Thoughts on a BLT

The way that we celebrate the first great tomatoes of the year has not changed since I was a child: making and devouring the fabled tomato sandwich. We look forward with extreme anticipation to the long-standing annual ritual of sandwiching juicy slabs of the first tomatoes between two slices of white bread slathered in mayonnaise. Just the thought of that first tomato sandwich of the year makes me drool.

In addition to drooling, there is something primal about the slurry of tomato juice and mayonnaise dribbling down your face while eating a perfect tomato sandwich. The mess is a defining part of the tomato sandwich rite; without the mess, it can't be a great sandwich.

An Amazing BLT

After the first few tomato sandwiches of the summer have scratched the tomato sandwich itch for us, we are ready to move on to the first BLT of the year. The BLT may be the simplest and best sandwich on the planet. The synthesis of firm white bread, juicy acidic umami-laden slabs of ripe tomato, silky fatty mayonnaise, smoky chewy salty strips of thick bacon, and sweet crisp lettuce forms a sandwich whose flavor and texture is light years ahead of the sum of its constituent parts.

The BLT's glory lies in its simplicity and it is a sandwich that begs not to be improved. Its downfall can also lie in its simplicity. Without the absolute best quality ingredients, the BLT can fail miserably.

In our three years out here in Oregon's Willamette Valley, we have learned much about flora and fauna, what can grow and what cannot, what the seasons are like, local customs and products, all things that were alien to us when we relocated from Virginia.

A key finding with respect to the ultimate tomato and BLT sandwiches: for the same reason that this is a world-class location in which to grow wine grapes, it is not so great for tomatoes. Those cool night temperatures that are so vital to preserving the acidity in wine grapes do not ripen tomatoes like we were used to on the East Coast where the night time temperatures rarely dip below the mid 60s.

Our night time cool temperatures surprise many people. Living here in the heart of wine country, wine tourism is huge business. We see our share of summer visitors from all over the US and the world, especially for the International Pinot Noir Celebration (IPNC) at the end of July every year (except of course in 2020, the totally unprecedented wild card year of our lives).

During high summer at the end of July, we are likely to have daytime temperatures into the 90s like much of the country, totally expected by our guests. That said, I cannot tell you how many IPNC visitors each summer resist our advice to pack a sweater. With our nighttime temperatures down into the 50s, they soon wish they had listened. No lie: yesterday morning we awoke to 47 degrees.

Those temperatures, while extremely pleasant for us, pose a problem for our tomatoes. Where in Virginia, we could reliably expect field-ripened tomatoes about the July 4th holiday, push that back another month out here. We are just now getting into tomato season in the second week of August. Moreover, while any fresh field-ripened tomato is a good tomato, our Oregon-grown tomatoes just do not have the depth of flavor that we are used to. Even though our tomatoes are not ideal, they are still good enough to be worth celebrating.

The other key finding about Oregon: Duke's mayonnaise is hardly to be found out here. Duke's is a bit more acidic and richer than other competitors and has been my go-to mayonnaise all my life, spent mainly in Virginia, with short stints in Maryland, Alabama, and Texas. A Virginian by birth and at heart, my allegiance has always been to the Duke's brand owned by the C.F. Sauer company of Richmond, Virginia. Their headquarters on Broad Street is a Richmond landmark. Alas, they have been acquired by a North Carolina company. Though such is the way of the world: Duke's was originally a Greenville, SC brand before Sauer bought it in the 1920s.

One final thought about mayonnaise. You would think that with my insistence on the best of ingredients for the perfect BLT, that I would make my own mayonnaise. And you're right. I can make better mayonnaise in my kitchen than I can buy. But that's not how a BLT is made. You have to make it with your brand so that you can throw shade at everyone who prefers another brand. And we'll not even mention those deplorables who favor Miracle Whip.

A Great Sandwich

Ann and I often remark to each other that it is damn near impossible to find a great sandwich. I am not sure why that is exactly, because a great sandwich is not at all hard to make.

A Great Sandwich

At long last, the weather was truly nice yesterday, a glimpse of fall, and it seemed perfect for sitting out on the back patio. Though we had thought to go out for dinner, I made an executive decision to stay home, enjoy the weather, drink a little wine, and make a really awesome sandwich.

