighter. Also, a good Reuben is tough to find. Often it’s transformed into an open sandwich slop of corned beef obscured under a pile of cheese. Katz’s, where you’d expect to find the genuine article, delivers a phone book thick stack of meat between bread soggy from an equally heavy hand with the Russian dressing. It’s a clumsy, careless product.
Which is why it makes sense to corn your own beef (if that’s a verb). You can craft your sandwich according to personal taste. You don’t need an exclusive cut of brisket, but because it’s critical to have good rye, I’d recommend sourcing that first. Or baking, if you know about that stuff. Then you’ve got a truly homemade sandwich.
(NOTE: they use ground ginger, which I loathe.)
Corned Beef Sandwich w/ Mustard (from Ruhlman and Polcyn’s Charcuterie)
Makes a lot of sandwiches
1 gallon water
2 cups salt
½ cup sugar
5 teaspoons pink salt
3 garlic cloves, minced or crushed
4 tablespoons Pickling Spice (see below) (halved-otherwise you’re stuck with a
dusty can of excess pickling spice)
One 5-pound brisket
Deli or Dijon mustard
Good, seeded Rye
1. Combine everything except the brisket and 2 tablespoons of the pickling spice (not the bread or mustard if I really need to say that) in a pot, bring to a simmer, stir to dissolve, cool to room temperature and refrigerate until cold.
2. Place brisket in brine (we used a giant ziplock-two actually) for 4 or 5 days. Remove, rinse under cold water, add to a big pot, cover with a lot of water and the remaining 2 tablespoons of pickling spice. Simmer 3 hours. Remove from heat, let cool in liquid. Lift out and refrigerate. Slice and make a sandwich.
Pickling Spice
1 tablespoon black peppercorns
1 tablespoon mustard seeds
1 tablespoon coriander seeds
1 tablespoon red pepper flakes
1 tablespoon allspice berries
1 tablespoon ground mace
1 cinnamon stick
5 bay leaves
1 tablespoon cloves
1. Mix in a bowl. How’s that?
The Best Sandwich Ever
This one is along the lines of meals I’ll never forget. And not because it was the day our son was born or A.J. Duhe intercepted Kenny O’Brien and wrecked the Jets’ season. Or an elaborate concoction of items assembled in a pan, reduced and strained to sauce consistency. This one was just plain awesome.
It was on our trip to Lugano, Switzerland at a table outside a small but bustling panini joint. They had about 20 panini, all simple, based on prosciutto, turkey, mortadella, and salami. Rather than the standard deli slicer we all know and love (except the guy I worked with who cut off a finger), they use a Berkel hand-cranked slicer, which permits one essentially to shave slices of meat thinner than paper-thin, if that’s possible. Let’s call it tissue-thin.
My sandwich arrived, full of that great prosciutto (did I mention Lugano is in the center of meat-eating country, and the cured stuff is excellent), a few slices of brie, baby arugula, and touch of mustard. Good bread is the key to any sandwich, in this case a fantastic, crusty, black bread with sesames. Each bite was as succulent as the next.
I won’t include a recipe; for this one, you need the right ingredients, and if you happen to have the right ingredients, you don’t need me to tell you what to do with them.
Leftover Steak and Eggs
I ate my first plate of steak and eggs in college at daybreak after a night of drinking. It was at a Boston IHOP and I remember it was very delicious. It is possible, however, that my standards were slightly compromised, no offense to the IHOP chefs. Tastiness aside, I do recall the extreme thinness of the steak; a chewy, overdone affair, a poorly cooked minute steak. But such a cut is precisely what’s called for: it’s breakfast, not a steak dinner; it would be a waste to use a fancy cut like strip or ribeye.
Perhaps because it’s tattooed on my brain as hangover fare, I haven’t eaten steak and eggs since that morning. But as a family man, I find myself living in a universe of leftovers. Last week I ate split pea soup three times; so far this week it’s been slices of Monday’s roast from my man Pino the Butcher.
