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Met Home Mustard Fruits

December 23, 2018 //
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Met Home Mustard Fruits
Serves 10.
I melon, seeded, peeled and cut into bite-sized triangles
1 orange, seeded, peeled, quartered and cut into fan shapes
1 Golden Delicious apple, cored and cut into bite-sized wedges
1 cup grapes
1 red apple, cored and cut into bite-sized wedges
1 cup cherries
Mustard Sauce
1/2 c loosely packed dill sprigs
Combine fruit and Mustard Sauce in a large bowl, mix to coat all fruit. Refrigerate until ready to serve (can be made 1 day ahead). Before serving, garnish with dill.
Mustard Sauce
1/4 c dry mustard
1/2 c water
Zest of one orange, finely julienned
1/2 c cider vinegar
1/2 c sugar
1/2 t salt
Juice of one orange, strained
Mix mustard and water together in a bowl, stirring until smooth. Set aside for at least one hour (no lie, don’t fail to do this). Combine zest, vinegar, sugar, salt and orange juice in a saucepan and boil for about 5 minutes. Add mustard to the syrup and stir while cooking until the sauce is thick and smooth. Remove from the heat, cool and refrigerate.
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Categories food

Eggplant

June 26, 2018 //
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The Corfu eggplant salad,* which I made to celebrate too-hot-to-cook salad week, was a gigantic success. It is nearly easy enough to qualify as Cuisine Dolce Far Niente — the dernier cri of which, as we have discussed, is fresh cherries in a crystal bowl full of ice cubes.
What’s so especially interesting is the addition of sweet almonds and meaty eggs, to develop the vegetarian umami aspect of eggplant, which I consider its more Greek Ottoman iteration.
Tomatoes do make their way into middle eastern eggplant dishes, but it’s more likely to be cooked with lamb and cinnamon, a la moussaka, which is super delicious.
So I started thinking about the permutations of eggplant, a non-gendered, chameleon kind of vegetarian-friendly stalwart. Claudia Roden, doyenne of middle eastern cookery writers, has 5 separate recipes for eggplant, of which the smokey charred ethos of baba ghanouj is one eggplant trope worth keeping in mind, along with the cinnamon/nutmeg-in-the-moussaka trope. She also emphasizes serving it with cream cheese or yoghurt, another iteration of its vegetarian umami aspect.
(The Guardian has these epic recipe geek columns reviewing 10 cooks’ different approaches to one dish, and concluding with the Platonic ideal of a recipe, awesome.)
The Italians do eggplant in Tomato Land as no one else does.
I realized I have never cooked or eaten eggplant Parm, which always looks so day-old-heart-attack-in-shitty-sauce in restaurants. Enough with your nasty tomato paste and softball gobs of mozzarella.
I turn to Marcella Hazan for the Ur recipe on eggplant in Tomato Land, and discover a few things. First, slim 3/8 inch slices of eggplant are PEELED, you fucking Visigoths, salted, drained, dried, and fried, according to exhaustive instructions. Laid in a dish. Covered with drained, canned, diced tomatoes and nothing the fuck else. Sprinkled lightly with grated mozzarella, Parm and oregano. Layer, finishing with eggplant lightly Parmed and dotted with butter. This actually sounds edible, and possibly related to Roden’s Ottoman dishes of eggplant with creamy white cheese or yoghurt.
The other thing the Italians do with eggplant is agrodolce — caponata. I think I read somewhere agrodolce is a conceit of Sephardic Jews? Whatever, the Cook’s magazine recipe for caponata is worth subscribing to the website in and of its own self. It has raisins in it, and the fruited aspect of eggplant — could we call this the North African or tagine trope? — comes to the fore.
The other superb thing about the Cooks’ magazine recipe is they solve the drainage problem eggplant has by nuking the finely cut cubes until they’re almost dessicated, before frying. Once upon a time I solved the mystery of the Shroud of Turin by laying salted eggplant slices to drain on cloth kitchen towels, resulting in photographically accurate prints of each slice in half an hour. |
The other place I found eggplant paired with cooked fruit is in this online recipe for Armenian Lentil Soup. I know nothing about Armenians and what they eat, but the recipe, with eggplant, dried apricots, vinegar and brown sugar is definitely in the agrodolce tradition. Also spice and tomatoes, which suggests many many armies marching through. I love the tagine thing of cooked fruit in a savory dish, and this soup is a favorite with me.
Alice Waters has an interesting non-tomato Italian take, of charcoal grilled slices with Italian parsley/caper/anchovy sauce which they call Salsa Verde, and I call Portofino Greeno™. As Portofino Greeno™ makes old inner tubes worth eating, I didn’t like Waters’ sort of American take as well as I might have. In other words, why kill myself to screw around endlessly with eggplant slices and a grill (see smoky baba ghanouj trope, above) when I could eat the sauce alone out of a bowl? (Check out Hazan’s whole barbecue of grilled vegetables, delicious and worth firing up for.)
Finally, for the base line of clean and yet sublimely well-cooked American recipes, Edna Lewis is the queen. I wish somebody would run her recipes through the forensic foodway detective software to discover their origins: I suspect French-educated slave cooks at Monticello are the font of the elegant food Lewis’ mother cooked in Orange County, VA.
For the Lewises, eggplant was a winter dish. It kept over winter, Lewis writes, whether on the vine or in the root cellar she doesn’t specify.
I was looking at recipes for roasted cauliflower the other day, there’s a million of them now due to sheet pan meal popularity and that Cauliflower, The Other White Meat, aspect it shares with eggplant. And I thought, who wants to eat it with any of that shit on it, when just caramelized is pretty near heaven? So with Miss Edna’s just plain fried eggplant. Here is her winter menu.
A Duck Dinner in Winter
Braised Muscovy Duck in Natural Sauce
Buttered Green Beans
Fried Eggplant or Puree of Chestnuts
Applesauce with Nutmeg
Slices of Yeast Bread
Butter
Lemon Meringue Pie
Coffee
Please note eggplant affinities suggested above — with nuts, spice, lemon, and dark fat meat like lamb, its caramelized or smokey aspect complimenting those Ottoman or North African flavors. Maybe Mrs. Lewis just brought that palate with her from Africa, not Monticello.
With eggplant, anything is possible.
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*Corfu eggplant salad is 1 lb. 10 oz. eggplants (three medium) baked in a 400 oven for 45 minutes, or until you can press their sides together. Flesh stripped into a colander to drain of brown juices (line your jelly roll pan with foil to avoid scrubbing said encrusted on your pan). A little over half a package of blanched almonds (3 1/2 oz.), blitzed. Half a cup of olive oil and juice of one lemon, beaten or blitzed together. Two hardboiled eggs, finely chopped. Salt. Parsley. Let it macerate overnight if possible and eat with pitas.
Categories food

