Skip to main content

BACHELOR MEAL #2 - SAUSAGE SANDWICH

Having discussed breakfast (See Meal #1), it's now time for lunch. A sandwich. A sausage sandwich. Across the Pond in the Colonies, particularly in the Northeast, there's a thing about sausage sandwiches. They are ubiquitous, hefty and chewy and overstuffed and sloppy and seldom very remarkable. The bread isn't as good as the bread here in France. The sausages are basic pork sausages, not very interesting. And the other ingredients...well, you get the picture. I'm a fan of French food...locally sourced, in season, grown for the taste and not the ability to be shipped across a continent. But I do miss a good sausage sandwich. So let's put together a suitably French version.

Ingredients: I start with a loaf Aveyronnais from our local baker. It's crisp on the outside, soft on the inside, a bit bigger in circumference than the average baguette but a bit smaller than the petrissane that I had for breakfast, and nice and grainy. Made, logically enough, exclusively from flour from the French region of Aveyron. For the sausage, I chose chipolatas from the butcher, a thin and lightly spiced sausage a griller (for grilling). The onions and potatoes come from local producer Fanny, the lady in the market. Now we cheat a bit. So what? I'm on my own. Nobody's watching. I don't char and peel fresh red peppers. I buy them already skinned in a jar from the super. But they're French, so it's OK. Same for the jalapeno peppers...from a jar. The mayonnaise is also store bought. In a squeeze bottle! (The Southern Woman That I Married makes fine homemade mayo. But she ain't here.) For cheese, already grated emmental in a bag, technically a Swiss cheese but milder. Sort of the French equivalent of Monterey Jack. Yes, I didn't buy a more interesting cheese and grate it myself. Mea culpa.


I start by cutting a potato into thin, thin slices. Almost crisp thin. (For the Americans in the audience, almost chip thin.) I brown them in a skillet with a bit of olive oil, then arrange them on a baking sheet and throw them in the oven to finish.




While the potatoes are roasting, I grill the chipolatas on the gas grill with the peppers and onions on the upper rack. Yes, I put the onions on top of the peppers. For this sandwich, I like the onions warm but still crisp. And yes, I use a gas grill. I also have a wood-fired grill/smoker but the gas grill works fine for this sort of thing.


I slice the Aveyronnaise lengthwise to match the length of the chipolatas, spread the mayo, lay down the peppers and onions, arrange the chipolatas, and cover with emmental. (Now I know that with hot dogs, and even the traditional American sausage sandwich, the mantra is: Dress the meat and not the bun. Well, I prefer it this way. Less mess. And I know that mayo may not sit well with everyone. Well, it's my sandwich, not yours.) I pull the baking sheet out of the oven, push aside enough of the crisps to accommodate the open-faced sandwiches, and put the sheet back into the oven until the cheese has melted.


Arrange on the plate. Salt and pepper the potatoes if you'd like. Eat. (It's not a sandwich to be eaten by hand. You can, I suppose. But married life has diluted the Neanderthal in me. Knife and fork, please.)


Bachelor Meal #2...






Comments

Popular posts from this blog

RESTAURANT TEN, UZES: RESTAURANT REVIEW

Ten sits just off the market square in Uzes, one of the prettiest villages in southern France. The newly renovated space is airy and comfortable with tables of sufficient size and sufficiently spaced to provide for a pleasant dining experience. Service was cheerful, fully bilingual, and attentive without being overbearing. The food presented well to both eye and tongue. And the rate of approximately 30 € per person for a party of five included starters, mains, a dessert or two, two bottles of local wine, and coffees at the finish. Reasonable if not cheap eats.  So why am I hesitant to give an unqualified thumbs up?  It took me a while to figure it out. Uzes is a quintessentially French village in a quintessentially French region of southern France. There are those who will say that the Languedoc is just as beautiful but less crowded and less expensive than its eastern neighbors. I know. I'm one of those people. But the fact remains that for many people, villages like Uzes are t

Kreuz Market vs. Smitty’s Market: Texas Barbecue in Lockhart

I was born and raised in New Jersey. I didn’t taste Texas barbecue until I was twenty-two years old. What the hell do I know about barbecue? And what could I add to the millions of words that have been written on the subject? Well, I know a bit about food. I’ve managed to check out a few of the finer joints in Texas – Sonny Bryan’s Smokehouse in Dallas, Joe Cotton’s in Robstown before the fire, the dear departed Williams Smokehouse in Houston, and the incomparable New Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Huntsville . So I can speak from a reasonably wide experience. This will not be a comprehensive discussion of the relative merits of Texas barbecue as opposed to the fare available in places like Memphis or the Carolinas. It’s simply a take on our recent visits to Lockhart and the relative merits of Smitty’s versus Kreuz from our point of view. I’ll get all over academic in a later post. On our way out to the ranch in Crystal City, we stopped at Smitty’s. You have to look

CHÉ OLIVE / LE ZINC, CREISSAN: RESTAURANT REVIEW

No, it's not Chez Olive. It is indeed Ché complete with red star and black beret. I have no idea why and I wasn't about to ask. The French are the French and not to be analyzed too closely when it comes to politics, especially these days. Creissan is the next town over from our village of Quarante. We pass through it often and Ché Olive is right there on the main road at the entrance to town. (One of the signs still says Le Zinc. Olive says he prefers Ché Olive though.) Olive opened it a couple of years ago after leaving the Bar 40, Quarante's basic local watering hole that's undergone a bit of a renaissance lately. We hadn't heard much about Ché Olive from our usual sources for dining recommendations. So we just kept passing by. For reasons not central to this review, we decided to stop in for lunch on a mid-week in late December. The bar is cozy, the restaurant open and bright and modern. Newly renovated and perhaps a bit sterile. We were the f