Most perfect sandwich?

First BLTs with home grown Early Girl tomatoes and low sodium bacon. Yummmy  I can feel my arteries clogging up already.

In reply to Tony Sestito :

Please forgive me for going way off topic, but I ran into a snag at dinner tonight, and I'm ready to assume that you're the local expert on such things, so I have a question for you:

How the hell am I supposed to eat roasted artichoke hearts?

They were included in my takeout meal (Mediterranean chicken with roasted potatoes, capers, tomato, artichoke hearts, Calamata olives and spinach). They seem to have the potential to be very tasty, but only a very small part of these things seem to be chewable. I have no idea what I'm doing.

Please help.

Also, I am not Italian.

Eat just the bottom edge of the base of the leaves. You should be able to just eat all of the whole hearts.

I don't recall what it's called, but I had a Cuban street meat burger once.  The meat was about 3/8" thick and covered with teeny tiny crispy fries that were only 1/16" in diameter.  The flavor and texture is something I haven't seen since, good stuff.

My breakfast staple sandwich is toast with pbj and crunchy bacon.  YUM!

In reply to Woody (Forum Supportum) :

Most of the time, the hearts are marinated, so they are soft enough to eat whole, but they can still be dense. Probably not much help, but I'm not a huge fan of artichoke hearts. I usually pick them out of whatever I'm eating, unless it's spinach and artichoke dip, and that will usually just have the leaves. 

I've spoiled Apprenticeboy, but I've also shown him the way.

It started out simply enough but now I have a George Foreman grill in my locker, and every morning we work I make us breakfast wraps, burritos, or breakfast sandwiches on English muffins.

Last weekend I had some left over Donair meat and made breakfast donairs, on pitas, with scrambled eggs, onion and garlic sauce. It works.

In reply to Woody (Forum Supportum) :

I'll jump in on the artichoke thing.

The heart is softish, and edible once cooked. That transitions into the leaves, which are grainy/stringy/basically inedible, except for the base, which is down near the heart in a whole artichoke. These leaves still have plenty of good "meat". What I've always done, is cook the thing whole, pull leaves off, dip their bases in garlic butter, and scrape the good stuff off the upside down leaf with your bottom teeth and a pull, then discard the leaf. It seems kind of wasteful, because you do toss a lot of organic matter, but is sort of fun, since each bite has its own disposable utensil attached. The "leaf meat" is better than the heart IMHO, because you get so much butter/garlic per bite. 

In reply to wheelsmithy (Joe-with-an-L) :

Thank you!

wheelsmithy got all the important bits, but I'd put in a good word for lemon butter. I think I've heard of using mayonnaise...

 And as long as I'm writing... set up a big bowl for leaf discards, and everybody needs their own ramekin of butter of choice. Once you've eaten leaves down to diminishing returns, pull out the rest and use a spoon to scrape the fluff off the heart.

I always hope some of the stalk will be edible, and it's always stringy and nasty. Just cut it off.

Did somebody say most perfect sandwich?

Our eldest son's birthday this weekend, so we've had this in the works for a few weeks, and made it over the last 4 days. It's his favourite. If you've never had porchetta, it's a must. This recipe is not 100% accurate, but it's close, and frankly, I prefer mine to any of the Italian bakeries and specialty shops we've had it in. The marinade is mostly mustard, lot's of garlic, and lot's of rosemary, which we picked fresh from the garden.

It started with an 11lb pork belly, which is about double what we need, but the price was right and it certainly won't go to waste. The marinade went on Thursday night, and it went in the fridge, in plastic wrap because we didn't really have anything big enough to put it in, until Saturday.

Saturday PW made up stuffing, like the kind you would put in a bird, but added mild Italian sausage from the local Italian grocery store, four of them, cooked and crumbled. Then in the evening we cut the belly in half, added the right amount of stuffing, and put the first one in the slow cooker on low overnight

Saturday morning we took it out, foiled and wrapped it in a towel for two hours, while we put the second one in the slow cooker. After two hours wrapped, we put the cooked one in the fridge. An hour before dinner I pulled it out, threw it on the grill to reheat, and crisp up the outside.

Crispy bits, super tender pork with garlic and rosemary, stuffing with sausage. On a bun with sauteed onions, pepper and zucchini.

This, my friends, is the best sangwich you will ever eat.

In reply to Peabody :

Looks really awesome!  How about some more details on the marinade and stuffing?  I smoke a lot of meat, and I can see where this recipe would be a great addition to my list.  

Going to need your passport, some transportation  and high-school French for this one. Go to Montreal and point  at the menu, cause they don't  speak real French in Montreal.

In reply to AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) :

OK, here you go.

I do this for a 5-6lb pork belly, or shoulder roast. Marinade anywhere from 2-48 hrs. I typically do it for 18-24hrs and that's fine, I don't think it really makes that much difference. This time we wanted to make sure the pork belly was thawed, and ended up being ready early, so it got almost 48 hrs. 