Pino, actually, suggested steak and eggs as a good leftover option. A sensible and original notion, I gave it a shot. The problem is that I wasn’t sure how to proceed. My recollection from IHOP was that the dish is hot, and I wasn’t about to reheat my perfectly pink steak. Leftover or not, I don’t like grey steak.
And so I hit on cold steak and hot eggs. Hot and cold on the same plate is done all the time. And, more to the point, the only leftover steak is cold steak. It was very good; better than some half-assed, fried piece of gristle. Some cold slices of a good roast, hot scrambled eggs. Steak and eggs for the mature guy.
Leftover Steak and Eggs
For 1, up to 3 days post roasting
3 pound rib roast, with about a ¼ inch layer of fat
3 eggs
touch of milk
coffee
toasted English muffin
salt and pepper
- Preheat oven to 425. Season heavily all over with salt and pepper. You want a nice crust. Roast on a rack for ½ hour until browned and sizzling then reduce heat to 350 and roast to an internal temp of 130 (for medium rare). This may take another 40 minutes, but check after half hour. Remove and let rest about 15 minutes before carving.
- Over the next 2 or 3 days make sandwiches, eat plain with salt, or make steak and eggs. Scramble the eggs with a touch of milk. Season with salt and pepper. Serve piping hot with slices of steak and buttered muffin and a cup of coffee.
Catfish Sandwich w/ Snow Pea Slaw
Consider the fish sandwich. Typically, fish for sandwiches is fried (oyster po’ boys), mixed into a salad (tuna on rye), or compressed into squares prior to being fried (filet-o-fish). While we eat too much meat and fried stuff, seafood does, in fact, present a textural challenge when it comes to the sandwich.
Think of a sandwich as a battlefield in which all the elements fight for distinction. The sandwich maker’s role is peace broker; to harmonize the parties so that each balances the other. Bread, spread, veg, central ingredient: they all have to mesh, or the dish fails.
Fish is tough, as it’s usually soft and flaky and thereby no match for bread or anything else. Hence the proliferation of crunchy fried fish sandwiches. But then the sandwich becomes all about the fried fish; you may as well subtract the bread and eat a bowl of crunchy crispy seafood.
However, what happens if you reverse the crisping process: pan-fry (rather than deep-fry) the fish, and lightly toast the bread? Both are equally crunchy though still soft, making for a nice, harmonious bite. Allowing us to move on to the other stuff between the bread, which is what caught my eye about the Momofuku recipe in the latest Art Culinaire.
I read the recipe for the snow pea slaw and knew it would be good. It’s a simple alternative to cole slaw, and also (obviously) green, which brightens the dish, a very important factor when building a fish sandwich. The slaw is crunchy and, as opposed to, say, a Romaine leaf, actually tastes like something. Top it all off with melted butter and you’ve got a pretty good fish sandwich.
We used catfish because it’s firm and easy to pan-fry. That’s right, pan-fry with a little olive oil, not deep-fry. Other white fish, like cod, hake, mackerel, trout, or bass, would be great. It’s hard to resist eating that catfish, smoking hot and crisp in the pan, but keep your eye on the ball, we’re on a larger mission: to bring back the fish sandwich.
Catfish Sandwich w/ Snow Pea Slaw (adapted from Momofuku via Art Culinaire)
Serves 4
1 pound snow peas, julienned
¼ cup sour cream or crème fraiche
1 tablespoon mustard
juice of ½ a lemon
2 catfish fillets, about 10 oz each
2 sprigs rosemary
1 cup olive oil
8 slices country bread, sliced ½ inch thick brushed with melted butter
salt and pepper
- In a bowl whisk the sour cream, mustard, and lemon juice. Toss in the snow peas, season with salt and pepper and refrigerate.