Paleo

July 29, 2014 //
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The paleo diet first came to my attention in the Tweet of Geoffrey Miller, the professor who says fat people are too lazy and fat to earn PhDs. I quickly found myself in an online pro paleo forum in which, as in many online mosh pits, young women (no old ones except me ventured where angels feared to tread) were being stomped, regularly, as the paleo diet was clearly the perquisite of digital oligarch males.
The cherry on that narrative arc was the controversy over a recent Craigslist want ad by San Francisco toolies for a paleo chef/slave/office serf.
https://web.archive.org/web/20140612213421/http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/ofc/4512279091.html
I’ve always had lots of problems with it, aside from the fact it seems to be the new men’s rights movement diet. In the blue zones, where people today live to be 100 years old as a matter of course, meat is the one significant thing absent from their very diverse diets. Legumes, dairy or grains sustain the centenarians in Okinawa, Sardinia, Loma Linda CA, Costa Rica and Ikaria with the Loma Lindans being vegetarians by religious scruple. Each obviously adds regional specialties to the diet — cloudy red wine rich with anti-oxidants, green tea, lime-slaked tortillas, tomatoes, oranges, olive oil — but meat is mostly off the menu for the oldest healthy people on the planet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Zone
The second big reason is that the paleo diet is for rich people, and grass fed beef is unsustainable. This new piece on the rise of paleo in the New Yorker reminds us of what major food sustainability research has been saying for 20 years — beef is not sustainable. Something the healthy, but significantly not wealthy, centenarians have known for millenia.
“Pound for pound, beef production demands at least ten times as much water as wheat production, and, calorie for calorie, it demands almost twenty times as much energy. Livestock are major sources of greenhouse-gas emissions, not just because of the fuel it takes to raise them but also because they do things like belch out methane and produce lots of shit, which in turn produces lots of nitrous oxide.”
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/07/28/stone-soup
My observation is that Peter Pan guys who grew up eating Slim Jims and cereal for dinner have found something to do with their money. Paleo.
Here is the classic piece by Candace Bushnell, one of her original Sex and the City pieces, about the most profoundly unsexy men of all. The paleo boys.
http://observer.com/2007/07/what-has-two-wheels-wears-seersucker-and-makes-a-sucker-of-me-a-bicycle-boy/

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Categories food, popular culture, sustainability

Tea Sandwiches

July 4, 2014 //
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I live for tea sandwiches. I troll the menus of fancy hotels for tea sandwich ideas, which are strangely few and far between. As mentioned, the best big honkin’ sammie ideas evar came from Chicago’s Cafe Lula, and Alice’s Tea Cup in NY (Lula’s Tineka sammie — peanut butter, sambal, sweet soy sauce, vine ripe tomato, red onion, cuke, whole grain; Alice’s Tea Cup — cumin-roasted carrots, tapenade, goat cheese on sesame semolina). The one takes a day’s shopping and the other a day’s cooking and another day to wash the dishes, but they are ROLL YOUR EYES BACK good. Alai Nna, who learned to cook in NOLA, with Vietnamese touches, is the best sandwich imagineer ever. I think she might find these a little heavy, both in concept and with the hippie dippie bread.
This one, from a five star British hotel I cannot now name, fits way more easily into the Dolce Far Niente summer cooking style: Pickled onion cream cheese, cukes, cress on — what have you. A nice challah toast, I’m thinking.
Slice a cup of red onion very thinly. Put it in a microwave bowl. Cover with red wine vinegar and pickling spice. Nuke. Cool. When they’re sufficiently pickled (I waited a couple days), take a well-drained handful (2/3 cup) and add to food processor with a bar of Neufchatel, some pepper and salt. Blend. It’s pink. It’s awesome. It’s ONION DIP, people. without the frightening sodium content of the Lipton’s kind. Total prep time, possibly five minutes, and five minutes to wash the processor. Lick first.

