Excerpt from the Introduction I remember sitting at our kitchen table when I was 6 or 7 while my mom made us her version of grilled cheese sandwiches for me and my brothers, Greg, Paul, and Ryan. She used fresh-baked pita from the market, luxurious European butter (my dad immigrated to Canada from Slovenia and loved it), and cheese from the cheesemonger (no prepackaged cheese singles in her kitchen!). It was simple, sure, but watching her make those sandwiches and then eating one—the crunch of the toasty, buttery pita, the melty and oozy cheese, and (some may wholeheartedly disagree with this) the sweetness of lots and lots of ketchup (hey, I was a kid after all!)—was pure joy. She often made us what we called grilled pitas, and as I grew up, I in turn made them often as well. Experimenting a bit here and there, they may not all have been hits, but I think my mom’s grilled cheese pita is where my love of a good sandwich started.
Food can sometimes be a bit polarizing: Do you like cilantro? (Does it taste like soap to you, or is it a refreshing, citrusy punch of flavor?) What about anchovies? (Love their salty, briny qualities, or loathe them because you were taught they don’t belong on pizza and have never given them another try?)* Wherever you stand on these things, and many others like them, it seems the one food people can agree on is the sandwich—whether it’s a PB&J, a grilled cheese, a meatball sub, or a freaking burger.** People agree that the sandwich is a damn good thing. A perfect thing, indeed. Think about it. What’s the best thing you can eat for breakfast? A sandwich. What do you eat for lunch? A sandwich. What do you eat late at night? A sandwich. What do you eat when you are hungover? A sandwich. Sandwiches are comforting. Sandwiches are fun. And sandwiches have the ability to bring people together. Make someone a great sandwich, and you’ve got a friend for life. I kid, but you get the point.
People everywhere eat sandwiches every single day. Canadians alone eat more than 3.6 billion sandwiches each year; 11.5 billion are consumed annually in the UK; and Americans—by far the most significant consumers of sandwiches in the world—eat 45 billion of them every 365 days! That’s a lot of sandwiches. And we haven’t even touched on the rest of Europe, or Australia, Asia, Africa, or South and Central America, where sandwiches play a massive part in the culinary lives of so many people who live there.
I like to think outside the box when I make sandwiches, and I hope this book will help you do the same. I remember visiting friends Morgain and Gary a few years back when I was in the UK. We went out to the pub and the kitchen was closed, so all we had to eat were a few bags of crisps (or chips, as we call them here in North America). Upon returning home, I took it upon myself to make my hosts the best sandwich I pos-sibly could to satisfy our now all-consuming hunger. (Thankfully, their fridge had a pretty impressive amount of ingredients to choose from, but that’s beside the point.) Wondering what I made? It made it into this book: The Wild Duck (page 98). It was a beautiful concoction of different ingredients and my friends still say it’s the best sandwich they’ve ever had, and hopefully, when you make that sandwich, you will agree.
Just like with anything you do often enough, monotony in sandwich making can be a real thing, so I’m excited for you to come on this ride with me and experiment a bit. Flipping through this book and seeing a recipe for a za’atar egg salad sandwich with fresh herb salad (page 31)(there’s that cilantro!) or a lobster roll with anchovy mayo (page 109) (there’s that anchovy!) will hopefully inspire you to step up your sandwich game a little bit—and open your eyes to the idea that a sandwich can be anything you want it to be. Let’s be honest; we’re not curing cancer here, so this book is really about having fun, enjoying some great recipes, and learning a few new things along the way.
I make my grilled cheeses a bit differently now (as you’ll find out in the recipes in this book), but every once in a while, I’ll make one just like my mom did—yes, ketchup is still involved, but now mixed with some hot sauce—and it takes me right back to where my love of sandwiches began. So thanks, Mom!
Happy sandwich-making, friends, and let’s meet up at the end and exchange notes.
* Seriously, folks, give the damn anchovy a chance! Your sandwich (and pizza, salad dressing, or roasted vegetables) will love you for it!
**Is a burger a sandwich? Don’t worry, there’s a whole chapter dedicated to that question.
Copyright © 2024 by Jason Skrobar. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