- Heat the oil in a large sauté pan over medium high. Season the fillets on both sides with salt and pepper. When the oil is nearly smoking hot, slip in the fish gently. Cook without moving until crisp and golden, a few minutes. Flip, toss in the rosemary and repeat. Remove to a tray or cutting board.
- Toast the bread until lightly colored.
- To assemble the sandwich: top bread with about ½ a fillet each then a mound of sprouts, close, and eat.
Lamb Sandwich w/ Vinegar
It’s what they call a meta moment. I was eating a sandwich-that ingeniously conceived piece of food architecture-while reading about a sandwich. More to the point, a lamb sandwich while skimming a lamb sandwich recipe, like working at the Smithfield factory while reading Charlotte’s Web, or to be precise and less gruesome, more like a cabbie watching taxi driver.
I consider myself somewhat of an authority on the lamb sammie, and this one was superior. Better, actually, than the one we posted a while back. I have happily hit upon perhaps the finest method of cooking a sammie-destined lamb leg. But back to the sandwich.
A lamb-or any similar sandwich-isn’t about excavating spoonfuls of dry scraps and piling them between the bread. To use a familiar example, a turkey sandwich is composed of three critical stages: a good bird; proper cooking; quick use, no more than 24 hours after you pull it from the oven.
Most cookbooks are fundamentally ignorant of the above strictures. Take Geoffrey Zakarian’s Town/Country, or Keller’s Bouchon. Both recipes call for “leftover lamb”, though at least Keller specifies the meat be “from the day before” as well as the leg. Zakarian suggests all kinds of “leftover” cuts i.e. rack, leg, shanks…whatever. Because a lamb sandwich is about sliced, not shredded meat, shanks are inadvisable. As for rack, who the hell is going to have leftover rack of lamb? As it is, the chops are tiny, and they cost over $20 a pound. In addition, he offhandedly recommends you just go out and double your lamb purchase expressly to make a next day sandwich.
Leftovers are fine for sandwiches: see turkey, chicken, and meatloaf. But there’s something about more delicate, slightly gamey meats, that doesn’t feel right. I’ve never, for instance, heard of a leftover duck sub, or craving a late night quail sandwich. Anyway, the idea of using leftovers is slightly insulting to the animal. Why not cook it for the express purpose of slicing and layering between bread with the condiment and topping of your choice?
Obviously you shouldn’t buy eight pounds of meat just for a sandwich. That’s step one. Step two is cooking it the right way. Because a sandwich is all about balance, the meat has to be doubly tasty so that it doesn’t get lost amid the bread and whatever else you have in there. So you have to be a little careful about how to cook the lamb.
A marinade is critical. Herbs, garlic, thyme, olive oil. But the recipe from Fiona Dunlop’s Tapas goes several steps beyond a mere marinade. The meat is seared and simmered in a full quart of olive oil along with a bunch of leeks, garlic, mushrooms, etc. And a cup of red wine vinegar, which is the key. Next, it’s marinated in the cooking liquid for 4, yes 4 days. Essentially, you’re making marinated, vinegary, lamb confit.
Four days later, uncovering the lamb, you immediately inhale the most delicious aroma of garlic, olive oil, vinegar, and lamb. The vinegar has provided you with a ready-made dressing, which you can spoon onto your toasted bread. A few romaine leaves and you have the best lamb sammie you’ll ever eat. Never again will you roast a lamb with leftover in mind. Respect the animal at least that much.
(NOTE: The dish is actually called “Marinated Lamb and Watercress Salad” but I like sandwiches better than salad, so there you go.)
Lamb Sandwich w/ Vinegar (adapted from Tapas by Fiona Dunlop)
For 4 sandwiches
2 pound lamb from the leg, tied
4 cups olive oil
1 cup red wine vinegar
¼ pound mushrooms, sliced
6 cloves garlic, crushed
3 leeks, chopped
2 carrots, peeled and chopped
small bunch thyme
1 head romaine
4 sub rolls
salt and pepper
- Preheat oven to 325.
