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SANDWICH FURY OF THIRTEEN DRAGONS!
I love sandwiches. They are portable, they are a handy size and shape, and they are tasty. You can hold sandwich in one hand and a gun, or a cup of coffee, or a shovel, in the other, and fulfill your nutritional needs while you shoot to kill/get caffeinated/bludgeon someone with a shovel.
I taught myself how to cook when I was very young. The first 'recipes' I invented were for sandwiches, and I had a million of 'em. I invented...
1965's Cotto Salami Flap Sandwich which is a couple of pieces of the sleaziest Cotto Salami you can find, put on one slice of the sleaziest white bread you can find, flapped over and then stuffed into the breast pocket of your bibs. Make three - one for each pocket!* and share with Bill Beizer and his sister Ellen way up a big tree. Then yell for help until someone comes and gets you all down out of the big tree.)
...1970's Huge Bacon Lettuce and Tomato (one sliced fat, drippy, home-grown tomato, six or more crispy slices of bacon, shredded iceburg lettuce, and a mayonnaise that includes olive oil, parmesan cheese, chili flakes, red wine vinegar and oregano, on sourdough. SO yum.)
...1977's Cashew Chicken Salad Sandwich ( chicken salad made with chopped cashews, a little onion, a sprinkle of garlic powder, thin cut celery and celery leaves, an oil and red wine vinegar dressing brought together with a bare dab of mayonnaise and mixed with some cubed chicken breast, then 'blap' on a wad of alfalfa sprouts that are laying on some homemade French bread; which kicks ass.)
I used to keep a food diary, so that's how I remember the dates, before anybody asks.
I literally cannot remember my own phone number, but I remember sitting up a huge dogwood tree in 1965 with Bill and Ellen Beiser eating Cotto Salami Flap Sandwiches and then realizing we had clumb* up too far into the branches, and panicking.
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When I saw the New Orleans Muffaleta Sandwich on TV some years back, I said to myself 'Self, that looks absolutely delicious. This needs to happen.' and I did that thing, and it was awesome. An excellent sandwich in all respects.
(This recipe for a Gin-You-Wine Muffaletta Poe-Boy *squaaaak NEVERMORE * is as good as any out there. Please hit 'jump to recipe' right quick though, or suffer through paragraphs of yadda yadda and ads, because this page is balls deep in monitization.)
Ah, but it was the olive salad constituent that captured my heart. That is some delicious shit.
The first thing I did was cut out the giardiniera because life is too short to be eating pickled cauliflower. That may not be in the giardiniera available to you in Parts Foreign, but that's all we get out here. Mezzetta Brand Giardiniera. They put cauliflower in it, and honestly? fuck that. Gawd. Yak. Ew.
So it was that I was forced to invent my own olive salad that is one million times of the Universe plus Saturn of deliciouser more better than the shit with cauliflower in it.
Now olives can run a little musky and same-o same-o as a flavor.
That would not do. I wanted a ROCKIN' olive salad. Therefore I created...
Not A Tapanade but Also Not Strictly An Olive Salad
This will, as always, take longer to read than to do.
==An equal amount of pitted Kalamata olives, pitted Castelvetrano olives, pimento-stuffed Manzanilla olives, and pitted plain black olives.
How much is an equal amount? Try eyeballing the mass and get back to me. I will ignore you. Prepare for that. This is to your own taste and need for olive salad in your life.
Chop these olives until the individual pieces are >( )< that size. Next, put into a mixing bowl. Not a huge one, just a regular one. Come on use some common sense here.
==Whole sun-dried tomatoes packed in olive oil - again, this shit varies. And these tend pretty sweet, so be advised. I'd say take one sun dried tomato out and chop it into hair- thin strips, and repeat those actions until you have about 1/6 the mass of the olives in finely chopped sun dried tomatoes. Got that did? Put into the bowl.
==Raw Garlic, a heaping teaspoon. Peel cloves and then put through a press. Sweat the pulp in a little olive oil for about 5 minutes. Cool, then add to mixing bowl, oil and all.
==Scallions (AKA green onions, spring onions) Add as many as you feel lead by the Lord. Chop very fine and add raw to the mixing bowl. You could use plain white minced Bermuda Onions here, but scallions will taste better and look better.
== 1 lemons' worth of zested lemon peel. Any size lemon. Go for it.
See this thing? Use this thing. Or use a plain grater, or just a vegetable peeler.
==1/2 tsp. pulverized anchovy, the kind you squeeze out of a toothpaste tube. You know the stuff. YES ADD IT.
==I hesitate to put this here, but I use it. It takes knowledge of the kind of pepper you use. One red, sweet pepper, roasted, seeded, peeled and chopped fine. Into the mixing bowl.
Taste taste taste taste !! Red sweet peppers can be very sweet indeed! They can also be very complex and wonderful. I have no idea what kind of red pepper you have available or what kind of flavor it has. I am presuming sweet, with a distinct flavor of freshly ground black pepper. You go by what you like, or skip this entirely.
==Salt, Pepper - to taste. In we go.
==Additional olive oil, to taste and to influence spreadability. I like Napoleon Spanish Olive Oil because it's peppery. You could instead use ghee. Do not cheap out and use margarine or any other commonly used cooking oil (vegetable, rapeseed, corn, peanut, soybean, cottonseed no no no no.)
==SECRET INGREDIENT: Now this is going to take some tasting and a lot of care and discretion. The ingredient is
Citric Acid
And the measurement is 'enough to coat a damp teaspoon' to begin with. Use very, very little indeed.
This is the first ingredient I've come across that offers such a huge, immediate difference to flavors - and then stays stable. There is no window of oxidization or number or hours to marinate. Let's say you've made a Bolognaise sauce and it tastes muddy because you might have overcooked that pup. The very barest amount of Citric Acid - a mere dusting!- added to your saucepan of muddy Bolognaise will separate all the flavors and bring them to the forefront vividly. Similarly olive salad! A bare trace of citric acid will bring the flavor of each ingredient to the forefront, and the added trace of sourness will augment the whole.
*Watches tracers form on passing hand. Does this for 45 minutes.*
So you get the drift, then. Add just a cunthair bit of Citric Acid, stir, and the taste.
Keep doing this until you suddenly begin to taste everything separately. It could happen with that first damp teaspoon! Or it might take a tiny bit more. Once everything springs to life, stop right there. Do not add another bit. You are done.
---Now all you do is stir all these ingredients very thoroughly together. You want the juices to mingle. Stand there and stir until your feet begin to hurt. Maybe call a friend you haven't heard from in awhile and catch up. Meanwhile you're stirring, and the olives and stuff are making a 'glick slish glick glick gaslosh' sound as you stir, right? and your buddy will think you're getting a blow job! Choice!
