Sep 1, 2008
In search of a simple sandwich
I may be incredibly complicated when it comes to everything else (life, random allergies, how I drink my tea, curious neuroses, superpowers, musical preferences etc), but when it comes to sandwiches, I just want things to be simple.
I want my sandwich to consist of:
- some bread (not too stodgy and not too stale)
- a little lubricating spread
- a single filling (not too soggy and not too fatty, and probably fairly boring)
And optionally:
- a portion of accompanying vegetable (or fruit, if you’re one of those weirdos that insists a tomato is a fruit but wouldn’t DREAM of putting it in a fruit salad)
- and/or a dollop of some form of condiment (to add flavour)
and preferably, I’d like the whole thing wrapped up in not too much packaging (recycled or recyclable if poss), costing a reasonable sum (£2ish?) and freshly made.
Containing or conveying matter could be bread, a baguette, a roll or bap (Which do you say? Is there a difference?) a wrap, a fork or chopsticks. Principal filling could be cheese, ham, chicken, tuna, salmon…something else involving simple, strong flavours. The rest is entirely optional: lubricant (Spread? Butter? Olive oil?), additional filling (something else from the first list, or lettuce, cucumber, tomato, etc) and condiment (Mustard? Mayo?) I can take or leave depending on taste, season or availability. Just keep it simple, dammit.
Is that too much to ask?
Well, apparently, yes.
For the last few years, I’ve noticed a creeping obsession among the sandwich-vendors of our nation’s capital and high street to add all sorts of random stuff to their lunchtime staples, turning what might otherwise be a simple, beautiful, tasty thing into something utterly fussy and overcomplicated.
Some sandwiches I spotted today and jotted down in my trusty go-everywhere notepad:
- Oak-roasted Wiltshire ham and mature English Cheddar cheese on multigrain white bread with tenderleaf lettuce and English mustard mayo dressing
- Chicken, mango, fruit chutney, roasted almonds, mayo and rocket leaves on wholemeal bread
- Sustainably-sourced Scottish salmon and fresh watercress with lime dressing on soft wheat tortilla
- Brie, grape and cranberry sauce with mixed salad leaves on white bloomer
- Marinated chicken breast mixed with Caesar dressing, Italian matured cheese, tomatoes and salad leaves on wholegrain bread
Forget about preservatives and flavourings - I just want a sandwich with no added verbs and nouns.
Perhaps it’s a hangover of a childhood packed-lunches in brown bags, clutched in small hands and taken to school to eat at room temperature, but I just want my sangers to be simple, tasty and fresh.
This recent photo of a Mantega butty by Blackbeltjones Moleitau sums up what gets my mouth watering:
Bacon, egg and spinach, and nae fucking aboot. What’s not to like? Pure gush. In fact, in that combo, I could even forego the egg, especially if there was a dab of pickle or relish involved.
The problem is, though, that if you want to choose and get precisely what you fancy, you need to go to a specialist deli. (This obviously doesn’t apply to the Armenian Deli-From-Helli near my old office, where although you could absolutely ask for exactly what you wanted, you would invariably come away with something entirely different and not necessarily in a good way.)
If you want something reasonable and tasty from most usual lunchtime outlets, including your works canteen, you’re a bit buggered, frankly. Row after row of packaged carbs await you, each serving sprinkled heavily with stuff you don’t really want or need, including ingredients, condiments, nouns and sheer tonnage of bread, all served way too cold to be able to taste properly (bread doesn’t belong in a fridge unless you live in Gabon) and not that satisfying, frankly.
However, there is an alternative, especially if, like me, there is a work canteen around. I’ve recently struck on the concept of sandwich unbundling. This is a bit like the telecommunication process of LLU, but without wires or regulatory bodies, and using the medium of bread instead of telephone exchanges.
Basically, I’ve discovered that I can saunter past the pre-made, pre-packaged butties in the refrigerated cabinet and instead head for:
- the soup tureens, where bread rolls can be sourced, along with butter/margarine
- the baked potato filling station, where petite tubs of tuna, tuna mayo or grated cheese can be picked up
- the salad bar, where a handful of lettuce, tomato and/or cucumber can be found, along with occasional roasted vegetables and
- the cultery trays, where you can usually get a squirt of hot mustard or balsamic vinegar, as well as a knife, paper bag, and napkins.
This lot can be purchased for under £2, and then assembled at my desk.
Et voila. A home-made (nearly), healthy (sort-of), fresh(-ish) but definitely simple sandwich.
Because sometimes, when you’re eating at your desk (again) in the middle of a flurry of deadlines and whiteboard markers and speaker notes, you just want something solid and simple and satisfying, don’t you?