- Season lamb with salt and pepper. Brown all over in pan with a bit of olive oil. Transfer to a casserole, pour over the oil, vinegar, and vegetables. Cover and simmer in the oven for an hour to an hour-and-a-half. If the oil is bubbling too much, turn down the oven. Remove and let cool in the liquid. The lamb should be just medium rare.
- Cover and marinate for 4 days.
- Remove, slice thinly. Split and lightly toast the rolls. Drizzle some of the marinade on both sides, top with a few leaves of romaine, shingle the lamb, season with a bit of salt, and serve.
Chiang Mai (Thai Sausages)
I sometimes wonder what our neighbors are cooking. All I have to go on is smell, an entirely unreliable sense, in our case stifled by elevator shafts, drywall, and the general anatomy of the building.
Chinese food, of course, is immediately recognizable: the steam released by an opened box of lo mein floats cloudlike downwind for miles. The same goes for Indian.
I have yet to meet anyone who can, from the lobby, identify a carefully watched stuffed trotter baking on the fifth floor or the fragrance of turbot fillets gently cooking in a buttery bath a few floors above that. Yet while a bowl of Thai curry might be recognizable from afar, the mystery lies in its elements: the raw ingredients as well as the transformation they undergo in the creation of the final product.
Over here we’ve been making our way through David Thompson’s great Thai Street Food, a hardcover coffee table cum cookbook a collection of recipes woven throughout lavish shots of Thai food vendors, farmers, and street life. What comes through, from both recipe and photograph, is a people with an innate feel for what grows, swims, or roams locally, and what to do with them in the kitchen.
Among many images, there’s braised duck hanging on a cart, waiting for customers; betel leaves being bundled and sold on river boats; bowls of cut pineapple; two varieties of corn, and shrimp paste fermenting in the sun
The items are remarkably subtle and interesting, indicative of a nation with a superb collective palate. Lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, and holy basil resemble their western counterparts yet are more fragrant and arresting. Even saltiness, achieved by fermenting fish in the sun-resulting in fish sauce-is complex, touching all the senses rather than being a mere accent to a dish.
The downside to all this is that it’s hard to find a lot of this stuff. We’re pretty lucky in this regard: there’s a Thai grocery nearby. But in general, I can’t step outside to pick up a jar of lime paste and a quart of milk. So you have to substitute. The other issue is the extensive chopping, and the fact that minute hairs of lemongrass fiber can find their way into the tiniest of kitchen crevices.
Minced and pounded, these plants and spices come together into a sharp paste, which, though it hits the wok first, is broken down throughout the process as to be virtually unrecognizable in the final dish. Thai cooking is all about standing over the cutting board pounding, mincing, and crushing an array of plants and spices.
When the house smells like coconut and lime leaf, lemongrass, shrimp paste, fish sauce, fried shallots, garlic, and ginger, there’s real Thai cooking going on. And unless he comes over for a taste, the neighbor won’t have any idea.
(NOTE: because this sausage is obviously not a curry, the paste doesn’t get broken down, hence the straight-on blast of curry paste. Smoking it over tea leaves, as Thompson prescribes, mellows out the flavor, but it’s also an extra step, and I was too tired. The sausage is relatively dry, so make sure you get fatty pork shoulder. In lieu of casing and a stuffer just make patties and turn them into burgers or even better, hors d’oeuvres on a toothpick with a sweet sauce.)
Chiang Mai Sausage (From Thai Food by David Thompson)
Curry paste (see below)
9 oz cubed fatty pork shoulder, ground
pinch salt
large pinch palm sugar (brown sugar if need be)
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon fish sauce
2 tablespoons shredded kaffir lime leaves
handful chopped cilantro
3 feet sausage casing
- In a medium bowl combine the paste with pork. Mix well, season with the sugar, soy and fish sauces, fold in the lime and cilantro.
