$12 Sandwich

Do you ever go to a bistro for lunch and see a sandwich that looks tasty and say "$12?! What the what?!" It happens to me pretty often. With a little bit of foresight, those sandwiches could be had for a couple of bucks. Good quality deli meat, roasted veggies, it doesn't take much. Obviously, you can choose whatever veggies and meat (or no meat) that you like, add cheese, pesto, tomato sauce, whatever! The winner for this sandwich is the roasted veggies. Packed with flavour and juiciness, plus healthy stuff.

Ingredients

• 3 zucchinis, sliced lengthwise into 1/4" strips
• 4 roma tomatoes, sliced lengthwise into 4, deseeded.
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• about 1 tbsp olive oil
• good, crusty bread
• good quality deli meat of your choice
• optional: whatever else you like in sandwiches: mayo, goat cheese, raw baby spinach, roasted eggplant, etc.

Let's do it!

1. In a large bowl, mix together the salt, oil and garlic powder. Add veggies and toss to coat.
2. Arrange on a baking tray. They can touch, but make sure they're not on top of one another.
3. Turn oven to 400ºF, put the tray in the oven (I don't wait for it to preheat. Seems like a waste of energy.)
4. When the edges turn brown, about 10-15 minutes or so, take them out and flip everything over. 
5. Bake until everything looks smaller than it did before, but not burnt!
6. Let everything cool.

Lunch it up!
I put the veggies and deli meat in a container and the bread in a plastic bag. I toasted the bread and made the sandwich at work so that it's not soggy. Note, maybe I should have drained the veggies or something after, but this sandwich will be pretty drippy!

Serves 2 or more.

Less lazy Vietnamese Sub

As promised, here is a recipe for a less-lazy Vietnamese sub, otherwise known as Banh Mi. If you live in a city that has Banh Mi, you are very lucky. When I was a kid, my mom used to be able to get them for a dollar each from Chinatown. She would buy them by the grocery bag full so that my brother and I could stuff our little faces when we got home from school. From my understanding as a non-Vietnamese face-stuffer, it seems that these subs have a few key ingredients: Vietnamese-style bun made with both wheat and rice flour, liver pate, mayonnaise, protein of some sort, pickled vegetables and fresh cilantro You can also hit it with some sriracha if you like it spicy.

I've decided to make mine with roasted pork belly as the protein.

Ingredients
1 Vietnamese bun
1 heaping teaspoon of liverwurst (the only pate in the store without dairy)
1 heaping teaspoon of mayonnaise
3 slices of pork belly (recipe to follow)
some pickled daikon and carrot
handful of fresh cilantro

Pork belly ingredients: 
a piece of raw pork belly that was maybe 12" x 6"
1 tbsp 5 spice powder
1/2 tsp salt

Let's do it!
Pork belly takes about an hour and a half - two hours to cook. It's worth it.

Take the pork belly, rinse and dry it with paper towel. Cut off some of the fat from the bottom (meat side) if you want. There is a ton of fat on the skin side, but we need it.

With a sharp knife, score the skin in a 1" criss crossed pattern, but don't cut into the meat. Make sure your knife is sharp, you probably want to use a chef's knife, not a serrated one. This is a really annoying process, but necessary if you don't want a big piece of hardened skin you can't eat. Mix together the salt and spice powder, then rub into the meat.. all around it, into the crevices... Just get it in there. Place the meat on a pan and roast in the toaster oven (or oven). If you have the option, set it on broil (only the top burner going) at 400ºF. Roast for one hour. After one hour, check with an instant read thermometer to see if the meat is at 160ºF. If not, roast it for another 30 minutes at 350ºF. Keep doing this until it reads 160ºF.

Let it cool on the counter, then cut it into slices.

Lunch it up!

Cut the bun in half and take some of the inside bread out to make more room for deliciousness. Spread pate on one side, mayo on the other. Fill with cilantro and wrap up in foil. Put the pickled daikon and carrot into an airtight container. Put the pork in another container. I like to heat up the pork a bit before putting it in the sandwich. By all means, you can put this all together if you like, but I sort of like to keep things separate. I also only made pickled daikon because I'm not a huge fan of pickled carrots.

Enjoy!

Garlic aioli.. semi lazy style

I still have some corned beef left from this post, so it's sandwich time. But not any ordinary sandwich.. my supremely lazy take on Vietnamese subs (in the future, non-lazy Vietnamese subs. I promise.) The star of this sandwich is the garlic aioli, which gives it an intensely savoury flavour, plus a delicious smell that makes you want to rip into your sandwich even though you're sitting in the dentist's waiting room (I didn't).

Garlic Aioli
3 cloves garlic
1 tsp grainy dijon mustard (I use the President's Choice brand)
2 heaping tbsp mayonnaise - do not cheap out here, Miracle Whip and "Mayonnaise-style dressing" do NOT count.

Let's do it!
Peel the garlic and chop it finely. Transfer it to a mortar and pestle (I don't know which one is the bowl) and go to town with it. Mash it up really well. You want it to be a paste. Mix the garlic paste with the rest of the ingredients in a sealable container. I have no idea how long this keeps for, we usually use it up pretty quickly.


Sandwiches!
Some thinly sliced cucumber
Sliced canned corned beef
Fresh basil
Garlic aioli
Vietnamese sub bun (different from regular buns as it uses rice and wheat flour)

Let's do it!
I don't need to tell you how to do this, do I? Okay fine.

Cut the bun in half lengthwise and spread a thin layer of the aioli on both halves. Cucumber on the bottom, corned beef in the middle and basil on top. Now you have a garlicy, savoury and crunchy sandwich! Roll it up in some parchment paper and secure with a rubber band. Now you're good to go.