http://lulacafe.com/
http://alicesteacup.com/menus/ATC_all_day_W_30.html

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Categories food, Uncategorized

Healthy Lunch Meat Chronicles

April 13, 2013 //
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How to turn a sandwich into a $12 meal was, I think, the project of the fern bars of the 1970s. Put it on a croissant and add avocado, voila, something not necessarily good to eat but expensive.

Restaurants are still making money on the very composed sandwich, and I fall for one every once in a while. Last fall it was the roasted carrots, goat cheese and tapenade on black sesame bread I ganked from Alice’s Tea Cup in Manhattan (who has a mouthwateringly creative sammie menu).

I came across another staggering composed sandwich the other day, and I am making dahl to recreate it. Leftover dahl will be part of my new Mediterranean diet regime of fish, fish, fish, and beans and greens. A recent New England Journal of Medicine study showed the Mediterranean diet reduces stroke and heart attack by 30 per cent. I remember an awesome dish of lentil salad with grilled salmon served at the Hay Adams Hotel in D.C. The other thing lentil salad was made for is cantalope. Schlurp.

So this is what the Satellite Coffee Shop up on Louisiana is serving. I forget what they call it. It’s on a ciabatta:

Smashed garbanzos,
tapenade,
artichoke hearts,
mozz,
pesto
and red bell pepper.

It’s taking me a while to get it together. I am making the delicious Bangladeshi dahl from the Coriander Club Cookbook of Spitalfields City Farm. Part of the pleasure is shopping for bargain spices at the Vitamin Cottage, where I got two or three pounds of turmeric for like 75 cents. If you need any, let me know. I have repackaged in it in clean old olive bottles and I have plenty for you. Ditto ground coriander which, along with yellow lentils from the Asian grocery (another four pounds for 75 cents), plus some soaked chickpeas which can only be cooked in under three days at this altitude in a pressure cooker will be cooked together with a bucket of onion and garlic, and finished with more of same, plus Paspiron. Which I don’t have yet, and which I should get. It’s a five seed combo. Wiki calls it panch poron.

Panch poron or paspiron: fenugreek seed, nigella seed, cumin seed, black mustard seed and fennel seed in equal parts.

Dahl may not be precisely Mediterranean, but it is one of the sublime creations of beans which add to our health. The Bengali ladies call for jalapenos, which I omit. This dahl will be my healthy lunch meat for the week.

For the tapenade, I’m using a can of Trader Joe green olives and white figs for this recipe. It’s delicious — stinky and unctuous, like you want it to be — with canned black olives and I’ma see how it goes with sourer green ones.

Pesto I got in a plastic thing at Trader Joe (which has all kinds of cute stuff but no actual dried beans, which is annoying) along with frozen artichoke hearts I will be cooking and marinating in lemon/garlic vinaigrette.

Eliminating the mozz. Looking forward to leftover dahl with leftover cold garlicky pork, and one of those broccoli slaw bag salads I am doting upon these days. Also part of the greens ‘n’ beans regime, my darling Sam Giancana’s last supper, which while it wasn’t so good for Sam’s health, is the all time winner in the beans ‘n’ greens category. Using bulk Italian sausage from Keller’s Farm Store. Kiss me, Guido.

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Categories food

Homeys, Fourth Grade with the Nazis, Weeds ‘n’ Beans

December 13, 2012 //
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Went to San Felipe de Neri mission church in Old Town today, then next door to the former convent, now a gifte shoppe, where the treasured parish cookbook, Memories and Recipes, San Felipe de Neri Parish is for sale. It’s recipes as well as the sociology of working class Hispano Albuquerque and their posadas and dias de los muertos, among many many other things.

I was eating a big bowl of green chile chicken stew at Flying Star and reading the cookbook when I met a new friend. Like me, she was raised in Bolivia. Like me, she went to grade school in the 1950s and was taught — very well indeed — by wounded Nazis at the Deutsche Schule in Oruro.

My fourth grade teacher in Cochabamba, Miss Hallek, looked like Adolf Eichmann, and tried to convert us to some kind of scary bleeding heart Lutheran religion with a really interesting flannel board.

