Like NYC, but with Half the Calories

One of the magical things about the old NYC of my day (10-20 years ago) is that you could get a good egg sandwich everywhere, on almost every corner, from either an old diner or a bodega. None of this phony biscuit/English Muffin with American cheese fast-food crap either. Default bread was Kaiser Roll. (BTW, there is something kind of gross about the Starbucks fancified version of the McMuffin too… I can’t put my finger on it exactly but I think it has to do with the oversized English Muffin they use. Definitely not right. And the cheese too. IIRC it is too slimey).

Well, swimming–as reported on below–may seem like an effort at being healthy, but the flip side is that we just might come back from the pool hungry and feel like we’ve “earned” a hearty breakfast.

The other day just this happened and Laura and I began reminiscing about the old ubiquitous NYC Egg sandwich. We almost instantly realized that we could throw together a decent simulation right there in our kitchen.

We lacked for real breakfast meat, but we settled pretty happily for Morningstar fake bacon. This stuff has “only” half the fat etc of real bacon, which seems like an awful lot of fat for very flat tofu strips. Manolis, if you are reading, this is the stuff I made for you the other day that you didn’t like much. Problem? I followed the directions on the back. If you instead fry the stuff in a decent amount of olive oil, it is really, really good. Note the bacon-like grease under those yummy fried strips. It is in fact pure olive oil. Despite being surprisingly high in fat, the thing that actually makes these fake bacon strips good is their very intense smokiness. And, when fried, they are very satisfyingly crisp.

Laura did the eggs while I worked on defrosting and toasting the buns. Turns out see always ordered her Egg Sandwich scrambled in the city. I had no idea–I always got fried.

I assembled the layers of the sandwiches. Our buns were actually Organic Whole Wheat Hamburger buns from our Co-Op. Sounds lame, but they got the job done. Started with Cheese–supermarket extra sharp cheddar.

I covered the eggs with salt and pepper; a dash of Habanero for me, none for Laura. Perhaps the key ingedient is the salt: super-cheap and delicious Korean sea-salt. People often ask me what brand it is. Honestly, I have no idea. Consult the photo and tell me if you can figure it out. The stuff is delish and costs less than two bucks for a good-sized bag.

So I’ll end this photo essay with a picture of the salt and the habanero sauce, both from that miracle, Carbondale’s own Monah’s International Market, known locally as “international.” This shop deserves an essay of its own, and probably will get one soon. But suffice it to say that it makes Carbondale a much better place to live.

Oh, and the sandwiches were damn good.

Easter Feast Leads to World’s Greatest Sandwich

Seems like sandwiches are becoming a theme on this blog, even though I don’t actually believe in sandwiches. They aren’t real food, just snacks.

Ah, the good old days when I used to put my beliefs, like the above, into practice. Back then my slogan was “fat is flavor.” Now I am into reality-based views, such as “I am too fat.” And “I want to live long enough to see my kids grow up.” Oh well.

Anyhow, this weekend was Easter for Orthodox Christians, so we celebrated by eating a feast. I was proud of myself for preparing the whole meal in only 3.5 hours, which for me is a very brief feast preparation. I also was proud that I didn’t employ my normal “restaurant” method, which is to pretend that a clean-up crew will come in later and the mess isn’t my business. Of course, one reason for the relative brevity and the leisurely pace is that I didn’t take any pictures. Sorry.

I made a 7 3/4 lb roasted leg of lamb–the smallest leg of lamb available in town–roasted for about 2.5 hours at 375, with slivers of garlic and cinnamon stick poked into little holes all over the lamb, and then a layer of sea salt and oregano rubbed on.

I also made Greek roasted potatoes. For this, you slice potatoes into about 6-8 slices lengthwise. You then cover the potatoes with water, in a long pyrex dish, and squeeze half a lemon or so onto them, and then splash in some olive oil (and if you don’t do the next step, some salt). Only this time I made two dishes, and put the lamb over the dish (I switched the lamb from one dish to another and moved the lamb drippings between pans with a baster). Ridiculously delish, but very fat-is-flavor.

Then I made veggies: dandelion greens (ie leaves) that L collected from our garden; I washed and soaked and picked through them about 4 times each to get rid of dirt, grass, stray flower stems etc. Then I boiled them for over an hour in a full pot of water, chopped them thoroughly, and put them in a dish with lemon, olive oil, and sea salt. This makes very authentic Greek “Horta”. When they were done I cleaned the pot and boiled four large artichokes (I split them each in half and served them with vinagrette rather than butter).

Finally, I prepared what my family calls “shredded salad.” This is an all-green herb-based salad that is very authentically Greek. You start by carefully washing and drying a Romaine lettuce. You then shred it with a sharp knife into strips of less than a quarter inch. Then you prep and shred a third of a bunch of flat-leaf parsley, a big handful of fresh dill, and chop them both fine. Then cut four scallions into quarter inch or smaller bits. You throw ‘em all together into a decent sized salad bowl, drizzle with olive oil, and squueze in the juice of one very small lemon (or about 3/4 of a medium one), toss in a small palmful of sea salt, and toss vigorously.