Egg and Bacon Salad Sandwich

If you have high cholesterol, you should really not make this sandwich. Everyone else, prepare for deliciousness!

I don't have a photo of this sandwich because when I ate it, I was super hungry and just couldn't take the time. Sorry. But it looks exactly the way it sounds.

Ingredients for 2-3 servings
4 eggs
2 slices of bacon
1 tbsp sweet relish
1/2 tsp grainy mustard
1/4 minced onion
1 tbsp mayo or more
Optional: Minced celery, capers, any other veggies you may have laying around that you want to use up.

Let's do it!
Put the eggs in a small pot and cover with water. Put on the stove on high until the water boils. When the water boils, cover and put the pot aside for at least 10 minutes. The eggs will be hardboiled after this time.

Heat up a pan on medium high and put the bacon on it. Turn over when it starts getting curly. Cook until crisp, then lay on paper towels to drain. When it's dry and cool, crush it up into little pieces.

Peel the eggs, chop them and put them in a bowl along with everything else. Mix well, taste and add more mayo, salt, ground pepper as needed. Put between two pieces of bread (whole wheat, preferably) with some lettuce or spinach or whatever.

Quick note: The best way I've found to peel eggs is to crack the egg all around the middle of it (the top being the narrow part, the bottom being the wider part). Peel away the middle, then pull the two remaining halves apart. You may need to rinse the egg after. There's also this method but every time I try it, I feel like I'm going to explode my ear drums.

Yayyyy!!

Crunchy Chicken Salad Sandwich with Raw Kale Salad

What do you do when you have one chicken thigh that you want to spread over two lunch servings without making some sort of stew thingie? Chicken salad sandwiches!!

But first, let's start with the kale salad, as I made that while the chicken was cooking.

Raw Kale Salad

I love this salad because it's ridiculously easy, lasts in the fridge for a few days and tastes great. It's also full of vitamins or something.


Working time: 5-10 minutes




Ingredients:
6 cups shredded/chopped kale (spines removed)
1/2 lemon
1 tbsp olive oil
salt to taste

Let's do it!
Put the oil, lemon juice (keep the seeds out, or the salad will have some bitter surprises for you) and kale in a big bowl. Put in a dash of salt. Using your hands, squeeze and mush up the kale until it's all mixed and it looks like you have about 1/4 of what you started with. Taste, salt (if needed). That's it. Really. That's it. And as an extra benefit, the lemon and olive oil feel great on your hands, I usually just give my hands a quick rinse after without soap, since it feels so nice. On the downside, you will discover that you have a tiny cuts all over your hands during this process.

Crunchy Chicken Salad

This is my first time making this, but not the first time making a chicken salad. To me chicken and egg salads need a few things: protein, onion, something crunchy and something creamy. Instead of the usual boring (and nutritionally empty) celery, I subbed in a nice tart and tasty green apple.

Working time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 20 minutes

Ingredients
1 chicken thigh
1 green onion, cleaned and chopped into thin slices
1/2 green apple cored and diced
1/2 cup of cucumber, diced
1/2 lemon
1 tsp grainy mustard
1-2 tbsp mayonnaise (to your taste)
Optional: Chopped up cilantro would add a pretty wicked kick to this. Too bad I forgot to buy some.

Let's do it!


Rinse and season the chicken with salt and bake in a toaster oven at 350ºF for about 20 minutes. If you don't have a toaster oven, you can cook it on a pan. It's done when you can pierce it to the bone and the liquid runs clear. If you're not sure, err on the side of undercooking. You can always cook it a little more, but you can't save a burnt, dried out chicken. You can also use chicken breast if you're really believe that fat has no place in your life (of which I heartily disagree). When the chicken is done, set it aside to let it cool down.

Meanwhile, chop up the green onion, apple and cucumber and mix them in a bowl. Squeeze half the lemon over it (again, keep the seeds out by squeezing through your other hand) and mix.

When the chicken is cool enough to handle, remove the skin (or dice it and add it for extra flavour). Reserve the juices. Tear all the meat off the bone and chop it up finely. Mix the chicken, mustard, mayo and 1 teaspoon of chicken fat (yes yes YES) into the other stuff.

Quick tip: Get a big zipper freezer bag and store all the bones from the meat you cook. Ideally, you should be cooking with meat attached to bones, since they're cheaper and more flavourful. Once you have a decent amount of bones, you can simmer them with onions, carrots, garlic, herbs and celery for some stock which you can use for soups, gravies, stews... basically anything that requires a stock. You can freeze that stock into single servings in smaller freezer bags. I'll post a how-to on stock sometime soon.

For the sandwich portion of this meal, I bought Vietnamese sub buns from the Asian grocery store (4 for $1!) You can use whatever bread you like.

For all the people who hate mayo out there (*cough* Asians *cough*), it's possible that you actually hate Miracle Whip, which is not mayo, but some kind of quasi-edible abomination. Many people in my mom's generation don't differentiate between the two, so it was probably the MW (which really needs to tone it down) that ruined all the potato salads and sandwiches of your childhood. Give it a shot, you might be surprised.

Quick tip: This recipe is also a great way to use up leftover meat. Just sub that in for chicken, unless it's got some kind of heavy sauce on it, in which case, just slice it up and eat it in a sandwich!

Lunch it up
To package, keep the kale, filling and bread separate in order to keep the bread dry. Put it together at work. If you have a toaster at work, you can toast the bread before putting in the salad. Prepare for your coworkers to marvel at your lunch, and poke at their freezer-food meals in disappointment.

This is a great meal for a hot day. The cucumber and green apple really add a coolness and freshness to the sandwich. I'd recommend this sandwich for the heat of summer, as opposed to a cold and wet spring day. Brrr...