What's Going On Here?

As he leafed through the pages of Snacks & Sandwiches, Matt kept saying: “That’s not a sandwich . . . that’s not a sandwich . . . that’s not a sandwich!”  He doesn’t believe open-faced sandwiches are sandwiches.

As a long time fan of the open-faced hot turkey sandwich, I have no such quibbles.  But even so, this page stopped me in my tracks.  In fact it was the deal closer, in deciding whether or not to add this book to my collection or to give it a pass.

It’s not just the attention to detail.  Although it is impressive. Sigh. Look at the way the meat is trimmed to exactly fit the bread, the repeated groupings of three, the radishes sliced to translucence. Such artistry!

It is another translucent ingredient that made me realize this was a keeper.  An ingredient I have long been fascinated by, though I’ve never eaten it.   It is used here in a way I had never seen before. From the caption:

A coat of clear aspic is spooned over French gourmandises. […] Chilled until firm, the aspic will provide a shining surface for the open faced sandwiches, and will hold the elaborate garnishes in place.

Who knew aspic could be so functional?

A Play of Geometry

This is the latest addition to my collection.  It came out in 1980, but it was one of a series of Time-Life books.  If you remember the Time Life music collections advertised on television around that time, you know that the “time” usually focused on was “the past”.  This book seems to be looking back over a glorious past where precision in presentation was prized above all,  where you could get pretty far on piping skills alone, and everything was arranged like an Annie Leibowitz photo shoot, even if, or especially if, it was supposed to look natural.

Isn’t this loaf amazing?  Things are sandwiched between slices of bread, but this is like no sandwich I’ve ever seen. It’s built like a Murano glassworker builds a milliefiori cane.  The assembly must take forever, and then you’ve got to slice it without distorting the gorgeous cross-sections, no easy task especially since the dots in between the pink squares of ham are pistachio nuts. By the way the green is asparagus.

At first I assumed the binding agent was some sort of cream cheese, but when I turned to the directions for this dish I found that it was butter.  Butter! Each slice must contain like half a stick.  I like butter, don’t get me wrong. But that’s a little too much, even for me.

Then I looked even closer.  It’s not plain butter. Its beure fermière: butter flavored with wine and egg yolks.  So, no problem.

The Secret Skewer

Even if it’s a grey, chilly, kind of rainy day, the Fourth of July really ought to involve grilling. So yesterday I made chicken spiedies and grilled corn. I don’t know if I can call spiedies vintage cookery since I got the recipe from the June/July 2009 issue of Cook’s Country, but hey, Wikipedia says the spiedie got its start back in the 1920’s. Plus it’s obscure enough to qualify. The introduction in Cook’s Country called them “upstate New York’s best-kept secret”. I agree, since I grew up in upstate New York and I’d never heard of them.  They are skewers of grilled chicken that you slide off into a bun for a sandwich.

Cook’s Country is the slightly larger format magazine with color photos from America’s Test Kitchen, the same people behind the decidedly black and white Cook’s Illustrated. Cook’s Country features a bit more down-home fare: more BBQ ribs, less Chicken Kiev, but it still has the signature Christopher Kimball introduction about catching fireflies and chatting with crusty old Vermonters, and the OCD level of testing : Vanity Fair paper plates are better at weight bearing, but Solo has the advantage in spill prevention. The recipes follow the inevitable Cook’s Illustrated pattern. There’s an introduction outlining the glorious history of the dish, then the slightly longer section detailing what has gone wrong and how all the recipes they’ve found fall short: “I wasn’t surprised that my first batch of spiedies tasted pickled. Worse, the chicken was grainy and chalky, as if it had been overcooked.” Next the goals are laid out and the steps in the testing process, including the dead ends are described, before the recipe itself is presented.

The spiedie recipe is relatively uncomplicated for the Test Kitchen people. It does call for fresh basil and dried oregano. Most people just use dried herbs because it’s easier, while some people insist that fresh are always superior and should be used whenever possible. The Test Kitchen goes further to assert that fresh and dried are two different things and thinks of each distinctly. I wouldn’t argue with them, but my basil plants are still only knee high to a grasshopper, so I reached for the jar of dried basil. On the other hand, we were out of dried oregano, but had plenty of fresh, so I chopped up some of that, and some parsley, why not? Actually there might have been a jar of oregano in the cupboard, but I couldn’t find any. Matt, for some reason, refuses to alphabetize the spices.

In any case their recipe has it all over one I found on the internet which just called for marinating the chicken chunks in a bottle of spiedie marinade. I’m not against store-bought marinades, but if I could find spiedie marinade in the store, I’d bet my set of skewers it’s got directions printed on the bottle. Plus where’s the sauce? I don’t know if it’s traditional, and I don’t care, but the mayonnaise based sauce you make in step one of the Cook’s Country recipe is the best part. Even sauce averse Matthew loves it. And it gives me a chance to use one of my collection of small pitchers.

To sum up: Chicken Spiedies have a New York History, are cooked on the grill, let me use specialized dishware, and make Matt happy. What more could I ask for? Oh yeah, they’re also super delicious.