What makes a great sandwich? Let's see: great bread, high quality ingredients, and a little care. That's all it takes, no matter what kind of sandwich. So why is it so bloody hard to find a great sandwich?

I was in the mood for an Italian cold cut sandwich, so I set out with that in mind. And since I had to make a Costco run yesterday, I availed myself of several ingredients there. First, the bread. They don't bake their own, but they do parbake decent bread daily, and while it is not the best in the land, it is pretty decent. I grabbed a loaf of rosemary parmesan bread.

Then over to the refrigerator cases where I got a pack of mixed capocollo/salame and another of prosciutto, again not superior quality, but decent enough for a sandwich.

At the restaurant, I remembered a few slices of unloved provolone in the bottom of the cheese bin and I found a couple of super-ripe Cherokee Purple tomatoes on the counter, so ripe that they wouldn't make it to dinner the next night before needing to be pitched.

At home, we had plenty of butter lettuce, olive oil, and, though not a traditional Italian sub ingredient, a roasted turkey breast.

That's it for the great bread and high quality ingredients. Now for the care, as if selecting great bread and high quality ingredients is not already taking great care. I split the loaf of bread, gave it a good drizzle of olive oil, salt, and pepper and put it under the broiler until nicely toasted. Out of the broiler, it got a good bath in great olive oil and healthy sprinkles of oregano and crushed red pepper flakes.

From there, it was just a matter of assembling the sandwich and devouring it.

Now why is that so hard?

Seven-Layer Dip Bowl

Delicious and Healthy, Too!

This cold wet weather is not helping the restaurant business one bit, but it is giving me more time at home with Ann, so that's something of a win, no? Last night was another in a long series of slow week nights and so I decided to go home and make dinner for us. It's no secret that Ann and I are slowly trying to work off all that winter weight we put on and so we are being a bit more selective in what we eat.

We haggled a bit on the phone over dinner, throwing out one idea after another. It all kept coming back to the thawed ground turkey in the fridge. It finally dawned on me that we could do a really healthy version of the horribly unhealthy seven-layer dip, yet put it in a bowl so that we could eat it without the usual tortilla chips.

The layers are up to you, but I avoided the cheese and sour cream in my bowl because of my lactose intolerance. Ann went for both from her stash in the fridge. This is not a quick or haphazard meal. Between vegetable prep and milling spices and adding cook time for the beans and the turkey, this was a solid 30 minutes of work, even for a very quick professional chef.

The bottom layer for both of us was ground turkey which I added to a sauté of onions, poblanos, and garlic and cooked until just done through. Then I seasoned with salt, cumin, ancho powder, oregano, and the barest hint of cinnamon. A spice mill really helps. Get one. Keep your spices and chile peppers fresh and rotated and mill them to order. It does make a difference.

For the beans, the second layer, I opted for something texturally between soup beans (frijoles de la olla) and refried beans (frijoles refritos). I started by draining a large can of cooked pintos: I love to rehydrate dry beans overnight, but that's not a possibility much of the time, especially on a day when I didn't anticipate being home for dinner. Canned beans aren't as economical or even as tasty as dried beans, but they sure are one of life's great convenience foods and there's no shame at all in using them.

In the bean pot, I started  a sauté of diced onion, diced poblano, minced garlic, and minced cilantro stems. Once this cooked down for a bit, in went the beans, about two ounces of the adobo off a can of chipotles, salt, and water to cover. I cooked the beans in parallel with the turkey. Once the turkey was done, I moved the beans to the high burner and brought them down rapidly. Towards the end, I smashed some beans against the side of the pot with my spoon and this thickened the sauce quite quickly. I finished them like refried beans, cooking them while stirring often, until the beans started to pull away from the side of the pot.

On top of the turkey and beans, I layered chipotle salsa, halved grape tomatoes, nopalitos, green onions, and topped the whole thing with cilantro. Cubes of avocado and fresh, raw sweet corn would be great in this, in season.

This dish has it all: extremely tasty, high protein, low fat, high fiber, and has only complex carbs in the beans. It's a winner even if you doctor it with a bit of cheese, sour cream, or both.

