Sandwiches are named after John Montague, 4th Earl of Sandwich, an 18th century English aristocrat. He apparently wanted to eat whilst playing cards without getting the cards greasy, so he ordered his valet to put meat between two slices of bread. The sandwich can be a humble thing, or a culinary extravaganza, and are also very good for using up leftovers at this time of the year (cheese? gammon? turkey? even roast potatoes and bread sauce has been known in our house). In fact, you can make any meal into a sandwich, and any sandwich into a meal! Although it's not all that easy with spaghetti bolognese. I speak from experience. Also I remember once at work we all tried to describe our lunchtime sandwich in the most "Marks-and-Spencer-like" way to make each one sound more grand than it actually was.
Anyway, back to toastie making. My daughter makes great toasties, often involving ham, cheese and pesto, which I love, and she does them under the grill, but clearly the making of this particular toastie was not going to be a straightforward affair. I started by making the beetroot and chilli chutney. This involved grating raw beetroot and cooking it in red wine vinegar with chillies, sugar, black mustard seeds, cumin seeds, salt, garlic and shallots until reduced and syrupy. I did the chutney part a few days before and kept it in the fridge.
When it came to the assembly, I used chunky slices of "tin bread" from the supermarket and buttered them. My daughter and I had a toastie each so two slices were placed in a hot frying pan butter side down and topped with chutney, ham and grated cheddar cheese. I also added dolcelatte to mine as I happened to have some in the house, but my daughter doesn't like blue cheese so we left it out of hers. The other two slices of bread were put on top, butter side up. After frying for 5 minutes each side while squashing with a fish slice to get them good and brown, the finishing touch of grated parmesan was added and a further flip and fry to crisp the cheese was had before they went in the oven for 5 minutes to properly melt the cheese inside. And so the best "toasted" sandwich was enjoyed...
This year we didn't have a conventional Christmas dinner, but instead a relaxed "family living room picnic for eleven", enjoyed with assorted relations at my parent's house. It did include pigs in blankets though, as my daughter insisted it wouldn't be Christmas without pigs in blankets. She was also handed the family sausage roll baton by my Mum, who was not up to cooking as she is recovering from surgery. All involved families contributed to the feast, including me, though only one new recipe was forthcoming this year, the red velvet and chocolate layer cake. It was layers of red velvet sponge and chocolate sponge sandwiched (tenuous link anyone?!) together with cream cheese icing and topped with raspberries, pistachios and a flourish of glitter and gold.
Not having a roast or too many timings to worry about was great, we cooked the pigs in blankets, warmed up the sausage rolls and baked a camembert, and had the sprouts on boxing day. It was a triumph! And there was a lot of left over cheese for more sandwiches, though the gammon seemed to have disappeared...
Wishing my readers every happiness for 2017. I didn't get to 1000 new recipes since 2008, I've been busy having other adventures out of the kitchen, but I'll get there eventually.
Caroline x
