Food & Drink

Assembling the sandwich

OK, you've got your  BELTO's ingredients (see previous post), now let's put our big sandwich together.  You've got your Bacon, Egg, Lettuce, Tomato and Onion, plus your bread.  You're also going to need mayonnaise, salt, and cayenne pepper.

Place two slices of bread on the counter, and cover both slices liberally with mayo - Hellman's Real Mayonnaise is the best.  I've tried other brands, I've tried even tried Hellman's canola oil mayo, but nothing is better than original Hellman's, not even TJ's.  It is STILL the original recipe used by German immigrant Richard Hellman in his delicatessan since 1905.  It was his wife's recipe, which became so popular he started selling it to different stores, and eventually closed his own deli to market his mayonnaise full time.  With a recipe over a 100 years old, it's gotta be good and it is - and it's also good for you.  Simple and natural, it's made from eggs, oil and vinegar - (don't get the "light" stuff, because they put all sorts of additives to make it the same texture and taste as the real stuff, don't quite succeed, and not only is that bad for you, it's no long "real" is it?)

That's right, just mayo, no mustard - you may be a mustard person, you may THINK you want mustard, but even a milder sweet mustard or plain yellow mustard is too much for the BELTO.  With the bacon and onion, your sandwich already has a lot of strong flavors and you want them to shine through.  The eggy mayo, however, perfectly complements the egg in your sandwich.  And, to digress momentarily, eggs have gotten a bad rap - they're actually quite healthy for you - the whole egg, not just the whites (never divorce your egg white from the yolk except in angel food cakes (for the whites) or hollandaise (yolks).)  The lecithin in the white of the egg actually counteracts the cholesterol in the yolks, so it balances itself out.  Egg eaters also (surprisingly) find it easier to lose weight than bagel breakfast eaters.

Now, we sprinkle a little salt and a little (a LITTLE) red cayenne pepper on the mayo'd bread slices - bringing out the flavors and adding just a little heat - not enough to interfere with the rest of the sandwich, just enough for taste.  You can add heat with tabasco, or Frank's hot sauce, or sirichi sauce - but they have too much flavor for our already flavor-filled BELTO.  Save them for something blander.  The cayenne just has heat, no imposing flavor.

Now it's time to assemble.  This is a tricky task with the big sandwich, so take a deep breath and prepare yourself!  The key is balance.  Your thinly sliced onion goes first - layer it sparingly on one slice.  Keeping your onion thin enables the rest of the ingredients to have a firmer foundation rather than a lumpy one, and makes your sandwich more stable.  Next, a thickly sliced home-grown tomato - you'll need at least two slices (depending on the respective sizes of your tomato and bread).  Don't overlap your tomatoes, or your sandwich will be lumpy and things will start falling out (you're going to have that problem with a big sandwich anyway, no need to make it worse.)  You may have to cut one slice of your tomato to shape, in order to make it jut up perfectly against its companion as well as reach the edges of the sandwich - which is important.  As you assemble your sandwich, you don't want to forget about the edges.  Don't just pile everything in the middle with an inch or two around the perimeter - you don't want empty dry edges!

Normally your big sandwich would call for pickles (another fantastic invention, more on that later) but not the BELTO - it has enough flavors going on, and pickles would make it too busy and confusing for your palate (we don't want to confuse that precious palate!)  Think of an outfit - Stacy and Clinton would give you holy hell ("shut the front door!") if you wore a bold plaid with bold stripes.

After the tomatoes, it's time for your freshly fried (over easy-medium) eggs - two should cover the bread, maybe even lapping over the sides a bit (yum).  Next, follow with your romaine lettuce - a hardy lettuce that can hold its own with these other strong flavors.  Green leaf or red leaf would work as well.  I like to use a lot - it makes me feel healthy!

Next is your TJ's apple-wood smoked bacon - it is best cooked in the oven, not fried - it lays flat, and is soft and tender.  If you cook in your TJ's bacon right, the fat in it has the consistency of butter... Put a few slices on a non-stick pan, and cook at 350 degrees for 20 minutes (give or take 5 or so depending your oven.)  Drain the fat on paper towels, cut the bacon slices in half for optimum sandwich fit, and carefully layer two and half slices of bacon on the lettuce.  Cap it all with the waiting slice of bread, and voila! - you have your big sandwich.

The only thing with a big sandwich is, it's big, which is a problem.  This is true of a lot of things in life; our greatest strengths are often our greatest weaknesses.  So how to handle it?  Toothpicks are the classic solution.  You may need a few placed strategically throughout the sandwich. If you don't have those ones topped with colorful clear curly plastic, you'll have to make sure you remember where you put them or risk injury!  Take them out as soon as your big sandwich bites get closer to them...

However, there's a better solution - and I wish I'd thought of it, but I have to give all the credit to Aaron McCargo of Food Network's "Big Daddy's House."  Get yourself some parchment paper (next to the aluminum foil and plastic wrap in the grocery store).   Place your big sandwich in the middle of a square, and wrap it up tightly like a burrito.  Cut in half, and place a toothpick in the center of each half if needed to secure the parchment paper.