Turkey and Shrimp Lettuce Wraps

Monday was one of those days that I just couldn't get inspired about food. It happens. Ann and I were on the phone trying to plan dinner before I hit the grocery store and I could tell she was getting frustrated by my lack of input and lack of enthusiasm for her ideas. I just wasn't feeling anything. She started surfing through something on her computer when she came across and suggested lettuce wraps. And that finally struck a chord with me.

Turkey and Shrimp Lettuce Wraps with Thai Basil

Mise: Thai Basil, Mystery Vegetable, Green Onions, Sugar Snaps, Shrimp, Ginger

I started off by quickly cooking minced ginger, garlic, and cilantro stems in a very hot pan. Next went in the ground turkey and Ann stirred it until it was almost cooked. I then added about a tablespoon each of sambal oelek, sugar, and black pepper. Once this was stirred in well, I added a fair amount of fish sauce, liberally sprinkling it over the meat. Finally, in went the green vegetables (sliced sugar snaps, mystery vegetable aka preserved mustard stems, chiffonade of Thai basil, and green onions) along with the shrimp. I let this cook for another two or three minutes just to reduce the sauce to thick and sticky.

Butter Lettuce with Smoked Salmon, Clementines, and Red Onions

Butter Lettuce with Smoked Salmon, Clementines, and Red Onions

On Monday, I got home early enough to eat lunch with Ann and she wanted to have a big salad. She really loves it when we make a huge salad, snuggle up in the big chair together, and dig in with two forks. When she suggested a salad for lunch, for some reason, I had bagels with smoked salmon, capers, and red onions on the brain. And so combining the two seemed pretty natural. While making the salad, I spied a bunch of clementines on the counter and so those went in. And Ann dredged up a container of dried cranberries which we added as well. The dressing is lemon juice, clementine juice, mustard, salt, and olive oil.

CLT

Monday was Carter's 16th birthday and Ann let me know that he wanted BLTs for dinner. Unfortunately, we got clobbered at the restaurant Saturday night and sold out of every single tomato. Moreover, none of our tomatoes are yet ripe (and at the rate that the birds are pecking them, we may never have any ripe tomatoes this season) and the farmers market doesn't go until Tuesday. How to make a BLT without tomatoes?

Chicken, Lettuce, and Tomato

I decided on using a roasted chicken, figuring that this is something that Carter would eat. At times, he will eat just about anything; at other times, just about nothing. Typical teenager, I guess. I never went through that. My siblings called me the Vacuum Cleaner: anything that they didn't want, mainly vegetables, ended up on my plate and was inhaled.


CLT in Progress

So, back to the sandwich. It's built from grilled and toasted focaccia spread with saffron aioli, red leaf lettuce, thick-cut bacon roasted on a sheet tray in the oven, and sliced chicken breast. No complaints from the peanut gallery. When making a lot of sandwiches, it's often a lot easier to make one gigantic sandwich and cut it down into smaller ones. 

Thai Chicken Salad

On Monday, Ann and I were both running different directions and we missed the opportunity to discuss what was for dinner, so I ended up making an executive decision. Given that it was a warm day, I wanted something cool, light, and highly flavorful.

Thai Chicken Salad

And so I decided to grab a pre-roasted chicken, some herbs, some lettuce, some vegetables, and throw together a salad. I'm calling this Thai Chicken Salad, but I doubt seriously that it has a counterpart in Thailand, though Thai cooks would recognize the spirit of the dish.

Salad Fixings

The first thing I did was to throw together a quick dressing, which you see in the bowl at the top of the photo, of freshly squeezed lime juice, fish sauce, sambal oelek, and agave nectar. Agave isn't used in Thailand but it has the benefit of dissolving readily in a cold dressing. It works better than sugar and I am all about works better.

Then I diced some of the chicken breast and gave it a quick marinade in the dressing while I tossed cilantro and Thai basil leaves with some lettuce leaves. I put the undressed leaves on a platter and then put tomatoes, sweet orange peppers, cucumber, and red onion rings over that. Then I spooned on a good bit of dressing and tossed the chicken on top.

I love crunchy bits in a salad, so on top of everything, I scattered some roasted peanuts and crispy fried shallots.

