Duck Breast Sandwich with Coleslaw and Baked Fries
ON PROVING YOUR SANDWICH IS BETTER THAN ED’S
We’ve been saying it to ourselves for months, but haven’t really gotten to it until now: We have to start doing some side by side sandwich comparisons. Today was pork. The main objective of this process is to create good recipes, but the other part is deciding where to place standards for what the deli will serve. We weren’t sure how many levels there were between that’s great and we nailed it and hoped that doing this would help us to figure that out. A sandwich can be great standing on one or two really tasty ingredients, with some others adding a bit, but not fully meshing. Thinking that we nailed it seems to come either by quite a bit of fumbling around and changing ratios, or more rarely by a chance risk or flash of insight. When it all comes together I can barely stop myself from pulling people off the street to try things. That’s about the point of all this.
ON EGGPLANT BANH MI
Disclaimer: I am no banh mi expert. At best an “enthusiast”, but only because I had a political philosophy teacher in college that would moonlight as a food critic and had a pretty extensive section on his blog about his personal journey to find the best banh mi. So thats out of the way.
We’ve still been pretty hot on trying to nail down a contender for the perfect Steve’s Deli vegan sandwich. As far as sandwiches go, the banh mi is the perfect balancing act of flavor and texture. Sweet, spicy, refreshing, and piled high with pork. Forgive us for our trespasses as we attempt to ditch the hog and make it through to the other side with a dark horse for the menu.
ON MUSHROOMS
Our crop share included a pretty big bag of Crimini mushrooms this week. So, we thought lets make a vegetarian sandwich. We sauted some onion and the mushrooms in butter. A bit of wine. Then I remembered that I had just made a bunch of pressure cooked beef stock. A couple of jokes later, I added a few cups of stock and cooked it down until it was thick and saucy. We put it on a baguette with some arugula and garlic mayo. Man, that was good. Sometimes making food quickly just to have dinner and work on another project turns out surprisingly great food. I guess its helpful to have some pressure cooked stock around too.
ON RADISH STEAK SANDWICH (CSA: Week 1)
This year we got a CSA from Penn’s Corner Farm Alliance. We got our first box yesterday. It included salad greens from Goose Creek Gardens and green radishes from Clarion River Organics. Don’t tell anyone, but other than putting them on salads or just eating them with some butter and salt, I’m not really sure what to do with radishes. So, I grated them and mixed them with goat cheese. I needed something to stand up to the strong flavors, and I had some steak in the fridge, so I cooked it. I mixed in some truffle oil and mustard, put it in the circulator and seared it on our new 220v induction burner. (See my post on the 3500W Cooketek for how much I love it.). I topped it with some of our CSA greens and it matched perfectly. Still wish I could eat this one each day and hope that my missing records aren’t difficult to reproduce.
Also great as breakfast with a fried egg on top.
Meet Maggie & Ed