Warning:  Do not make, order, or eat a big sandwich on a date with a member of the opposite sex whom you desire to impress.  There is nothing delicate about it.  When you eat your big sandwich, it WILL fall apart, and you are going to have a mess.  That's OK, enjoy it! Especially because you were wise enough not to eat it in front of anyone but your bestest friends and family who love you immensely in spite of your many flaws, including the inability to eat a big sandwich with grace (an ability which no one has by the way).   And your parchment paper will catch much of the yummy ingredients before they hit the plate, ensuring some semblance of neatness.

Next post:  What to drink with the big sandwich:  The Bloody Mary (since this is likely breakfast, and we don't want to begin the day with the sailor's bottle of rum, despite the name of this blog).

The Big Sandwich

Life is like the big sandwich. First of all, you must start with a good foundation, in this case, quality ingredients - it's difficult for your final product to be better than the ingredients with which you begin.  Then you must use treasure and treat ingredients well, using them to their fullest potential. You also need the right mix of the right ingredients. Too little or too much little of one or the other can spell disaster - use judicial moderation in applying them together in just the right amount. But, if you get it all right, you get your reward, the big sandwich!

So, I'll start at the beginning, with a breakfast or brunch sandwich, though good enough to eat any time of the day - the BELTO: Bacon, Egg, Lettuce, Tomato, and Onion.

1) Start with the right ingredients: One, bacon - bacon makes everything taste good. The Food Network show "Chopped" gives four chefs impossible (and sometimes disgusting) ingredients to create a delicious meal with in half an hour - so as not to get "chopped" - or eliminated. If a chef uses bacon, you better believe he's going to stay that round! And it seems you can put bacon on anything - sprinkle it, wrap it, top it - and it works. So, start with good bacon. I buy my bacon from Trader Joe's (which I love so much that this blog may become an advertisement for TJ's) - their no-nitrate, no-nitrite apple-wood smoked bacon, universally agreed to be their best. Best-tasting, yes, but the elimination of nitrates/trites just makes you feel like you're doing something healthy (when I think few would say anything about bacon is healthy - but it's oh, so good.) But in moderation, anything unhealthy here and there to spruce up your meal won't kill you and will make life much more fun - and your big sandwich much tastier.

2) Good lettuce is not iceberg. Few recipes are enhanced with iceberg, unless you're serving the wedge (simply, a quarter chunk of iceberg, blue cheese dressing, and bacon). Oh yeah, there's the bacon again - it makes even iceberg lettuce taste good! However, despite the bacon, there's not one iota of nutritional value in iceberg besides water, which you can get without the hassle of having to crunch through the tasteless leaves like a rabbit. So, for your lettuce, you're pretty good with anything but iceberg. Romaine is probably the best for sandwiches, and it is packed with nutrients. Spice it up with arugula, green leaf, or butter lettuce if you want; consider the rest of the ingredients - if you have stronger flavors elsewhere, choose a milder lettuce. Weaker flavors might like a stronger lettuce. (Like life, it's the combination in a team that makes it work.)

3) Our BELTO has eggs - fried eggs. Some people like to fry them hard and flat, ensuring a nice neat sandwich. But like life, the neat ones aren't always the best. Fry your eggs a little soft, with the yolk a little runny and messy - so it runs out on first bite, flavoring and moistening the rest of the ingredients like a sauce. I like organic brown eggs for health reasons, but taste-wise, most eggs are pretty much the same...

4) The tomato! A good garden fresh tomato tastes nothing like grocery store tomato, the majority of which have been genetically modified in some way for hardiness, color, etc. The best tomato I ever had was when I answered an ad in the paper for a used car. I went to a small town outside Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to the humble home of aged Mr. and Mrs. Grizzle. The Grizzles, in their 80s, insisted I sit down with them to eat before they would sell the car to me, and offered me a tomato from their garden. The intense flavor surprised me - until then, I thought tomatoes tasted like water. Rarely will you get a tomato like that in the grocery store. So if you have a garden, or can get one from a farmer's market, that's the place to get your tomato.

5) Be careful of the onion - strong and powerful, too much can ruin your sandwich. Too much onion can even overpower your bacon. A red onion is attractive on salads, but use it in moderation. Slice it thin, so thin the slice is almost translucent. Take the rings apart and sprinkle them only sparingly over the sandwich. Another great onion (that I prefer) is Georgia's own Vidalia onion - a sweet onion (however, while some will say you can bite into it raw like an apple - don't believe them, it's not that sweet!) - it's milder and not as obtrusive to the rest of the sandwich as the red onion.

6) The bread: nothing is as good as fresh baked bread (besides a garden-grown tomato...). Our military family used to live in Izmir, Turkey, and all the Americans gained 10 pounds the first six months they were there - from the ekmek. Ekmek is turkish bread, baked fresh every day in bakeries throughout the city. If you went there early in the morning, it was hot and melted in your mouth. While ekmek is not available here, you can get fresh-baked bread from whole food stores or local bakeries; different breads work for different sandwiches and different people. A good sourdough goes with most sandwiches.

7) Putting your big sandwich together: Stay tuned for tomorrow's post!