As a Brit I have grown up with a less than inspired relationship with sandwiches. Whilst these are fairly common place as parts of our diets, especially as a quick and easy lunch option, they aren’t really something we take particular pride or distinct interest. We’ve got a few staple fillings that we know and love...cheese and pickle, BLT, tuna mayo...but none of these really set the world alight! They are more tried and tested favourites rather than anything that would really get us salavating.
This is not a trend that I can say I have experienced to be true around the world. In fact, certain countries and cultures take such pride in their varieties of the humble sandwich they have almost been elevated to national dish status! Take the bánh mì in Vietnam for example. Whilst there are an extraordinary variety of alternatives, the traditional sandwich starts with a freshly cooked crusty baguette spread with pork liver pate and generously filled with sliced pork, grated carrot and sliced cucumber and topped with pork floss. Bánh mì vendors are found on every street corner in every city throughout the country and they take this sandwich seriously! A carelessly prepared, under filled or poor quality version of this sandwich would not be accepted! Any talk of culinary institution status sandwiches would be absolutely incomplete without the inclusion of the world famous Reuben sandwich! Personally I believe this to be a sandwich like no other!! Practically perfect in every way! The exact origin of this dreamy creation is contested but all agree it comes from some form of American Jewish background. Essentially very basic in terms of it’s content, five ingredients are impeccably combined in a precise flavour balance to create the classic Reuben! Warm corned beef, sauerkraut, melted Swiss cheese and Russian dressing are enclosed between two slices of rye bread...done. Surprisingly simple and unbelievably good! Accept no substitutes...the original is the best! One final sandwich that I believe deserves a mention is the Philly Cheesesteak. This sandwich actually started it’s life as a temporary alternative to a hotdog but was met with such a positive reception that it stuck! Again, it’s fairly simple to create...an amoroso roll is stuffed with thinly sliced rib eye steak and topped with melted provolone cheese. Simple it may be, but Philadelphians are very serious about it! When acquiring a cheesesteak from one of the many vendors located around the city you must have you ordering lingo prepared...”prov” will get you the traditional steak and cheese combo, while “Swiss with” will get you steak, Swiss cheese and onions on your roll. Brave (or stupid) is the man who enters a vendor and advances to the counter before knowing exactly what they want and how to ask for it. It will probably come as no surprise for you to learn that I have tried all of these sandwiches and I have loved them all! They are not sandwiches I could eat everyday...not least because I probably wouldn’t live very long if I did...but they are certainly sandwiches with a significant level of culinary clout. And one thing they all have in common...they have definitely made me look at the old BLT with less of an admiring eye!
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Previous image was deleted as it was not my own - Credit to https://www.ketogenicsupplementreviews.com/ (this company is not related to our blog)I was asked today what my favourite cuisine was and funnily enough this is not a question I get asked all that regularly, nor is it a question for which I had an instant answer. I like a lot of foods and more generally, I like lots of food! I thought about it for a while and decided that the best way to come to a conclusion would be to think about what my favourite dishes are…okay…Spaghetti Bolognese (Italian), Dim Sum (Chinese), Pad Thai (Thai), Sashimi (Japanese), BBQ Ribs (American), Sunday Roast (English), Goan Fish Curry (Indian)…this is by no means a list that contains all of my favourite dishes, but they are a selection of the first few that came to my mind and made my little theory of using my favourite dishes to answer the question suddenly seem pretty useless! Like I said, I like food!
