Anonymous asked: Tell me about the bad sandwich guy.
From JMM:
NSH came in with the bad sandwich so angry she could hardly talk. On only a few occasions have I seen her so angry. She was just yelling incomprehensibly about the little butcher-paper-wrapped parcel in her hand. Eventually it became clear that she was holding an egg sandwich without an egg in it on squished sandwich bread. After the too-angry-to-talk phase passed, she ranted in blow-by-blow fashion about the entire sandwich-ordering experience. While NSH ranted, we stuck the sandwich in the toaster for a while. I nibbled on it. NSH got mad at me for eating too much of the bad sandwich she was too angry to eat, then she ate it. And that was just one of the bad sandwich guy’s sandwiches. Even bringing him up is a sure way to get NSH mad, so you’re really asking for it.
From NSH:
Oh my GOD he is the WORST! Like, there are very simple rules to making sandwiches (ask me about THOSE sometime) and he manages to break ALL of them while making YOU seem like the crazy person for asking that your bread be toasted in the toaster and not, uh, the panini press (does it anyway, squishing the bread), or requesting that your condiments get spread evenly over the sandwich and not in a single squirt in the middle (says “what?” and pretends not to hear), or wanting to know that they aren’t serving egg sandwiches anymore BEFORE the entire rest of the sandwich is constructed (isn’t the ONLY RULE of NYC that you can get an egg sandwich at any time, day or night?), or believing that wasting avocado is a minor sacrilege (flicks bits from the avocado half onto the bread with a knife then TOSSES the rest), or saying that MAYBE the bacon should be regriddled or the meatballs should be reheated or whatever instead of going straight on the sandwich cold (ignores you outright).
And he’s always working nights when you’re maybe drunk or just home from working really late and ahhhhh it’s him again!! All you wanted was a sandwich!!
Like I said, furious. To be fair, the morning sandwich guys are excellent.
Olive-oil-grilled cheeses with mustard, mayo, avocado, and just a little bit of goat cheese for lunch.
This meal contained so many upstarts! The creamed spinach was your basic milk-and-thawed-spinach deal, but I made the roux with olive oil instead of butter and let the onion and garlic get a little more brown than usual. That plus the crushed pink peppercorns and sprinkle of cayenne made the dish bright and savory against its mushiness. (Not that there’s anything wrong with mushiness.)
The eggs were cooked in a new way, too. I started them using our normal method (heat olive oil over high heat, add the eggs and salt/pepper them — although that’s charcoal-y black salt from H in the photo, not pepper — turn the heat to very low, and cover til the whites are set) when I mistakenly thought the socca — I used this recipe this time, and it wasn’t as good as this one — was done baking under the broiler. I kept trying to pry it out of the hot skillet like a dummy, forgetting The First Rule of All Skillets That Require Seasoning: the things in them unstick when they are done — if it’s stuck, it needs more time.
Anyway, I put the unset-centered socca back under the broiler and then got nervous about the eggs, which were still barely cooked. I ended up just turning off the burner and letting the pan sit there, covered, and lo and behold about 6 minutes later we had runny-yolked eggs and crispy socca and mushy spinach and it was great.
April 30, 2013, 7:58pm
A big, shared, simple plate of baguette slices (I’d never bought bread at Bakeri before, just coffee, and this loaf was really great), cucumber slices, garlicky pickles, and hummus and olive oil both sprinkled with Aleppo pepper.
April 24, 2013, 7:45pm
Here’s what we’ve been having for our lunches lately: I’ll make an enormous pot of a really boring thing like beet-bulgur-parsley salad (okay, that one had ricotta salata, which was awesome) or white bean and millet “baked beans” or just a big pot of plain millet, and we’ll have it over and over for lunch with maybe some bread or an egg until I want to die. (Unsurprisingly, JMM loves it. Also unsurprisingly, I work more efficiently when I just eat something and keep going instead of stopping to cook a meal.)
On this day we paired our baked beans and black bread with a quick salad from my mom’s childhood of grated cucumbers and red onion tossed with vinegar and dried mint.
April 23, 2013, 12:14pm
After the last aborted attempt, I was nervous about making chicken fried steak again. Nothing went wrong this time, though, and we even remembered to add butter to the biscuits, unlike last time. I was happy that JMM loved the food of my homeland — I used to go back as many as three times through the lunch line on the days they served chicken fried steak at my high school, and I’ve dragged my family to weird highway diners to eat it since — but I was also happy that we had that salad to lighten the meal at least a little bit.
April 22, 2013, 7:38pm
There were two Seville oranges left from the ones my parents brought to have with our new year’s dinner, and I figured I might as well make a tiny batch of marmalade. Using this recipe with the ingredients scaled down by weight, I chopped and measured and boiled and just a couple of hours later had three tiny jars of jam, which is exactly the right amount of jam before I get tired of it and never want to eat any again.
Also see those cookies on the side? They’re these tahini-rye cookies, and they’re as amazing as a shortbread with tahini and rye flour sounds like it would be.
April 22, 2013, 2:30pm
As a random present, I brought home some Rogue Creamery Echo Mountain blue cheese and some Salumeria Biellese Baby Jesus salami. (Okay whatever, I went to the store and asked for a sample of the salami because I love it, then felt pressured to buy something.) We had them for dinner along with the last of the Iranian almonds, the last of the sourdough loaf, JMM’s mom’s olives, and an escarole salad with a Bragg’s liquid aminos-Frankie’s olive oil dressing.
April 21, 2013, 7:50pm
A make-your-own-sandwich breakfast of sourdough toast with scrambled egg and the rest of that awesome cured salmon.
April 21, 2013, 2:32pm
I woke up craving grilled cheeses, so I crossed my fingers that the bad sandwich guy wouldn’t be working at the corner store and ventured out. (I dare you to ask me about the bad sandwich guy. God, he makes me furious.) He wasn’t, and our two sandwiches with ham and avocado, respectively, were amazing.
April 20, 2013, 11:02am