- If using a sausage stuffer, run the mixture through the machine into the well-washed casings. Twist into links and prick all over to pop any air holes.
- If making patties, form into patties. How’s that? I like making hors d’oeuvres-sized balls and you could also do that.
- Fry in a pan until done. Or smoke, then fry. Serve with a sweet-salty dipping sauce like a mixture of fish sauce and palm sugar. Or pop into a split hoagie roll with spicy mayo, pickled carrots, and lettuce, banh mi style.
Paste
6-10 dried long chilies, deseeded, soaked for 15 minutes, drained and dried
pinch salt
3 tablespoons chopped lemongrass
1 tablespoon chopped galangal (or ginger if need be)
3 tablespoons chopped shallot
2 tablespoons chopped garlic
1 tablespoon chopped long pepper (or 2 teaspoons black pepper)
1. Gradually pound the ingredients with a mortar and pestle. Or, if you’re somewhat sane, puree in a small food processor. Make sure the items are well chopped before you add them, as they really need to form a paste. Add a bit of water if necessary, and be sure to keep scraping down the sides.
Vietnamese Eggplant and Mint Lettuce Rolls
For my first ever Nook experience I chose Gay Talese’s “Honor Thy Father”, the definitive mob chronicle. Brilliantly understated and quietly powerful as only Talese can write, it’s also typically informative in a dense yet engaging manner.
The Godfather notwithstanding, the mob existence was quite unglamorous and dull. Horse heads, shootouts, and dead fish calling cards were either extremely rare or entirely fictional. From what I gather, guys spent most of their time in underfurnished rooms watching television.
And, critically, they don’t seem to have spent much of that time browning sausages in the preparation of delicious, long-simmering pasta dishes. Reading TV Guide and making trips to the corner pay phone seem the activities of choice.
Reading Talese has, however, conjured a homestyle Italian craving over here: a lot of labor-intensive Bolognese, lasagna, and overloaded takeout subs. Movie mob food, otherwise known as starch.
It took a trip up 9th Avenue to Co Ba to pluck us from this carb-haze. Small Vietnamese plates are the specialty: steamed coconut and shrimp pudding; fried lemongrass coated tofu; barbecued pork ribs; grilled shrimp served with lettuce leaves, mint and chile-lime sauce.
The shrimp is a classic dish, the elements presented for self-assembly: a few shrimp, some mint leaves, a drizzle of sauce, maybe some sriracha and crushed peanuts, all folded into a leaf. It’s the very essence of Vietnamese cooking, salty, sweet, spicy, and minimal, reflecting a confidence in each ingredient. Even the lettuce, whose ridges and crimps store the drizzles of sauce, is well thought-out rather than a mere wrapper.
The Vietnamese lettuce roll is an elevated sandwich whose components, stripped of starchy interference, are allowed to shine. As you see below, the roll invites creativity, especially of the vegetarian kind, a tasty antidote to starch overload and, as such, perhaps not Sunday Italian supper, but surely a welcome meal for housebound gangsters.
(NOTE: you can use a large eggplant; we like how the small ones, quartered, make for the perfect-sized filling. Instead of vegetable oil, you could use mustard oil.)
Vietnamese Eggplant Rolls
Serves 4
2 small eggplants or 1 large (see note)
1 tablespoon curry powder
¼ cup vegetable oil
1 head romaine
1 bunch mint
1 cup unsalted roasted peanuts, crushed
1 recipe Sweet and Salty sauce (below)
salt and pepper
- If using small eggplants, trim ends and quarter lengthwise into roughly 2 inch strips. For a large eggplant, slice similarly. Make three or four shallow scores on the flesh side of the sections. This will allow the spice and sauce to penetrate the vegetable.
- Toss the sections in a large bowl with the oil, curry powder and salt and pepper. Don’t oversalt, as the sauce is fairly salty.