My new friend lived in Taos and says all the abuelitos of all the Hispanos there were peones, walking sheep from Taos to Oklahoma and back. They speak the Spanish of Cervantes.
The cookbook has all kinds of Hispano and Mejicano fuds for festal days in it, including about seven versions of such Lenten dishes as weeds ‘n’ beans (quelites=lamb’s quarter or canned spinach, according to the seven permutations of San Felipe, who is said to have had a big heart and a sense of humor).
I love weeds ‘n’ beans. I thought only the Italians ate it (for example, Sam Giancana’s last supper, the one he was cooking when he was assassinated.)
http://gapersblock.com/airbags/archives/sam_giancanas_last_meal/
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Categories albuquerque life, food, macondo, spiritual

Healthy Lunch Meat Chronicles VIII

November 19, 2012 //
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What’s good to eat Thanksgiving week is favorite no-cook food, and lite faves. I’m getting fresh home style cottage cheese from the supermercado, maybe mix with shredded carrots, capers, scallions and maybe not. I also scored a deal on mangoes and papaya chunks.
http://www.elranchoinc.com/el/index.html

My favorite peanut butter for grownups sandwich, the Tineka,  my candidate for one of the best sammies of all time,  from Cafe Lula in Chicago. It is electrifying with chili paste, sweet soy sauce, cukes, red onion and sprouts.
http://www.lulacafe.com/lula/menupages.html

Ima cook one big meal, aside from the turkey one, and eat it all week, including Ottolenghi’s sweet slaw (with lime, papaya and mango, eat your heart out). http://www.toast-nz.com/2012/07/bookshelf-ottolenghis-plenty-sweet.html

Roast pork shall be eaten hot, cold, shredded, stirfried or nuked until it’s gone. I am lucky to love fruit and eat a bunch of it, clementines and honey crisp apples now. Hummus for healthy lunches.
I think maybe after the turkey Ima go to Costco, get a crate of mangoes and make mangoneada popsicles. The supermercado has the sekrit ingredient, chamoy sauce.
http://alibi.com/food/36098/Spicy-Thirst-Destruction.html
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Categories food

I’m So Keen-o On Beef-a-reeno

September 25, 2012 //
2

Seinfeld is one of the few things in life that stays as funny as it was. I told some people at a dinner party the other night (they’re Martians, never watched) about the Costco episode, where Kramer buys thirty-five 10 lb. cans of Beef-a-reeno and then has to figure out what to do with it in his tiny New York City apartment. Not to make spoilers, even at this late date, but he feeds some to one of New York City’s long-suffering Central Park carriage horses. Hijinx ensue. I’m a sucker for a good fart joke and so was everybody at the dinner table. Such a good guest am I!

My Beef-a-reeno story isn’t half as funny. Absolutely gobsmacked on the price for a five pound bag of spinach, on one of my early, innocent and unguarded tours of Costco, I paid like a dollar for it and considered myself slick. Got it home and realized it would make three gigantic spinach lasagnas, the cost of cheese and other groceries for which approached $100, and which took me like three days including shopping at the other stores, schlepping, parking, chopping, making bechamel, etc.etc. etc.. It was a Trojan horse bargain, like one of those Martha Stewart peasant food recipes — the minestrone from scratch — which cost $100. First catch your cow, and butcher off the shanks….

Strategies for the successful negotiation of Costco include having cleared a place to store the 24-roll whopper-een-o pack of toilet paper. When I lived in an efficiency apartment, I stacked them in a decorative pyramid in a cute galvanized window box in the bathroom. As I had an under-the-counter refrigerator, the three frozen spinach lasagnas would not have fit. Clearing off a shelf in my walk-in closet made space for the one-gallon size of organic dish detergent, and I pretty much still avoid the five-pound bags of carb. What no human can do without from Costco, however, is the jalapeno popper and Amy’s bite-sized quiche hors d’oeuvres. People love them and don’t know you didn’t make them. I tell them I got them at Costco, along with the toilet paper pyramid.

I went to Costco the other day and successfully resisted a mouthwatering five-pound bag of pita chips, a half gallon of cashews, three pounds of Brussels sprouts, two quarts of blueberries and so on. I was proud of myself. I cleared space for, and achieved the bargains I needed — extra virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar, organic canned tomatoes and scored some nummies too — not least half a dozen Comice pears, nowhere else in Macondo to be found, and  a side of wild caught, not farmed, salmon, for $8.99 a pound, as compared to $12 or $13 frozen at Albertson’s. But I had to buy a huge slab, nearly three pounds worth, and I decided it would be my meat for the month. How to put it up?

Comice pear, the juiciest and most delicious of all, third from right.

I made fish sticks. I love fish sticks. I want to see how well they freeze.

Here’s the recipe I used. Typically for a Costco recipe, I had to go to the hippie-dippie grocery store for cage free eggs to make them; already had panko crumbs from the Asian market.

I’m going to have my salmon goujon-a-reenos with that five-pound bag of Costco spinach — ready for it, this time — creamed with an elegant veloute sauce of evaporated milk and chicken bouillion cubes, well-nutmegged, with rice with currants and almonds. The leftovers will be huge and Ima freeze ’em.