Clearly I had to approach this little conundrum from another angle…so I posed myself another question, if I had to eat one thing for every meal for the rest of my life what would it be?! The answer to this question came almost instantly…salmon! Okay, second part of the question…how would I prepare the salmon?! Sashimi (Japanese)…no wait en croûte (French)…oh but I love blackened (Cajun)…but I couldn’t live without smoked (Norwegian/Scottish/Canadian)! This was clearly another completely futile line of thinking. So I concluded, maybe I don’t have a favourite cuisine overall! I have favourite dishes from different cuisines and I have a favourite food that I like cooked a range of ways from a lot of different culture’s cuisines but I don’t think I can categorically say that I have a favourite cuisine exclusively! Is that weird? Maybe I am just too indecisive or too flaky to make such and rash commitment. Maybe I have tried so many things in so many places that the choice is just too hard to limit so severely. Or maybe, just maybe, I like food just a little bit too much and I am a dedicated glutton who couldn’t possibly restrict myself to just one option when it comes to the culinary smörgåsbord (see…there’s another one, Swedish) that is the world’s offering of stomach filling delights! But I’m still willing to pose the question to you…what’ Increasingly in the culinary culture around the world there has been a move towards a more all inclusive attitude towards consuming animals. In saying this, I don't mean that more people are doing it, quite the contrary...sometimes it feels like vegetarians are starting to take over (Riv I’m looking at you)!! No, no, in this case I mean using more and more of the animal as a means to create a dish. Historically all parts of the animal were used to make meals, flesh, organs, feet, the lot, but over time we became a world that championed the pure meat and began to marginalise or even completely ignore the less attractive and appealing parts of the animal. This is a trend that, while still present all over the world does not seem to have taken over in quite the same way in parts of Asia, South America and even Europe as I have recently learned. The 'nose-to-tail' craze is not simply a hipster fad in these places but simply the way they have made and continue to make delicious and nutritious traditional food.
On our recent trip to South America I learned that offal and tripe are central parts of most people's meat based diets. Particularly in countries like Perú and Colombia. This is for a number of reasons. Primarily it is just a question of logic, it is there, it is edible, so why wouldn't you eat it?! The second reason is a financial one, with the aforementioned increasing trend towards a desire for only the prime cuts of meat, the price of those has increased massively and accordingly the price of the leftovers has plummeted. Finally, it is fundamentally about the taste and the parts of the animals that have been used in traditional recipes for decades and even centuries. Take Sopa de Mondongo (stomach soup) from Colombia as an example. This is a very traditional Colombian dish and is created simply using tripe from a pig or a cow, dicing it up, mixing it with some vegetables and water and boiling it up. It sounds simple, and that's kind of the point. It easy, it's cheap and it's delicious! In Eastern Europe in countries like Bulgaria and Romania they have a fairly similar tripe soup made using the stomach, off-cuts of the meats and a delicious combination of herbs and spices. However, in this part of the world, offal and tripe are also used as the exclusive meat component of many dishes and could not be substituted for the fancier and more glamorous alternatives as they would just not be the same dish. While in Bulgaria I ate the most wonderful chicken offal stew which contained heart, liver, kidneys, intestines...the lot, and it was absolutely sensational. It's not just in poorer cultures that you can find offal and tripe being thrust into the limelight of widely eaten dishes. It would be no surprise to see a dish containing heart or liver on most of the tapas menus in Spain, or coming off a giant skewer at a Brazilian BBQ restaurant. I even tried the most incredible tripe sausage on a recent trip to Torremaggiore in southern Italy and one of my favourite sandwiches ever was the lampredotto (tripe and gravy) sandwich I had in Florence. Yes, it's true, most of the dishes that contain tripe and offal were traditionally primary features of peasant diets but just because they were peasants did not mean they didn't know flavour!! I know tripe and offal isn't for everyone, sometimes it's a taste thing, sometimes a texture thing and sometimes it's purely and simply psychological. As I am sure you know well, I will try anything once and I have yet to regret an occasion when I took a punt on a local tripe or offal dish anywhere in the world...but that's not to say that it won't happen, I'm realistic about these things. Having said that, here's to many more innard-based delights in the future! |
Follow us on Instagram or send us a messageAbout Foodie FridaysWe love food, as most people do! And when we are on the road this doesn't change. We, like many people, believe that food is one of the best ways to really get to know a culture and it's people, as so much about the way people live their lives around the world is centred around food. This means that when we travel we actively seek out the local foods and delicacies. Sometimes that comes in the form of unusual and exotic produce from markets and sometimes from street food vendors serving an array of barbecued, fried, steamed or entirely indistinguishable goodies. Having tried and tested these goodies for some time now, on our adventures around Asia, Europe, North and South America we have discovered some pretty wonderful treats that we have decided should earn a bit of publicity. So, as the working week drifts away and the weekend winks at you like a naughty temptress we will share with you one of the delights that we have encountered from around the world! We hope you enjoy reading about these as much as we enjoyed eating them! Archives
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