The only thing better than pasta on sandwiches? Potatoes on sandwiches!

A few standouts quickly emerge -

First there is the breakfast variety – a little eggs,  some cheese, maybe a little meat, and some AM potatoes. As recently reported by the Village Voice’s Fork in the Road blog, this type is well represented by the version at Torrisi Italian Specialties in New York’s Little Italy. Provolone, soft scrambled egg, and roasted red spuds. What’s not to like?

Fork in the Road

Next up, to India, where potato on bread is a fixture — from the sandwich-like masala dosa

(not really bread, but close…)

photo, su-lin

to the stuffed aloo sandwich (sort of like grilled cheese but with potato goes better than cheddar)

to the vada pav, a hugely popular vegetarian Indian fast food delicacy. This belly bomb marries a giant fried spicy potato ball (vada) on a squishy white bun (pav), and is then topped with any number of chutneys, shredded coconut, or even cheese. Last year Shiv Sena, the ultra-right wing Indian political party, launched its own chain of vada pav joints, called Shiv Vada, with the hopes of making the sandwich as globally ubiquitous as the Whopper.

scaredy_kat

And lastly who hasn’t enjoyed a French fry sandwich?

In Paris’s Quartier Latin, one can’t walk three feet without a vendor imploring you to buy a sandwich grec (shawarma meat and fries on a baguette or pita)

photo, kais miled

The British chip butty — butty being a Britishism for sandwich, chip being a Britishism for fry; and using the powers of deduction, you’ve got a French fry sandwich on your hands (one so beloved by the Brits that there’s a song in its honor)

photo, judyboo

The famous Pittsburgh sandwich shop Primanti Bros knows that everything is better with spuds, and so from the sardines and cheese sammy to its knockwurst hero, the restaurants tops all of its sandwiches with fries.

photo, Kurt Komoda

Okay, this list could go on forever – Israeli falafel often has fries; there’s the Thanksgiving sandwich with mashed potatoes; the Danish open faced Smørrebrød featuring thin sliced boiled potatoes; and the Peruvian lomo saltado (steak and fries) on a bun. But all this carb club conversation is making me hungry, so instead I’ll leave you with one more -

A Japanese pork katsu sandwich that just looks like a baked potato…

photo, Sparklette.net

photo, Maggie Hoffman

Urban Daddy has info on an illicit grilled cheese dealer, operating under the radar out of an apartment in New York’s East Village. Though Urban Daddy reports that the company, called Bread. Butter. Cheese., offers delivery of said hot, gooey, pressed sandwiches, according to BBC’s Facebook page, it is take out only. Which means you’re going to someone’s apartment and paying money for some bread, some butter, and some cheese. Seems a bit of a scam, but I guess, when that jones for a grilled cheese hits and your larder is bare, who you gonna call? Now we know.

The UK’s News of the World reports that Tesco, a British grocery chain, has launched a brand new Las-Sandwich. As you might have guessed, this ingenious concoction consists of two slices of old fashioned processed white bread, surrounding noodle sheets, tomato sauce, cheese, and a little mayo for good measure.

While Tesco claims that this particular piece of carb-loading is the world’s first lasagna sandwich, it’s not alone in its pairing of bread and pasta. Who hasn’t marveled at the genius of the baked ziti pizza? (Not a sandwich, but if you fold it up New York style, it almost counts…)

drtchock

Then there is Japan’s gift to the starch lover, the yakisoba sandwich, toothsome buckwheat noodles piled high on a squishy hot dog style bun.

YGX

Similar in style, courtesy of the Clover Bakery in San Jose comes the spaghetti sandwich (with meatballs of course)

Crunchier than its pasta pan pals is Nathan’s take on the classic Chow Mein Sandwich

Rikomatic

And, finally the Wachtung deli in Montclair, NJ serves up the Benny Mac, a chicken cutlet, bacon, barbeque sauce, and mac& cheese, stuffed in a giant Italian roll.

And there you have it, great pasta sandwiches in history. Next week’s course –  prominent potato heroes (of the sandwich variety.) We have a lot to learn.

Mr. Henry was short on time and on ingredients. Ocean caught off St. Augustine, cleaned and frozen in skim milk right on the boat, mahi-mahi filets had not yet completely thawed. At 11:15 a.m. Mother Henry was ravenous, asking whether her son was ever going to fix that fish.

When lunch is late, Mother Henry is not at her best.

How do you hurry a mahi-mahi onto the lunch plate? The answer is salt.

Sea salt liberally applied helped the fish thaw. Scouring the fridge for ingredients, Mr. Henry found a bottle of capers, a lemon, and some dried parsley flakes – just sufficient to construct a sauce piccata.

Dredge the salted filet in flour (with black pepper) and sauté to a light brown in a mixture of butter and olive oil. Remove to a serving plate and deglaze your pan with lemon juice, white wine, or both. (Add more butter if you want more sauce.) Add capers and chopped parsley (fresh is preferable), combine briefly and pour over the filets.

From start to finish the whole thing won’t take more than five minutes, so don’t begin until your guests are ready to eat.

The recipe works equally well with filet of veal or breast of chicken. To assure the meat is evenly thin, pound it flat beforehand between plastic wrap.

Capers are a curiosity – immature flower buds cured in brine or vinegar. The best ones are Italian cured only in rock salt. Before using these you should them soak in cold water for a few minutes.

Mr. Henry’s friend Famous Howard lives exclusively on take-out. In his refrigerator there are precious few items, but always a bottle of capers. Howard finds the addition of capers adds immeasurably to the flavor of almost any sandwich.

As a history buff Howard might be excited to learn that capers are mentioned in The Epic of Gilgamesh, a Sumerian story from the third millennium B.C.