This is where the world’s greatest sandwich comes in. The roast lamb came out beautifully. The top have was medium well-done, gray with streaks of light pink; the bottom half was cooked but entirely pink (not bloody or purple, but entirely pink). I cut very thin slices off the leftover roast–for me mostly pink but a little grey too, making sure to get bits of garlic and cinnamon in some slices– and then I layered some nice Feta cheese, four small slices of meat, and a final layer of shredded salad onto a good baguette.

And voila, the world’s greatest sandwich. With a small side of the potatoes (quickly warmed) it is heaven.

(yes, everything had lemon-olive oil-sea salt in it). The below is a stock photo; mine would have little bits of cinnamon stick poking out all over, but looked otherwise similar. The potatoes here look about right.

The Politics of Cheesesteak

These two pictures of the Dem candidates were on the front of my print copy of the NY Times today, despite the NY Times claiming to have printed a picture of HRC celebrating under a rain of confetti instead.

I find the pictures very interesting from the perspective of the semiotics of food. Although it is cropped out in the version of the HRC picture on the web, the words “On A Roll” clearly hover over her head in the print edition. Is this an example of the AP photog being “in the tank” and on message for Hil? She’s “on a roll” given her PA victory? Or is the implication, given the context, that she is lunchmeat? Most crucially, the salads and sandwiches mentioned on the awning above her are adorned with adjectives like “innovative.” Is she using the awning to claim that she is indeed the candidate of change?

This blog posting claims she’s in trouble because of the lack of evidence that she actually ate her cheesesteak. Indeed, for all we know, she actually has an innovative salad in that closed bag.

In contrast, Obama was photographed holding a visible sandwich, unwrapped and ready to eat, and he also had his Cheesesteak photo op set for Pat’s, the temple of the cheesesteak. But here’s the problem. He seems to be claiming gritty, urban authenticity with his “real” Pat’s in his own hand, as opposed to HRC’s random suburban cheesesteak, purchased at an inauthentic cheesesteak shop which even serves salads!! However, I think that rather than connecting Obama with the “lunchpail” crowd as it might seem to, Obama’s overly obvious bid for authenticity via Pat’s could backfire. After all, who makes a bigger deal out of “authentic” urban food like Pat’s than chowhounds… And who is more likely to be a chowhound than the kind of urban, latte-sippin’, college teachin’, elitist snobs who write blogs and are already totally on the Obama bandwagon??? He needs to dissociate himself from people like that, not embrace their values. After all, there is a picture of Kerry actually biting a cheesesteak floating around the web. How well did that work out? Plus why is Obama looking up like that? Is he ruining the meaty goodness of having a cheesesteak in his hand with another easily mockable messiah moment?

Invisible Restaurants: The Florist’s Bahn Mi So

The outside of the shop is truly uninviting: a squat little square tarpaper-roofed building stuck between an improbable high-rise semi-private UT Austin dorm (The Dobie tower) and an abandoned fast food taco joint with its now logo-less Sombrero shape hovering between landmark and eyesore. When you walk into the tarpaper box, you find yourself in an unruly florist shop, specializing in leafy green plants, with nary a cut flower in sight. You are likely to be distracted by the tables of hippyish “Native American Jewelery” in the right hand margin of the space, apparently sub-leased from the Vietnamese family running the show. In fact, I walked into a few times and retreated quickly, fearing an encounter with Patchouli-scented knickknacks, without noticing the two little tables for lunch in front of the cashier’s booth of the florist shop. On closer inspection (actually, with the guidance of my friend Stephanie, who is apparently less frightened of Patchouli than I am), I discerned a small menu listing items such as “Vietnam Coffee” and “Sandwiches: Pate and Chicken, $2.00.” That cashier’s booth, it turns out, was also a food shack capable of working miracles.

You all know the wonders of Vietnamese iced coffee. But even those of you who love Bahn Mi So haven’t had ones like these. The bread was a quite serious baguette, very French in style with thick crust and a crumb with some heft to it (as opposed to the almost gossamer quality of many Bahn Mi So rolls, which could, ungenerously, be mistaken for decent-quality supermarket Italian rolls). Toppings were lettuce, shoelace thin mandolin slices of carrot and cucumber, and carefully plucked cilantro leaves. The meat (if you ordered it) was freshly pan fried and nicely warm. And the sweet, chile-peppered dressing with just a subtle hint of fish sauce, coupled with the thick, tasty slices of apparently home-made pate, was perfection.

Tragically, the family sold out on this business and instead opened a dry-cleaning business a few blocks away on MLK. While I hope they did well—they certainly earned good karma with every delicious sandwich they essentially gave away for $2 or so—it was galling that their new business was actually the third dry-cleaning operation located at that one intersection.

While I recommend any Bahn Mi So that you can get your hands on, the other ones I’ve had are generally so light on the pate that you hardly know it’s there…

Editor’s note: this shop operated in the Austin, TX in the early to mid ninties. It was subsequently replaced with a chain used-CD shop and then a chain sandwich joint… Neither of which was capable of performing miracles. And note that the above picture is not one of the Florist’s miracles.