Leftovers Love: Zucchini Pickles

These pickles, which you got a peek of recently in sandwich porn, were made by simply slicing up a small zucchini that I had not used in my zucchini-onion sautée (they were 3 for $1 at my beloved Mr. Melon), and plopping the coins into the brine left over from my dill-horseradish (cucumber) pickles. (I made these a couple of weeks ago, so don’t think I used rancid veggies or anything.)

They are an excellent addition to sandwiches, as recently documented in the aforementioned porn, and were a hit when I served them as an accoutrement to lamb tacos made with fried scraps of leftover lamb roast, jalapeno jack, iceberg lettuce, sour cream, and cilantro on warmed flour tortillas. Sadly, gentle reader, I did not capture a photo of these tacos, as they were devoured too quickly.

Spread leftovers love, it’s the Brooklyn way!

All These and a Bag of Chips

Welcome to some more amateur sandwich porn.

The lunch I packed for my man tonight included (clockwise from top left): (1) turkey and ham with American cheese, lettuce, tomato, mayo, and mustard; (2) baby-back rib meat and American cheese with iceberg lime-mayo slaw; (3) roast beef, mozzarella, and tomato with sriracha-mayo-mustard spread; and (4) turkey, cream cheese, and lettuce.

As you may have guessed from the title of this post, gentle reader, this lunch was accompanied by some barbecue-flavored potato chips, or “crisps” as Davy's people call them. There was also a can of Red Bull, because for some reason he enjoys Red Bull when vodka is not involved, which is weird. Actually, it’s weird to like Red Bull even when vodka is involved. But there is nothing at all weird about liking 4 different sandwiches, and a bag of chips.

Please Enjoy Some Sandwich Porn

Feast your eyes on this pseudo-Cuban beauty: Ham, turkey, Swiss, mustard, mayo, and sliced zucchini pickles (post to come here).

(Kindly disregard the poor Photoshopping around the edges to conceal my messy kitchen in the background. It is still a thing of beauty, gentle reader, is it not?)

By the by, I have now perfected my technique of packing non-soggy sandwiches for the next day’s lunch: I drape a sheet (or two) of cheese on each cut-open side of the bread, then stack on the cold cuts, spreading condiments between the layers. Any wet ingredients such as tomatoes and lettuce also go between the meats, sealing in the moisture. Revolutionary and revelatory—I know, right?

You’re welcome.

Cream Cheese Pinwheels: Yes You Canape!

Normally, gentle reader, I feel a bit ripped off when a food magazine/blog or TV chef offers up a “recipe” that is in essence a glorified sandwich in disguise (*darts sidelong glance in Rachael Ray’s direction*). But did we mention the thing of how it’s, like, 105 degrees in Brooklyn right now? So I’m sharing what-passes-for-a-recipe for the light and refreshing lunches I've been making myself recently. This cream cheese pinwheel is a take on the kind of canapé a 1950s suburban hostess might serve at a Tupperware and/or cocktail party.

This works great to pack for lunch a night in advance, since the cream cheese acts as a buffer to keep the wrap from getting soggy (as regular readers may recall, non-soggy sandwich preparation techniques are a bit of an obsession of mine). You can pack the segments in a plastic take-out container so they look like a cute little suburban-America version of a sushi bento box, and they’re easy to eat at your desk without getting your keyboard too disgusting (also a recurring struggle of mine).

Pack a Non-Soggy Sandwich for Lunch At Last!

Last night I had the very cool opportunity to attend a reception for Popular Mechanics’ annual Breakthrough Awards, which featured demonstrations of these amazing scientific innovations. And clearly, upon my return home, I was inspired by that spirit of innovation. Except, instead of thinking of ways to benefit human beings’ quality of life via genetics or engineering or green energy, I opted to do so by improving the quality of their sandwiches.

Although I doubt this particular innovation will make next year’s awards list, I am nevertheless pretty excited to have developed a method that solves a major and persistent problem in our fast-paced modern workaday society: how to pack a sandwich for work or school the night before, without the bread ending up soggy and bloated like a body that Benson and Stabler just dragged out of the East River. In fact, my new technique ensures that—brace yourself—the bread remains completely impervious to moisture absorption the next day. Suspend your disbelief, gentle reader, for it is true! Behold, the future of sandwiches is here now!

Curried Chicken Salad

Curried chicken salad, cucumber, and feta in whole-wheat wrap

Lately I am obsessed with curry powder -- the yellow-orange, vaguely Indian, commonly-found-in-supermarkets kind rather than any of the myriad other varieties. Contrary to popular belief, it is not "spicy" in the sense of being hot -- there's actually a sweetness to it. Curried chicken salad is super-simple to throw together, and in about five or ten minutes, will yield you the fixings for a five-day workweek's worth of sandwiches (yes, squeamish types, a chicken-and-mayo-based mixture will keep that long) that you can throw together in minutes in the morning. And, of course, it will be a lot cheaper than buying comparable sandwiches day to day.

I start by shredding leftover chicken, which means pulling it off the carcass with my fingers and then pulling apart those scraps so they're like strands. (You could use store-bought roast chicken, but that kind of defeats the point of this blog, now, doesn't it.) I shred the chicken directly into a large Tupperware container, so as not to have to dirty a bowl. (Note: The curry powder might stain your Tupperware yellow. If you care about this, you're really neurotic.)