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Categories food

Healthy Lunch Meat Chronicles VII

September 1, 2012 //
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Ottolenghi is the man.

Yoram Ottolenghi, the fusion chef, right, with head chef Sami Tamimi.

He’s got sweet potatoes, my go-to food. He’s got sweet potato salad, a recipe for which that didn’t send me screaming to the raw green crunchy purlieus. He’s got a luncheon salad, my very favorite kind, of cooked vegetables with fruit. He’s got that awesome fruit and balsamico thing going — you remember those delicious desserts of golden balsamic vinegar on strawberries with a touch of fresh cracked pepper? And the immortal fresh fig, balsamic, mint, pepper, hazelnuts?

Finally, he’s one of the two chefs I’ve ever run into who took the coarse indigenous fusion cuisines — think goat, butchered into 5-inch cubes from head to tail, port to starboard — with which they grew up and turned it into something not just 100 per cent better but a true incarnation of melting pot culture. The other one is Steven Raichlen, who single-handedly created a Caribbean/Cuban/central American/Florida cracker cuisine in Miami Spice. What Raichlen did for guava cheesecake, or cole slaw with carambola and Scotch effin’ bonnet pepper, Ottolenghi is doing with the many cuisines of his native Jerusalem.

Further he has a column for The Guardian called The New Vegetarian — good news for all who claim that sometimes healthy lunch meat is a salad —  in which he brings all that and his London restaurateur polish to the table. They are gathered in his Brit best seller, Plenty.

I am making the sweet potato fig salad, and I am making it with my homegrown Chimayo chiles and local figgies. I am very excited.

This picture is from the Guardian piece.

Next up, his celery salad with soft-boiled egg. Celery floats. my. boat. And he’s got a kohlrabi salad for winter to die for.

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Categories food

Healthy Lunch Meat Chronicles VI

August 29, 2012 //
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I  could eat sandwiches and nothing else for the rest of my life. This includes tea sandwiches and canapes. One of my most treasured tearout recipes, and the only remnant I know of of Rosie O’Donnell’s magazine, was fanciful and delicious kids’ lunchbox recipes.*

There are dozens of blogs on bento box lunches for kids which  a.) are terrifying in their samurai tiger momness and b.) lack sandwiches and c.)  are therefore inherently boring. Terrifying and boring is not my bag. It’s pretty much the definition of hell and in-laws, as far as I can make out.

The sandwich of all sandwiches is of course, Ernest Matthew Mickler‘s potato chip sandwich, in White Trash Cooking: “Pardie Tickette says: ‘Wash it down with a Pepsi, it’s some good!'”

http://www.amazon.com/White-Trash-Cooking-Ernest-Mickler/dp/0898152070/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1346257310&sr=1-1&keywords=white+trash+cooking

The three best sandwiches I know of carry a heavy cargo of vegetables. Iceberg lettuce has its delights, basically, I think, in a wedge under homemade Iowa Maytag blue cheese dressing, but I don’t like it in sandwiches. Even shredded in tacos. (I have discussed the transcendent virtues of Sammy Gugino’s cabbage slaw for fish tacos qua Mexican cole slaw. I think pretty much every taco would be better with Sammy’s fish taco slaw instead of limp iceberg.)

I once had a discussion over at LiveJournal on the very best sandwiches of all time. The very best were concocted by a Sinophile from New Orleans, who added mint or coriander to every sandwich as a matter of principle — learned, I think I recall, from her shrimp-fishing Vietnamese neighbors on the bayou.

You know that banh mi sandwiches, with French bread, Vietnamese pickled vegetables and grilled meat or pate, the aforementioned mint or coriander, are the best sandwiches in the universe.

Here is Gourmet magazine’s recipe for a chicken and liverwurst banh mi:

Ruth Cousineau’s Vietnamese Chicken Sandwich

1/2 pound daikon, peeled

1 carrot, peeled

1/2 cup rice vinegar (not seasoned)

1 tablespoon sugar

1 (24-inch) soft baguette

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 tablespoon Asian fish sauce

1/2 teaspoon soy sauce

1/4 pound liverwurst

2 fresh jalapeños, thinly sliced

1/2 sweet onion, cut into 1/4-inch rings

3/4 cup packed cilantro sprigs

2 cooked chicken breasts from a rotisserie chicken, thinly sliced

Lettuce leaves

2 tablespoons mayonnaise

Preheat oven to 350°F with rack in middle.

Shred daikon and carrot in a food processor fitted with medium shredding disk. Stir together vinegar, sugar, and 1/2 teaspoon salt and toss with shredded vegetables. Let slaw stand, stirring occasionally, 15 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat baguette on rack in oven until crusty, about 5 minutes. Cut off and discard round ends, then split baguette.

Mix together oil, fish sauce, and soy sauce and brush on cut sides of bread. Spread liverwurst on bottom layer of bread and top with chiles, onion, and cilantro.

Drain slaw in a colander.

Arrange chicken, slaw, and lettuce on cilantro. Spread top layer of bread with mayonnaise and cut sandwich crosswise into fourths.