For most of our secondary school lives, bruv and I existed on a lunch that contained:
Two crusty rolls, butter and ham
Packet of crisps (preferably salt and vinegar)
Doughnut
Black Cherry yoghurt
I find myself veering towards this now (minus the yog, this is what I had today). Simple, perfect, so why mess?
Yep, I’ve ended up going back to home-made rather than shop-bought for much the same reasons (plus knowing exactly what’s gone into it)
Two wholemeal (or even better, granary) rolls with ham and cheese and added branston. That’s it. Who needs more?
Pret do a rather nice Brie and Basil baguette.
And that’s it: baguette, cheese filling, and a wee daud of basil for accompanying vegetable emphasis. Oh, and marge as lubricating spread.
Add coffee from a vendor that does good coffee (not Pret then), and that was me set for breakfast on the tube while staying at the back of Kensington High Street and working at Brentford.
I always had this problem in the US. The concept of a simple ham salad sandwich always seemed to confuse them, there was far too little on it. Ham, lettuce, tomato and a little bit of mayo, what more could you want? But the deli guys always expected me to load it up with loads of everything and were seemed surprised I never added cheese, which was seen as a vegetable by many.
I have done this for a while, on and off. I go to the nearest supermarket, Waitrose, and get a fresh roll (45p), slice of ham from the deli counter (30p-75p) and a mayo/ketchup/mustard sachet from their cafe (free). This was purely on the grounds of making cost savings but assembly is simple and quick and it tastes good. I am missing the lubricant but complementary filling can be sourced from my salad bowl.
Like you said - healthy-ish, cheap and preferable to pre-packed.
While I appreciate the sentiment behind this post and indeed agree with lots of things you say Meg, your claim that putting spinach in an egg and bacon sandwich isn’t fucking about with it is obviously wrong, I couldn’t think of anything more designed to fuck about with an egg and bacon sandwich than bunging a handful of spinach in it!
a roll or bap (Which do you say? Is there a difference?)
A roll is crusty, a bap is soft.
Andy, I understand what you mean, but I really, really like spinach, so as far as I’m concerned that’s not fucking about.
Frisee, however, is a different matter entirely. That stuff is EVIL.
why do you need lubricating spread when your sandwich is filled with decidedly moist tuna mayonnaise?
I cannot find a sandwich purveyor anywhere who won’t slap buckets of hydrogenated toxic grease all over the bread. Now that’s fucking about with it.
Ping, you’re quite right - that was a poor illustration because I actually thought I’d bought tuna (plain, flaked, un-mayonnaised).
mayo over marge any day.
Marge
for a brief while there was a juice shop on long acre that sold crusty rolls with butter, cheese and pickle. for 50p
i was in heaven
and they sold out every day
sadly the shop shut soon after as everyone was buying 50p butties and ignoring the £3.39 smoothies that were their stock trade.
See now I’m the opposite.
I hated school sandwiches. Just hated hated hated them. I went through a phase of hiding them in my cupboard. this lasted until the mould and the smell caused the discovery following by a lot of parental yelling. Stodgy dull bread, with a few boring things slapped in the middle … sure I see why you like them .. but I’m totally into the poncey sandwiches.
Give me a deep rich cheese with some nice herby stuff and some grapes, on top of a seven seeded loaf baked by vrigins in the highest alps. Lovely.
Or give me some rare roasted beef with some horseradish and black pepper on granary loaf with pumpkin seeds. Awesome.
Tuna mayo with corn? What the ? Come on, lets jig it up a little with some melted swiss and pepper corns on a ciabbata roll.
And then their is American Jewish NY Deli sandwiches. I might cry. Now that’s a sandwich. Or 6.
You’ll all probably hate this and lynch me, but my favourite London sandwich place is now Napket - Posh food for snobs. Their Roast beef with cheese and three slices of bread is to die for. Goes lovely with the fresh Watermelon juice.
The idea of going further into the supermarket to buy cheaply the component parts of a delish simple sarnie is a good one. For some time I have skipped the 60p-70p packs of Walkers they have in the entrance of large supermarkets and gone to the savoury snack aisle and grabbed own brand tortillas which when I last checked were between 11p and 17p depending how posh the shop is. The bags are much larger than the Lineker advertised alternative.