- Preheat broiler Lay out eggplant flesh side up on a tray (shake the tray a bit to make sure the pieces are well oiled and won’t stick. If necessary, coat the tray lightly with a bit more oil.
- Broil until well browned, about 8 minutes depending on the size. You want to retain a bit of firmness so watch that it doesn’t overcook.
- Arrange on a platter with the lettuce, mint, nuts, and a ramekin of sauce.
Sweet and Salty Sauce
1 cup palm sugar
½ cup fish sauce
2 shallots, minced
1 small chile, seeded and minced
1. Simmer the sugar and fish sauce in a small pot until thickened to a light syrup. Stir in shallot and chile.
Char Siu Bao – Roast Pork Buns
Final bun ready to eat (already started)
One of my favorite condiments is Indian pickle. It comes in a jar and with different bases: lime and mango being the most common, though the homemade jalapeno version from Suvir Saran’s cookbook is, I think, the best (see our post). Not that you’d make a grave error purchasing one over the other as they taste about the same: large chunks of fibrous, indistinguishable fruit matter suspended in a broken slurry of vegetable oil and a long list of spices such as turmeric, cumin, coriander, and fenugreek.
start with top quality fatty pork shoulder
While homemade chile pickle is superior, jarred pickle is very good and available at Kalustyan’s or your local Indian grocery. Most people, however, probably live in an area devoid of Indian grocery stores. We just spent a month in Truro near the tip of Cape Cod, which is that sort of place. Hunks of great swordfish yes, jars of mango pickle, no. Which got me thinking about prepared sauces.
Roasted and chopped (need to keep mincing-taking a break)
In New York we’re spoiled by addictive ethnic groceries. Holy Basil (for Chrissakes, pun intended), the Thai form of the herb, is available a few blocks from us on Mosco Street, a tiny curve at the lower end of Chinatown. So when I tackled char siu, the Cantonese marinated roast pork-using the recipe from Corinne Trang’s great “Essentials of Chinese Cuisine” - I took the subway uptown to Kalustyan’s for a box of fermented bean paste.
Kalustyan’s carries shelves of the stuff mostly in plastic boxes covered in Chinese characters and an illustration of a few cubes. Save for the lone English description “fermented bean paste” and unless I pried open the thing, I didn’t have a lot to go on. I had, however, read of a form of genuine, supposedly rank, Chinese fermented beans, and having learned from that promising but perhaps too authentic Chinese restaurant, I decided to pass.
Yet because char siu marinade needs some form of fermented bean-it donates that familiar blast of body and umami common to a lot of Chinese dishes-I bought a prepared chile bean and garlic sauce which, whisked into the other, less esoteric ingredients, worked nicely. I submerged the pork strips for a solid 6 hours, flipping once or twice and then roasted at a high temp. The result was perfect, sweet and savory Chinese barbecue.
The prepared sauce worked great, but I’m no dummy. After all, we live in New York, so while at Kalustyan’s I picked up a bottle of tandoori coloring (red food dye) for that extra Chinese restaurant-at-home result. High quality, fatty pork shoulder is necessary for char siu, so find a butcher, or come to the city and get it from Pino on Sullivan Street.
(NOTE: We turned these into pork buns-recipe below-but it’s great with rice. The pork bun dough, incidentally, is yeasty and if left for a bit in the fridge and steamed, makes for a nice accompaniment without having to go through the chopping and stuffing.)
Char Siu (Cantonese Roast Pork) from Corinne Trang’s “Essentials of Asian Cuisine”
Serves 4
7 tablespoons honey
2 tablespoons hoisin sauce
1 tablespoon prepared chile bean sauce with garlic
¼ cup sugar
1 tablespoon shaoxing wine (sherry would work)
2 large garlic cloves minced
3 dashes red food coloring
1 pounds pork shoulder in 1 ½ to 2 inch thick strips
- Whisk together the first 7 ingredients till smooth. Pour into a baking dish or large bowl. Immerse the pork, coat well, cover and refrigerate for at least 6 hours, flipping and coating a few times.