Read More http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Vietnamese-Chicken-Sandwich-Banh-Mi-241475#ixzz24wv894df

Aside from the incredibly delicious daikon/carrot slaw, and the combination of liverwurst and chicken the very idea of which makes me swoon, I think the take-away genius technique of this recipe is the spreading of the bread with the oil/fish sauce/soy sauce mixture. That could make any sandwich worth eating,  even a scaled-back, budget, skinny, or semi-vegetarian banh mi consisting just of slaw, coriander, and fish sauce. Mmmmm.

I do believe the flavoring on the spread, and the care with which the spread is taken to the very edge of the bread, and beyond, is the secret of a good sandwich. Just as anchovy butter is the real secret of every tea sandwich you have ever eaten, whether you know it or not, and whether or not you like anchovy, another just-let-me-die-now sekrit spread is miso mayonnaise. Oh god.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentleman’s_Relish

Mrs. Grieder of the famous Gay Head luncheonette in Martha’s Vineyard wouldn’t let anybody else make her lobster rolls, according to Louise Tate King. The secret was — aside from buckets of hour-old lobster — carefully spreading the hot dog roll to its edge with butter, and grilling it very slowly. Add lots of finely minced celery, and a touch of grated onion if you’re feeling less Puritan, mayo, and the lobster.

Almost as delicious are my two candidates for Healthy Lunch Meat, one from the late Griffin Market, at 28th and P in Georgetown, and one I ganked from the over-explanatory food-trendy menu at Cafe Lula in Chicago.

The late, great Griffin Market in D. C..

The Griffin Market one isn’t particularly calorie- or budget-conscious, so I save it for very special occasions. The Cafe Lula one I save to eat until there are real tomatoes ripening on the vine. It’s a summer sammie.

Griffin Market Special

Two slices wheat bread

Russian dressing (mayo, catsup, sweet pickle relish)

Sliced avocado

Havarti cheese

Smoked turkey

Sprouts

Spread one slice with Russian. Layer on avocado (salt and pepper), thinly sliced Havarti, smoked turkey, sprouts. Cover with slice two, cut into triangles, and enjoy.

Cafe Lula Tineka Sandwich

Two slices wheat bread

Crunchy peanut butter

Sambal bajak (Indonesian chili relish)

Sweet soy sauce (not optional, no subsitutes)

English cucumber

Red onion

Vine-ripened tomato

Sprouts

Spread one slice with peanut butter, a scant 1/4-inch. Spread 1/8 teaspoon sambal over peanut butter — and do not flatter yourself, Jalapeno Boy, that you’re bigger than sambal.

Drizzle a modicum of sweet soy sauce over.

Add cucumber, red onion, tomato and sprouts (I like “spicy sprouts”) — I like my veg thinly sliced up to three layers, rather than one layer of chunky. Awesome sauce, thy name is tineka sandwich.

I’m still working on the recipe I ganked from Alice’s Tea Cup , for a sandwich of cumin-roasted carrots, olive tapenade and goat cheese on black sesame semolina bread. It is quite the project, but roasted carrots and tapenade together are a ravishing combination, to the eye and to the palate.

_________________________

*This is from a 2002 post of mine elsewhere. Rosie magazine kids’ lunch recipes:
Mama Mia Lunch Box
make-your-own pepperoni pitzas
green beans with creamy parmesan dip
orange quarters
lemonade juice box
Pitza Kit
2 T thick pitza sauce
2 mini (4 in.) whole-wheat pita breads
2 heaping T shredded pizza-cheese blend
8 thin slices pepperoni
(from 3.5 oz.) pkg

Pitza Kit:
Pack sauce in container with lid. Pack in insulated lunch box with ice pack, along with other kit ingredients, each wrapped separately. Spread 1 Tbsp sauce over each pita; top with cheese and pepperoni.

Green Beans with Creamy Parmesan Dip

Dip
1/4 c + 1 Tbsp light sour cream
1/4 c grated Parmesan cheese
2 Tbsp each olive oil and 82 % less fat mayonnaise
1 1/2 t cider vinegar
1 t soy sauce
1/4 t sugar

Accompaniment
4 each green beans and yellow wax beans, cooked until crisp tender, drained, cooled

Dip. In mini food processor, blend all ingredients until thick an creamy. Makes about 2/3 cup dip, enough for 3 servings. (Can be refrigerated for up to 2 days.)

Place 3 Tbsp dip into small plastic container with lid. Pack in insulated etc.


Finger-Lickin’ Lunch Box

oven-fried chicken drum sticks
macaroni and cheddar cheese salad
raspberry applesauce cup
frozen portable yoghurt stick

Oven Fried Chicken Drumsticks
8 drumsticks (2 1/2 lbs.)
1 1/2 cups buttermilk
1 tsp garlic flavored hot red pepper sauce
non-stick cooking spray
1 box extra crispy coating mix for chix (4.2 oz.)
1/4 c grated Parmesan

In 1-gallon resealable plastic food storage bag, combine chicken, buttermilk, and pepper sauce; seal bag. Refrig several hours or overnight.
Preheat oven to 400. Line rimmed baking sheet with foil. Coat foil with spray. In bowl, stir together coating mix and cheese. Drain chix; coat with coating mixture. Place on prepared baking sheet.
Bake 20 mins; turn over. Bake 20 mins or until crispy and chicken is cooked through. (Can be refrig for up to 2 days.) Pack in insulated lunch box with ice pack.