This was a delightful salad that we gorged ourselves on while sitting in a chair and eating right out of the platter with two forks!

Pork Larb Lettuce Wraps

I didn't have a clue what to make for dinner last evening. I wasn't hungry and I wasn't really craving anything. So when Ann sent me an email in the morning asking if we could have pork lettuce wraps for dinner, I was totally jazzed at not having to think about dinner. The figuring out dinner part is the hard part; the execution is always the easy part.

Pork Larb Lettuce Wraps

Last week, I made shrimp larb for dinner and I thought I would reprise that with pork this week. While Ann was off at a meeting, I went out to the garden and picked Thai basil and mint, whose leaves I mixed with cilantro leaves and very thinly sliced red onion in a bowl. And then I sliced some shallots, some Thai chiles, and minced some garlic. The final step in getting set was to mix some lime juice, brown sugar, fish sauce, and Thai chiles to make a sauce to drizzle over the wraps.

When Ann texted me to say she was coming home, I browned the shallots hard in a pan, then threw in a bunch of minced garlic and sliced chiles. Next went in the pork, a touch of brown sugar, and a splash each of fish sauce and water. When the pork was cooked through, I removed it carefully to the bowl containing the herbs and red onion, and returned the liquid to the stove where I reduced it to a syrup and then poured it back over the pork.

I omitted the toasted rice powder: we're watching our carbs. We hate watching our carbs but it is working. I could kill for a bowl of pasta now after three months of low-carbing it!

Carter's Birthday

Sunday, Carter's Birthday, is one that we will probably never forget. His 15th birthday was a day that he chose to show his true teenage colors in front of friends and family. By way of extreme contrast, it was a beautiful day outside, our gardens are in full summer bloom, and we had great food and a good visit with Ann's parent's Mary and Bob.



A Rare Smile

Despite his being the rear end of a horse for 99% of Sunday, I actually caught Carter with a smile on his face.




Baba Ganoush

For an appetizer, Ann asked me to make baba ganoush from three small eggplants that we had in the cooler, so I did. I haven't made baba ganoush in so long that I had almost forgotten how simple and delicious it is!

Ann Assembling BLTs

When Ann asked Carter what he wanted to eat for his birthday, I don't think either of us were expecting the answer to be BLTs. Steak, perhaps, or pizza, more likely, but a BLT? Never! How good is a great BLT like the one below?

Glorious Eats!

Carter Asked for This Cake

And now, so that we can finish on a happy note, here are some photos from my stroll around the gardens on Sunday morning.

Echinacea

Volunteer Sunflowers

Volunteer Butterfly Bush

It's Finally Hibiscus Season

Bumblebees and Hummingbirds Love Anise Hyssop

Dinner Plate Sized (see how tiny the bumblebee looks?)

A Relaxing Weekend

This past weekend was about feeling good about getting some work done in the yard and then rewarding ourselves by relaxing. Sunday we made a trip to Delaplane Cellars after a morning in the yard. And Monday, after a morning in the yard and a short trip in to work, we ate and sipped wine during the afternoon. I needed a slow leisurely weekend to start to feel good about the yard and to just slow down and enjoy. It was a great weekend!

Relaxing Lunch on the Deck at Delaplane Cellars

Sunday morning started sunny and pleasant but the humidity was up and by 10:30 or so, it seemed like the clouds were building for afternoon thunderstorms. But the nice morning let me get a lot of needed work accomplished in the yard. The younger wisteria are growing like crazy now and need weekly work to train them to our pergola. And since we are gardening on a budget, I was able to transplant a volunteer maple tree and a volunteer crape myrtle from one of the front beds to our property line out back. It felt good to finally get something accomplished in the yard rather than merely trying to recover from the damage from last winter.

In the afternoon, even as the clouds piled up in the sky, we made the quick drive to Delaplane Cellars where we tasted through the current line up and then retired to the deck with a bottle of 2012 Left Bank Bordeaux blend. Left Bank is the blend from the winery's own grapes and though the fruit is very young, it makes for a delicious and easy drinking red.