- Preheat oven to 450.
- Pour 1 cup water in a baking pan fitted with a flat rack. Roast the pork basting with the marinade occasionally and flipping after 20 minutes. Thinly slice and serve over rice with the drippings from the pan.
(NOTE: You can shape it as large or small as you want i.e. 1 or 2-biters.)
Char Siu Bao (Roast Pork Buns)
Makes 12
1 tablespoon veg oil
3 scallions sliced thinly
2 cups minced Cantonese roast pork (Char Siu recipe above)
1 ½ tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons light soy sauce
3 tablespoons oyster sauce
1 teaspoon tapioca starch or cornstarch
1 ½ tablespoons shaoxing wine (or sherry)
12 spongy buns (below)
- Heat the oil in a medium skillet on medium heat. Add the scallions and cook till soft, about 1 minute then add the pork, sugar, soy, oyster sauce and cook, stirring, till warmed through, about 3 minutes.
- Dissolve the cornstarch in the wine, pour into the pork mixture and stir in to thicken, remove from heat and let cool.
- Place a golf ball (or slightly larger) sized bun (see note) in one hand and make a well in the center with your thumb. Fill with 2 tablespoons of the mixture and close by pinching the edges together. Repeat.
- Place the buns seam side up or down (if down, use a scissors to make a small x in the center of the dough) in a bamboo steamer fitted with parchment paper. They should be spaced about 1 inch or so apart to accommodate their expanding. Fill a wok 1/3 high with water and bring to a simmer. Place steamer in and steam buns for about 12 minutes.
Bao Spongy Buns
Makes 12-24 buns (depending on desired size)
1 teaspoon active dry yeast
3 ½ cups flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 tablespoons lard or shortening, chilled
- Dissolve yeast in a cup of lukewarm water for about 5 minutes in a large bowl. Whisk flour, sugar, and baking powder and add to yeast slowly, stirring. With fingertips work in the shortening or lard.
- Turn to a floured surface and knead about 5 minutes until smooth. Form a ball, dust with flour, place in a bowl, wrap with plastic and allow to rise about 2 hours till doubled.
- Punch down dough, knead till smooth and elastic, about 5 minutes. Shape into 12 to 24 equal-size balls and cover with plastic wrap till ready to use.
SUB! Serrano Ham, Manchego, Grated Tomato
About five years ago, I discovered the perfect sub. Sandwich, that is, not the submersible propeller kind. At White House Sub Shop in Atlantic City, it was equivalent to Supper’s caci e pepe being your inaugural bowl of pasta. White House is one of the last legitimate eateries left in Atlantic City, and it’s worth the trip, but bring your track shoes-you may need to dodge bullets on the way in and the way out.
As Caroline Russock at Serious Eats noted, the key to the White House sandwich is the hot chile pepper condiment spooned over the meat. The bread is also superb: fresh, slightly crusty, and not too dense. I also like the sheer size: a full sub is a two foot-long torpedo wrapped in butcher paper. All day people stream out, balancing sacks of them as they sprint to the car. (Bring the shoes.)
While the White House makes a fantastic sandwich, it is summer after all, and with high quality ingredients you can put together a lighter, equally delicious sub. Rather than the papery, bland shrink-wrapped prosciutto from the supermarket, we used a delicious, salty, porky, dry Serrano ham from D’Espana. While there we snatched up some manchego; on the way home we grabbed a few good rolls and tomatoes from a Little Italy market.
The condiment here is a take on tomato bread, a tapas staple (to stay with the Spanish theme of the day) in which a tomato is halved and grated onto crostini. Since we were composing a sandwich, a heartier, more liquid version was called for, so we grated the flesh into a bowl and spooned it over the bread.