Macaroni and Cheddar Cheese Salad
1/3 c rotelle (wagon-wheel shaped pasta)
1/2 oz yellow cheddar cheese, cut into small dice
2 Tbsp each finely diced seeded plum tomato and celery
1 1/2 tbsp frozen green peas, thawed under running water and drained
1 Tbsp each 82 % less fat mayo and light sour cream
2 tsp each milk and sweet pickle relish
1/4 t yellow mustard (DO NOT OMIT!!!!)

Cook pasta following package directions; drain in colander. Rinse under cold water, drain. In bowl, toss pasta with remaining ingreds until evenly coated. Can be made 1 day ahead and refrigerated. Pack in insulated etc.


Hippie Lunch Box

strawberry banana smoothie
homemade granola bars
mozarella-cheddar string cheese
portable pudding stick
apple

Strawberry Banana Smoothie
1 small ripe banana, cut up
1 8 oz. container low-fat strawberry-banana yoghurt
1/2 c sliced strawberries, hulled and rinsed (FROZEN!!!!!!)
1 t honey or to taste
1 c ice cubes, crushed if large

Place all ingredients in blender. Process until thick and smooth. Pour into 2-cup plastic drinking cup with tight-fitting lid and built in straw. Refrig until ready to pack in lunch box. Pack in insulated etc.

Homemade Granola Bars
Nonstick cooking spray
3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats (not quick-cook)
1 cup pecans, coarsely chopped
3/4 cups each dried cranberries, finely diced dried apricots, and raw unsalted sunflower seeds
1/2 c toasted wheat germ
1/3 c packed light brown sugar
1 t ground cinnamon
1 (14-oz) can sweetened condensed milk
1/2 c (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted

Preheat oven to 325. Line a 13 by 9 by 2 in baking pan with foil, extending foil 2 in beyond each short side of the pan; lightly coat foil with cooking spray. In large bowl, combine all ingreds for bars until evenly moistened and blended. Spoon granola mixture into prepared baking pan; firmly press mixture to form compact, even layer.
BAke for 45 minutes, turning pan 180 degrees on over rack once, halfway through baking, or until top is golden brown. L:et bar cool in pan on wire rack.
Carefully remove bar from baking pan by lifting ends of aluminum foil; carfefully peel off foil from bottom of bar. Transfer bar to cutting board. Cut bar lengthwise into 6 long strips; cut each strip cross-wise into 4 bars. (Can be stored in air tight container at room temp for up to 3 days.)


‘Souper Stickwich’ Lunch Box

creamy tomato soup
ham and cheese stickwiches
fruited gelatin cup
raisin snack box
yoghurt drink

Creamy Tomato Soup
This soup is delicious hot or cold.
1 lb ripe tomatoes, in small chunks
1 1/2 cups canned vegetable broth
1/3 c each finely chopped onion and celery
1/4 c tomato paste
2 1/2 Tbsp chopped fresh cilantro or parsley
1 tsp each soy sauce and sugar [DO NOT OMIT!!!!!!]
Dash hot red pepper sauce
1/4 c light sour cream

In a medium saucepan, bring all ingreds except sour cream, to a boil stirring to blend tomato paste into broth. Reduce heat to medium-low; cover. Simmer 25 minutes, stirring occasionally, until onion and celery are tender. Let cool slightly. Transfer mixture to blender; add sour cream. Puree until smooth. Fill small thermos (1 cup) with some hot soup, or chill soup overnight and serve cold.

Ham and Cheese Stickwiches
4 very thin slices Virginia ham
4 very thin slices Muenster cheese
2 (8-in. long) thick cheese straws or plain or cheddar bread sticks

On work surface, arrange 1 slice ham and 1 slice cheese, both slices lengthwise and overlapping, so combination slice is about 5 inches long. Top with another 1 slice each ham and cheese, putting ham over bottom cheese slice and cheese over bottom ham slice. Place one straw at bottom left edge of stack on diagonal; roll stack around straw. Wrap in plastic. Repeat with remaining ham, cheese, and straw. Pack in insulated etc.


What’s Up, Doc? Lunch Box

veggies with cream cheese dip
sesame bagel crisps
chocolate-vanilla swirl pudding cup
wild cherry juice drink pouch

Veggies with Cream Cheese Dip
1 (3 oz.) pkg. cream cheese, softened
3 Tbsp light sour cream
1/4 tsp minced garlic
2 tsp each sliced scallion and chopped parsley

Veggie Dippers (choose your child’s favorites)
2 cups celery sticks, grape tomatoes, broccoli florets, carrot sticks, bell pepper strips, cucumber slices, zucchini spears

Dip: In mini food processor, blend cheese, sour cream and garlic. Add scallion and parsley; pulse 3 or 4 times to blend. Scrape into 2 small containers; refrig. Divide veg dippers into two containers. Pack 1 container dippers and 1 container dip in insulated, etc.