As a fellow keyboard crumber I can sympathise with the need for speed and simplicity when it comes to choosing a sandwich. However, I feel that the thrust of your rant is really more towards the superfluous use of nouns and verbs in the description of the sandwiches on offer rather than their contents themselves. Taking a pen to your list of examples, I find the contents mostly seem to meet your requirements for a simple sandwich, it is the descriptive language that does not:
*
Oak-roasted Wiltshireham andmature English Cheddarcheese onmultigrainwhite bread withtenderleaflettuce andEnglish mustardmayodressing*
Sustainably-sourced Scottishsalmon andfreshwatercress with limedressing on soft wheat tortilla[wrap]* Brie, grape and cranberry
saucewithmixedsaladleaveson whitebloomer*
Marinatedchickenbreast mixed withCaesar [with]dressing, Italian maturedcheese, tomatoes and saladleaveson wholegrainbreadPersonally, I’m rather partial to being enticed by fancy descriptions and I love lots of extras in my sandwich. As Nigel Slater says, “only the generous can make a sandwich worth eating”. I think a real meal can be made out of a sandwich, they should not be overlooked as a simple means to an end. As an example of this, those of you partial to a meal-on-bread might like to check out this Bagel with hummus, feta and caramelised onions which I make at home with bagels from the local Hot Bread shop.
Having said all that, I did have a fantastic no-frills sandwich at an Italian airport this summer. It was called a “mortadella panino” and it was a slice of mortadella inside a roll. That was it! (It was complimented by the no-frills service, which meant when you finally caught the server’s attention, they shoved the sandwich over the counter with a ‘humph’!)
Nooo, spread is essential, even when you have a mayo-based filling.
Mayo is essentially a water/oil emulsion, which will soak in without a proper oil-based spread prophylactic.
The spread is there to keep the bread and filling separated, thus the bread stays dry, without the sogginess and risk to falling apart in your keyboard of soaked in filling.
It’s a bit Elvis but a very nice sandwich is peanut butter, bacon and apple. Try it before you slag it!
Hmm. Trying to get a plain, unfussy sandwich when out and about is a nightmare, indeed…. especially when you’re with your dear offspring who won’t eat anything but a PLAIN HAM sandwich (with nothing else in it thankyouverymuch) or an egg one (with NO cress!!). The amount of cress i’ve had to pick out of prepackaged egg sandwiches doesn’t bear thinking about. If you eat cress, then it kills you, you know. So my kids say.
I totally agree with keeping it simple:
Peanut butter and Marmite
Cheese and Branston (or sometimes onion)
Cheese and Tomato
Ham (or Beef) and mustard
Tuna and Mayo
Bacon and Egg
Sausage and Egg
That’s it
I’m so with you on this, whatever happened to the ’simple’ sandwich - some days I just want a simple cheddar cheese and pickle!
[...] 5. meish dot org: In Search of a Simple Sandwich [...]
You can certainly get simple sandwiches where I work - a school. I always take my ingredients in with me and make my own sandwich. I do not want two pieces of white bread with lots of margarine and a slice of ham. Ever. Or (if with salad) three shreds of lettuce and an end of tomato.
A typical sandwich for me includes brown bread, ham or chicken, spring onion, spinach leaves and (this is the embarrassing bit) two cheese triangles instead of mayonaise and/or spread. It works for me and I enjoy it. But actually all those sandwiches you listed sounded lovely, I just know they aren’t necessarily good for me.
I’m with you on this. I don’t know whether they still do it, but Squat and Gobble just off Tottenham Court Road used to do a mean fish finger and rocket leaf sandwich. It makes my mouth water just thinking about them. In fact, I’m just off to see if there are any fish fingers in the freezer…
That raises an interesting point, Nick… after years of being called ‘goujons’ the humble fish finger appears to back in fashion.
Sharon:
I have no idea what a goujon is, really. A fish finger, though - I know *exactly* what that is. As well as simple sandwiches, I’m a big fan of simple language.
I have a feeling I’m about to commit some dreadful faux pas even mentioning this, but I’m going to mention it anyway: Subway. I really love Subway sandwiches. Particularly something like the Italian meats, loaded up with all of the salad, and then extra pickles. There. I’ve said it.
I was in Croatia recently (lucky girl, I know!) and struggling to find a truly veggie option in the port town we were staying in. I ended up with a ‘Bali Toast’ which consisted of .. avocado and cooked banana on toast. Topped with melted cheese. Served with salad - some of which had managed to get trapped in the melting cheese.
They managed to describe this in the menu in a way that made it sound so tempting one of my non-veggie friends almost ordered one too. She was incredibly relieved when it arrived that she hadn’t.
I can’t even begin to express myself about this. Who? WHY?!
I feel especially bad because having bought one I’m obviously just encouraging them…
So, I think what my point was - simple, honest sarnie = good. Fancy, over-worded sarnie descriptions = BAD!