THE SANDWICH: ONE SLICE OR TWO?
Much has been made of the humble sandwich this week in the land of good food. And quite rightly - it is a magnificent thing, a life-saver between two slices of bread. Or, controversially, one.
Socially-distanced sandwiches taste like freedom, says Gemima Cody in Melbourne’s The Age, and creativity has flourished as restaurants and solo chefs vie for attention. “What we have ended up with are sandwiches with serious personalities, a reflection of the creators and of the times” she says, citing the winter special of “beef cheek, pesto and mozzarella stuffed in a crusty Ned’s roll to dunk in napoli sauce like a New Orleans French dip” at Greta in Flinders Lane.
In the Sydney Morning Herald, Callan Boys talks up everything from the salad sanga at Good Ways Deli in Redfern, to the Lighthouse Keeper’s Lunch at Small’s Deli in Potts Point, which is “exactly what you want to eat while wearing a woolly cable-knit and fondling reef knots.”
Thank you to both for alerting us to the nearest great sambo; that’s a public service you are doing right there. But I’d like to talk about the anti-sandwich, another form of deliciousness-on-bread that isn’t actually sandwiched.
THE ANTI-SANDWICH
This is a sunny, open-faced sandwich built on a single slice of bread, delivering an unambiguous transparency and freshness not found in a conventionally sandwiched sandwich. It also delivers precisely half the carbs, being one slice and not two.
The French call them tartines, the Swedes smorrebrod, and the Viennese, Russians, Germans and Estonians all do brilliant ‘bread-spreads’ but I don’t know what they call them. I just call them lunch.
The thing is, however, they are so simple you need to bring your best game to them.
Today’s lunch, for instance, is built on magnificent, health-giving sourdough from Berkelo Bakery, spread with Dijon mustard and topped with left-over rare roast beef from a standing rib roast on the weekend.
With those in place, it’s a no-brainer to top another slice of sourdough with the lightest, silkiest butter from Coppertree Farms, a few hacked slices of Comte or gruyere or cheddar, and a scattering of pickled onions. Maybe some more mustard on top of the beef, a handful of rocket leaves, and some coarsely grated comte on top of the onions. You can continue to add things, but I wouldn’t.
There’s a special beauty in being able to see the working innards of your sandwich, for those of us who seem to register more flavour from things they can see than things they can’t.
What you have before you is The Ploughperson’s, inspired by the English rural labourer’s traditional lunch of bread, cheese and beer first mentioned in Pierce the Ploughman’s Crede in 1394 or thereabouts. Some clever marketing people then popularised the idea in the 1950s for the British Cheese Bureau (why they did not call themselves the British Cheese Board is a mystery), and any combination of cheese, pickles, meat, pork pies, Branston pickles and the like became the norm.
I’m pretty sure I’ve already run through the recipe and that any more detail would be as superfluous as parsley.
But perhaps your fingertips are blue with cold and you’re not going anywhere near a not-hot lunch, thank you very much? Then just slap the two slices together, bung it in a sandwich press until the cheese oozes out, and call it The World’s First Ploughperson’s Toasty. Or a double-tartine. Or just lunch.
Thanks for reading (and liking, commenting, subscribing, knock yourself out). Copyright © 2020 Jill Dupleix.
I would like to acknowledge that I live, work and play on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, and wish to pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging. I fully support the Uluru Statement from the Heart, and for an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voice to be enshrined in Australia’s Constitution.