As with anything in life, this sandwich is a trade-off: unless you live conveniently near a bunch of great specialty stores, finding first-rate ingredients may be a bit of a hunt. On the other hand, you won’t have to trek to A.C. and risk your life. If you’re within say, 50 miles of the shore, however, I do recommend the White House Sub.
(NOTE: the nectarine adds sweetness (obviously), though you can omit if you don’t want that gourmet stuff. It is nectarine season, though, so might as well go for it now when you can.)
Serrano Ham and Manchego Sub w/ Grated Tomato
Makes 4
1 beefsteak tomato
6 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons sherry vinegar
10 oz sliced Serrano ham
10 oz sliced manchego
1 nectarine (optional)
4 ciabatta rolls
salt and pepper
- Halve the tomato. Cut side facing the grater, grate the flesh of both halves into a medium bowl. Season with salt and pepper, two tablespoons of the olive oil and the vinegar. Set aside.
- Split the rolls and toast very lightly, until barely colored. Remove and spoon several tablespoons of grated tomato on one side. Top with the ham, cheese and optional nectarines. Serve.
Shrimp Salad w/ Green Peppercorns
We spend August in Truro. Truro is way out on the Cape, nearly as far as you can go, just before Provincetown, the tip of the curl, a place you’d think remote, yet jammed with schlocky shops and summer beachgoers strolling its narrow streets day and night.
No matter. The farther out on the Cape, the more you realize it’s truly a fishing zone. Markets sell giant, thick hunks of swordfish, tuna, and bass, as well as crab and buckets of steamers ready to be cleaned and dunked in clarified butter.
The long drive to this seafood mecca necessitates a roadside diner stop. Last year, either we chose the wrong place, or pureed chicken salad is a tradition among these joints. Needless to say, my mushy scoop went untouched.
“Protein salad”, for lack of a better term, shouldn’t be mushy. (By “protein” I mean chicken, tuna, egg, etc. It must be a remnant of my days working at the cooking school receiving dock where every morning the “protein” guy unloaded the truck, handing over the meat and fish for us to label and cart up to the classes where students would destroy the helpless aforementioned “protein”.)
While I like my “protein” salad at least semi-chunky, it’s tricky to achieve success. Chunks of chicken or, in this case, shrimp, don’t bind well with mayo, a failing perfect for a salad, less perfect for a sandwich. Sandwiches, you see, shouldn’t collapse with one bite. The filling has to remain inside the bread, otherwise you’re left with soggy bread and a handful of whatever.
A handful of bite-sized shrimp tossed with a few herbs makes for a great salad as well as a tasty sandwich.if matched with the right bread. It should be a soft bread (see mayo-less lobster roll): the violent wrestling motion inspired by a crusty roll or baguette causes spillage. Go light on the mayo to prevent soaking, but if need be, use a few leaves of protective romaine.
If you make it to the Cape, you may as well soldier on to the end and taste the purest seafood on the East Coast. Alternatively, a good shrimp salad is a good simulation.
(NOTE: We made an hors d’oeuvre, which works well. You can even use crusty bread, as it’s only a one or two biter. Adjust the seasonings to taste.)
Shrimp Salad Canape
Makes 8
1/2 pound peeled, deveined shrimp (or do it yourself, it’s cheaper)
¼ cup mayo
1 tablespoon dijon
1 teaspoon green peppercorns
2 tablespoons capers
1 tablespoon tarragon, minced
1/3 cup celery, small dice
3 tablespoons scallions, thinly sliced
1 baguette, ½ inch slice
salt and pepper
1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add the shrimp and blanch 5 minutes. Drain, cool under running cold water or an ice bath. Dry well.
2. Chop shrimp into ½ inch pieces and reserve.
3. In a medium bowl whisk together the mayo and Dijon. Fold in the shrimp then the rest of the ingredients. Refrigerate.
4. Spoon salad on bread and serve. Alternatively, serve in a nice bowl alongside the bread and dig in