We saw Jim mowing grass between rows as we lunched and ultimately he and then Betsy joined us out on the patio where we chatted for a couple hours before we had to head home in the late afternoon.The wind got up a couple of times forcing us to furl the umbrellas and we got a few stray raindrops, but it didn't ever amount to enough to force us in. Back home in Winchester on the other side of the Blue Ridge, we saw that it had rained in our absence. Good luck for us!

Monday Lunch: Chipotle Black Bean and Mango Tacos

I worked hard all last week to keep my Monday workload to a minimum and that let me work a couple more hours in the yard before heading in to work to finish up my Monday chores. On the way home, I stopped at the market and grabbed some things for lunch and dinner. Lunch, out on the patio under the umbrella, was these black bean and mango tacos that took all of five minutes to put together from canned black beans, a mango, a bunch of cilantro, a bunch of green onions, and a can of chipotle salsa.

Shrimp, Lop Cheung, and Vegetable Lettuce Wraps

Dinner was another outdoor affair, this time, lettuce wraps with a dipping sauce. For the dipping sauce, I used the white parts of the green onions and the stems of the cilantro from lunch, along with garlic, sambal oelek, lime juice, fish sauce, and agave nectar just to take the edge off the lime.

I threw together a quick stir fry of lop cheung, tiny shrimp, sugar snaps, lime leaves (discarded before we ate), garlic, white pepper and fish sauce. This I mixed with the raw ingredients: pineapple, roasted peanuts, fresh tomato, orange sweet pepper, and lots of Thai basil. As you can see in the photo, the wraps are mostly vegetables with a tiny bit of shrimp and sausage for flavor.

What a Great Day!

A Salad Riff on Shrimp Bánh Mì

Last night for dinner, I had shrimp bánh mì on the brain, but I just wanted everything in the sandwich without the bread, without any mayo, so I came up with a quick salad.

Salad with Fish Sauce-Garlic Shrimp and Lop Cheung

The salad itself is torn butter lettuce, cilantro, and Thai basil from our garden all tossed with a dressing of caramelized sugar, rice vinegar, lime juice, sambal oelek, and fish sauce. This is topped with raw vegetables: julienne of carrot, julienne of sweet peppers, thinly sliced red onion, Mexican Midget and Sun Gold cherry tomatoes, cucumber, and green onions. And then this is topped with a quick sauté of fish sauce-garlic shrimp and lop cheung and the whole is sprinkled with deep-fried shallots. Lime wedges finish the salad.

Mise-en-Place

Ten minutes of prep work after we got home let us have a glass of wine and relax for ninety minutes before three minutes of assembly.

Shrimp in the Marinade

For the two of us, I put six ounces of shrimp in a bowl with lots of chopped garlic, a splash of sambal oelek, and a healthy dose of fish sauce. These guys hung out in the refrigerator until they were ready to go in the pan. I lifted the shrimp and garlic out of the marinade and then put them into a hot pan. Once the shrimp were cooked on one side and flipped, I added the three ounces of sliced lop cheung, and poured the marinade over. Total cooking time, three minutes, if that.

The best part of the whole dinner was cuddling in a chair with Ann and both of us eating the salad right out of the salad bowl while watching a movie! Great dinner!

Note to self: Ann said she wants peanuts in the salad for crunch next time. Can do.

BLT Reprise

This isn't the first post I've made about BLTs here: last summer saw Ann's indoctrination into the BLT sandwich club. And it is that time of year again, almost down to the day. Last night for dinner, I toasted great bread while Ann fried bacon. Et voilà!



The King of Sandwiches

BLT

I was shocked to learn that my girl was a BLT virgin. Granted, she was born in Manhattan and is a Yankee through and through, but she's lived in Virginia since she was a teenager. I have had to wait all summer to get a beefsteak tomato of sufficient girth to make the proper sandwich with which to indoctrinate Ann into the club that the entire civilized world except her belongs to.

That tomato came along Saturday and you see the result. Like all other simple foods, the BLT depends entirely on the ingredients: a tomato large enough to cover the entire sandwich, the best thick-sliced bacon, beautiful oak leaf lettuce, and Duke's mayonnaise.

For more of my waxing poetic about this sandwich, http://chestermagazine.com/the-tomato-sandwich.