Today Mr. Henry finds himself in London where the sun is shining. In Dickensian London, the sun did not shine. But in post-millennium London, the sun shines through clear skies. Streets are clean. The Thames is not malodorous. People are tall and apple-cheeked. Men show tattoos. Women show cleavage and leg. No one wears a hat.

Sea breezes refresh foot-weary tourists rambling along the South Bank. In front of the old power station, now the Tate Modern, freshly planted aspens rustle musically. Street mimes strike frozen positions as standing statues. Their principal artistic achievement seems to lie in the heavy application of spray paint, all of a single color – a blue guitarist, a silver Merlin, a golden Mary Queen of Scots.

A sinuous, undulating woman with blond dredlocks danced erotically with a shiny hula hoop. Propriety prevented Mr. Henry from enjoying the full performance, however, propriety and a glance from Mrs. Henry.

Unwittingly the Henrys became caught up in a march for colitis and Crohn’s disease. Shortly Mr. Henry’s vitals began to rumble in sympathy. It was time for lunch.

At Terence Conran’s Skylon cafe, Mr. Henry ate a bowel-friendly sandwich of grilled courgette and minted hummous, a fresh and delightful pairing of flavors. In a spirit of adventure he bought a muffin of green peas, mint, and feta cheese. It was perfectly horrible. Indeed, the English are a courageous nation. The highlight of the meal was a bag of black pepper and sea salt crisps. The English genuinely appreciate the crisp.

“Mind the gap!” exhorted the Underground conductor. Inside the car, a placard quoted John Milton’s description of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the garden:

They hand in hand, with wand’ring steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way
Paradise Lost. Book xii. Line 645

“Way Out” read the exit sign.

For dinner their hostess, My Phuong, poached a beautiful clear-eyed Scottish salmon, a special treat after this year’s shocking absence of Pacific salmon. Tangy and bright baby arugula earned its English sobriquet, “rocket.”

Is it the unexpected turns of phrase, the long days, or the driving on the left that so subtly disorients and pleases? Perhaps it’s the wicked high prices. Whatever the reasons, Mr. Henry is delighted to be here in this temporary Eden. Milton understood that all Edens are temporary, so find one for yourself and take your solitary way.

Mr. Henry has been roughing it in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, living on Grape Nuts, Eight O’Clock Coffee, bacon, tuna fish, red chard, chips, salsa, and Yeungling Black & Tan.

To capture the internet he cruised Third Avenue while his laptop Airport searched for a signal. Parked in the breezeway of the Jacksonville Beach Quality Suites, he logged onto the hotel wi-fi and downloaded the Manolosphere. Across the parking lot the Crab Shack loudspeaker bellowed “Baker, party of six! Baker, party of six!” Even from 100 yards the air was thick with frying oil. He wanted to shout, “Bakers, save yourselves! Don’t do it!” but Mr. Henry does not foist his opinions upon innocent beach people.

To his amusement and delight, during his absence spirited contributors duked things out for themselves without intrusive guidance or editorial assistance. It was a barroom brawl from the Old West, a fair fight in which things sorted themselves out to the satisfaction of the many.

Mr. Henry does not like to apologize. He embraces the old show business adage, “Never complain. Never explain.” Now and again, however, he will do so, if only for the pleasure of breaking his own rules.

The kerfuffle over Michael Pollan’s injunction against more than five ingredients was settled satisfactorily. Yes, Pollan does refer to packaged products, not to other recipes, as Mr. Henry should have noted.

The food fight over pizza was such good fun that Mr. Henry is almost sorry to say he is sorry. He should have specified “American pizza,” the take-out kind. A thin-crust pizza with light tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella, and basil like Serafina’s in New York or Mrs. Henry’s home-made is one of life’s irresistible temptations.

Likewise for take-out tacos. A fresh fish taco from Baja California is one of the world’s great treats. Here in Florida Mr. Henry has been imagining just such treats by dipping his corn chips into the tuna fish, watching the Atlantic while dreaming of the Pacific. (There must be a name for such ingratitude, no? Or does the beach air simply render you perpetually sulky and less than satisfied?)

Regarding Mr. Henry’s denunciation of Subway, he just does not trust “cold cuts.”(Chachaheels explained most eloquently precisely why you should avoid fast-food sandwich places.) When he eats a roast beef sandwich, he cuts the meat from beef he roasts himself. In a pinch he will eat the fresh baked country ham from Zabar’s, but if he wants to eat genuine salumeria, he doesn’t put it on a sandwich.

Inevitably cold cuts are preserved in some nitrate or glutamate that to Mr. Henry’s nose smells like embalming fluid. Eating cold cuts he gets the queasy sensation of having crashed high in the Andes trying to remain ALIVE!

In Roughing It, Mark Twain reports:

“At the Green River station we had breakfast – hot biscuits, fresh antelope steaks, and coffee – the only decent meal we tasted between the United States and Great Salt Lake City, and the only one we were ever really thankful for. Think of the monotonous execrableness of the thirty that went before it, to leave this one simple breakfast looming up in my memory like a shot-tower after all these years gone by!”

Tomorrow Mr. Henry faces the monotonous execrableness of Walt Disney World, and he must face it like a man, not a mouse.

Eighty-five of the English Pounds for the Sandwich?

The ingredients of the sandwich are: Wagyu beef, fresh Lobe foie gras, black truffle mayonnaise, brie de meaux, roquet, red pepper and mustard confit and English plum tomatoes.

Bah. Well the Manolo remembers the mania last year for the Thousand Dollar Omelette, and the Ten Thousand Dollar Martini.

The Selfridges they will have to go to much greater lengths if they wish to win in the ridiculously expensive foods competition.