Kids’ Club Lunch Box
pb&j banana club sandwich
snack-size bag baby carrots
pretzel sticks
v-8 splash fruit medley juice box

PB&J Banana Club Sandwich
3 slices cinnamon-raisin bread
2 Tbsp creamy peanut butter
2 tsp raspberry jam
1/2 banana, sliced
1 Tbsp Nutella (hazelnut spread)

On one bread slice, spread 1 T peanut butter evenly, all the way to the edge; spread with jam. Spread the remaining peanut butter on second slice of bread; top with banana slices, then spread evenly with Nutella. Place on top of peanut-butter and jam slice, banana side up. Top with remaining bread slice for triple-decker sandwich. With a serrated knife, cut sandwich into quarters. Wrap in foil. Pack in insulated, etc.

Gimme Five Lunch Box

tuna “handwiches”
crisp vegetable sticks (Terra Stix)
white chocolate-dipped fruit
milk

Tuna “Handwiches”
1 (3 oz.) can solid-white tuna in water or oil, drained
3 Tbsp 82 % less fat mayo
1 Tbsp each finely diced celery and sweet pickle relish
2 tsp minced red onion
pinch each s + p
4 large slices 10-grain whole wheat bread (each slice about 4 1/2 x 4 1/4 in), toasted
Hand-shaped cutter (4 1/2 x 4 in)
In a small bowl, mash tuna, 2 T mayo, celery, relish, onion, s + p.
Cut toasted bread into “hands” with cutter; save trimmings for snacking.
On work surface, line up 2 toast hands as left hands, 2 others as right hands. Spread each hand with the remaining mayo (3/4 t per hand). Spread tuna over left hands. Top with right hands. Gently press together. Place handwiches on paper plates; wrap. Pack in insulated etc.

White Chocolate-Dipped Fruit
1 (8 oz) microwavable carton creamy white shell coating (Dulci frutta)
2 large strawberries, preferrably with stems, rinsed, dried
3 navel orange segments
2 clusters green seedless grapes (about 4 grapes per cluster), rinsed, dried

Open coating carton. Microwave on medium power 2 minutes, stirring every 30 seconds with rubber spatula until melted and smooth. Dip fruit into coating halfway, letting excess drip back into container. Place on waxed paper; let stand until hardened, about 15 minutes. (Dipped fruit can be refrig up to 2 days.) Let remaining coating cool and harden in container; cover with lid (can be remelted and used for more dipping). Pack dipped fruit in shallow 2 cup plastic container with tight-fitting lid. Pack in insulated, etc.


Wrap Star Lunch Box

bbq turkey and cheese wrap
carrot-currant slaw
cocoa rice cereal treats
apple juice box

BBQ Turkey and Cheese Wrap
1 (10-in.) tomato-flavored flour tortilla or sandwich wrap, softened according to directions
1 Tbsp each BBQ sauce and 82 % less fat mayo
1 large green-leaf lettuce leaf, center core removed
2 thin slices deli turkey breast
2 very thin slices tomato
2 slices American cheese [NOTTTTTT!!!!]
Place tortilla flat. Spoon mayo and BBQ sauce onto center. Spread to cover tortilla. Top with lettuce. Place turkey in center, leaving 1 1/2 in. border around the edge. Layer on tomato and cheese. Bring tortilla edge closest to you up and over filling to enclose. Fold sides in; roll up, burrito style.
Wrap in waxed paper. Cut in half diagonally. Wrap halves (keep in paper) tightly in plastic wrap. (Can be made 1 day ahead and refrig.) Pack in insulated, etc.

Carrot-Currant Slaw
1 carrot, peeled, shredded
1/2 small Golden Delicious apple, cored, coarsely shredded
2 Tbsp each dried zante currants and 82% less fat mayo
1 tsp each distilled white vinegar and sugar [DO NOT OMIT!!!!]

Mix ingredients. Pack in plastic container (can make 2 days ahead). Pack in insulated, etc.

Cocoa Rice Cereal Treats

Nonstick cooking spray
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
1 (10-oz) bag marshmallows
1/2 c creamy peanut butter
1 t vanilla extract
6 cups toasted cocoa-flavored rice cereal
1/2 cup min candy-coated chocolate baking bits (M&Ms)
Line 13 x 9 x 2 in. baking pan with foil, extending foil 2 in. beyond each short side; coat with cooking spray.
In a 6-quart pot, melt butter over low heat. Stir in marshmallows until almost melted. Stir in peanut butter and vanilla until blended and smooth. Stir in cereal until evenly coated.
Press marshmallow mixture into pan. Sprinkle with bits; press down.
Let cool. Cut into 24 squares. Store up to 1 week in air tight container.

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