2 tablespoons chopped garlic

3 anchovies - this time we forgot and didn't notice any difference.

2 tablespoons chopped fresh rosemary

2 tablespoons kosher salt

1 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/4 cup olive oil

2 tablespoon Dijon mustard

You can put the ingredients in a food processor, but I just chop it up medium/fine with a knife, mix it all together and rub it on both sides. If it's a pork belly with skin, or a layer of fat I score it in both directions and rub the marinade in pretty hard. Wrap in plastic wrap and let sit in the fridge. I cook it in a regular slow cooker/crock pot for 8-10 hours on low.  I'll then wrap it in foil, and a towel for a few hours after, but if you're a smoker you know about that. I like to then put it in the fridge, then bring it out an hour before dinner to crisp up the outside on the BBQ. It's fatty, so watch for flare ups. This time PW cheated and used three boxes of stove top stuffing, chicken or turkey, mixed it up, and added four cooked crumbled sausages. For the above recipe one box and a couple sausages would probably be fine, you definitely have some leeway with this recipe. I then piled it on the belly, rolled it up, and tied it, pushing the stuffing in so it wouldn't fall out. You always lose a bit.

I smoke too, and have wondered how this would be smoked, but not sure how the garlic and rosemary flavour, and it's predominant, would taste smoked. I may try it in the future, but it's so good as-is I don't want to mess it up.

I'm handy in the kitchen, but certainly no chef, but since I've started making this I've had several people tell me that this is the best thing they've ever eaten, so it's a pretty bulletproof recipe. If you do make it, please let me know how it works out.

Back in the 80s, a restaurant in Raleigh called Mr Dunderbak's had a sandwich called the Munich Munch. Corned beef, Muenster cheese, lettuce, and 1000 Island on rye and then grilled. I've been trying for years to recreate the taste, but haven't yet. There was probably some other ingredient I'm missing or it could have just been all of the beer we'd drink there made the sandwich seem a lot better.

In reply to Peabody :

Thank you!  I smoke or grill.  We have pros in the household for other forms of cooking.  I'm going to try this smoked!

So I described this to my wife...  and her answer, "oh porchetta."  Living with kitchen pros...

Over the weekend we discovered a legit, east coast style deli about 10 minutes from the house that just opened a few months. I've been to NYC a few times, so I have a decent bearing on what a deli should be. 

It was absolutely outstanding. In fact, I'll probably run by there today for lunch since we need to go grocery shopping. 

One more to add to the list: the McD’s Ebi Filet-O It’s like a shrimp po’ boy but even better because it’s JDM. 

In reply to AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) :

We gave our stomachs a break for a day and had leftovers tonight. I wanted to slice it up thin and try it like cold cuts but we ended up putting it in a grill pan and heating until the fatty bits turned crispy. But this should give you an idea what it looks like inside

In reply to Peabody :

Real tempted to make this and smoke it this weekend along with smoked cream cheese as an appetizer.  

Sourdough bread, egg, sausage, cheddar cheese...oh yeah

Bump or more vegetarian sandwich (mayo and cheese are ok). 

My wife generally likes sandwichs, but rarely eats them because she's lazy when it comes to food. I like them too, but I like meat. It'd be nice to find a happy place in between. 

That eggplant setup looked pretty good, though put enough balsamic glaze on anything and it will be good. 

pheller said:

Bump or more vegetarian sandwich (mayo and cheese are ok). 

My wife generally likes sandwichs, but rarely eats them because she's lazy when it comes to food. I like them too, but I like meat. It'd be nice to find a happy place in between. 

That eggplant setup looked pretty good, though put enough balsamic glaze on anything and it will be good. 

You could go all "high tea" and make pinwheels and cucumber sandwiches? 

pheller said:

Bump or more vegetarian sandwich (mayo and cheese are ok). 

My wife generally likes sandwichs, but rarely eats them because she's lazy when it comes to food. I like them too, but I like meat. It'd be nice to find a happy place in between. 

That eggplant setup looked pretty good, though put enough balsamic glaze on anything and it will be good. 

Not necessarily perfect, but definitely very tasty and easy: https://www.food.com/recipe/slippery-hummus-sandwich-352349

This also qualifies if you use prepared pesto: https://www.cookrepublic.com/vegan-mushroom-pesto-sandwich/

BenB said:

Back in the 80s, a restaurant in Raleigh called Mr Dunderbak's had a sandwich called the Munich Munch. Corned beef, Muenster cheese, lettuce, and 1000 Island on rye and then grilled. I've been trying for years to recreate the taste, but haven't yet. There was probably some other ingredient I'm missing or it could have just been all of the beer we'd drink there made the sandwich seem a lot better.

Fun fact: Daytona has one of the last Mr. Dunderbak's restaurants in existence. It's in the Volusia Mall, a dying mall opposite the speedway. I still make a point to go there just to visit Dunderbak's. Hard to beat the Blue Max sammich there.