Veggie Sandwiches

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My regular readers know that I am a devoted carnivore, but there are times when a veggie sandwich of one kind or another is called for. I have three particular favorites, all of which make perfect bedtime snacks.

I learned in my adulthood that if I don’t eat before I go to bed I wake up nauseated. It’s true. I can’t eat something sugary or the same thing happens. A high-protein snack like cheese or yogurt is best, but sometimes I want something else.

Take the tomato sandwich, for instance. This is a sandwich for high summer, when the beefsteak tomatoes are ripe and sweet and luscious. I don’t make them unless the tomatoes are home-grown or farmer’s-market-purchased, vine ripened beefsteaks. No other tomato will do. Beefsteaks are low acid, so they don’t cause heartburn. They taste like summer.

A good tomato sandwich always brings back the memory of getting the soil just right, planting the young plants so they have the most area to root from, watching them grow almost as I watched, until the vines grew out of the cages and over the top, cascading down and reaching the ground again before frost took them out. Beefsteak tomatoes are big fruits growing on robust vines and they need lots of space! I used to pick tomatoes that weighed up to three pounds each.

A good tomato slice covers a slice of bread. Some of the ones I grew would cover several slice of bread, and it was all meat and almost no seed space. That’s the thing about beefsteaks – they are very meaty and the seed cavities are tiny.

I no longer grow my own tomatoes and I really, really miss those giant dark red ones. I can get pretty good ones at the farmer’s market up the road, though.

I’ve never decided whether I prefer the bread toasted or untoasted. I do know that it must be a good-quality white bread like Pepperidge Farm or Arnold because the fluffy white bread can’t stand up to the tomato. It must be spread thickly with mayonnaise and well seasoned with fresh-ground black pepper. If I have bacon I might add it, but I never make a BLT, I just sometimes make a BT on toast. Making a tomato sandwich properly is an art form. It’s worth it for that month and a half when the tomatoes are really, really good. This is a sandwich best eaten over the sink so the juice doesn’t drip onto your lap or the tablecloth.

Other seasons I eat banana sandwiches or olive sandwiches. What, you say? Banana or olive? Yes, banana or olive. Not both at once, no. That sounds a bit awkward.

The banana sandwich is perfect when I want something a little sweet but not sugary. Many’s the bedtime when I’ve stood in the kitchen with only a night light on, spreading mayonnaise (of course) on white bread and slicing the banana just right. The acid saltiness of the mayonnaise complements the banana so well that just dollop on the fruit with no bread is almost as good. They say that some folks like peanut butter and banana and if you like peanut butter they probably are. I don’t care for the stuff.

The fruit must be just the right degree of ripeness. If it’s too green it isn’t sweet enough. If it’s too ripe it gives one heartburn. If it's evenly yellow and just lightly freckled it's ju-ust right, Goldilocks. Then my OCD takes over and I slice the half banana (just enough for one sandwich) into thin slices and tile it on the slice of bread. This is the only sandwich I cut the crusts off of. The taste of the crust seems incompatible with banana. I never toast the bread for this one.

But banana sandwiches are when I want something a little sweet. If I want something a little salty, it’s olive. I discovered olive sandwiches when I was in high school and couldn’t sleep. I would pad barefoot down to the semi-dark kitchen to get a little snack, and discovered that olive sandwiches were perfect. I used to be able to get something called olive spread, which was finely chopped green olives. It had pimiento in it and I always suspected that they ground up the broken and defective olives that they couldn’t put in the jars, but that was OK. I can’t get it now, so I chop up the olives myself.

It takes a small handful of olives to make a sandwich. It’s kind of a pain in the ahem! to first slice them so they don’t roll, then use a chef’s knife to do a fast and thorough chop. They have to be well chopped to be spreadable. Once again, it’s a white bread with mayo kind of thing. I’ve never tried toast, probably because the prep of the olives is such a pain. This is an exceptionally satisfying sandwich because of the salt and the fat inherent in the ingredients. It’s another bedtime snack sort of thing.

Of all three sandwiches, the tomato is the only one that stands up to daylight. The others are best eaten late at night, in a darkened kitchen, waiting for the dogs to do their late-night duty and come back in for their “cookies:” end-of-the-day tooth-cleaning dog biscuits. It’s a quiet time to contemplate one’s navel and savor a good sandwich.

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North Carolina Barbecue

That’s East North Carolina. When I was a child there was only one barbecue. One didn’t have to specify “North Carolina” because we had never had any of the other versions of barbecue that one finds around the country. I discovered in my adulthood that they put (gasp) ketchup in it in Western North Carolina and I really, really don’t like it. I do like other kinds of barbecue but some of them seem to be more candied meat that barbecued meat.

I hesitated to do this topic because there is a huge group of total fanatics out there. There are web sites and discussion groups on line. One of the best is www.hkentcraig.com/BBQ. Lots of musings, restaurant reviews, critiques, and discussion. It has a tendency to make me homesick, and I haven’t been homesick for North Carolina since I was twelve years old.

This is a dish that can’t be cooked at home unless there’s someone to tend to it for a day. It’s slow cooked pork. Really slow cooked. When the sign says “pit cooked” they mean that it’s probably a whole hog slowly spit roasted over a pit of charcoal for 16 to 24 hours, being basted the whole time with a vinegar and hot pepper sauce.

When my grandmother was running a sandwich business she made everything except the barbecue. I can remember going with her to buy the barbecue and watching it being cooked. An old man sat next to the pig-over-the-pit constantly basting. It takes at least 16 hours to barbecue a whole hog. He sat on a low stool next to the carcass with the skin on. He’d turn the spit a little and pour on a ladle of the – let’s call it a marinade – then repeat. Slowly. I stood outside the shed in the dusty heat, smelling the cooking pork and vinegar with my mouth watering. I don’t know what’s done with the skin but it isn’t served with the meat.

There isn’t really a sauce the way one thinks of a tomato-based barbecue sauce. What happens is that the vinegar and hot peppers (usually in the form of Tabasco) are cooked in slowly so that they virtually pickle the meat. The result is a succulent, tender product that is pulled (shredded) and piled onto hamburger buns. Some folks chop the pork but it should be so well done that it falls apart anyway. The juices soak into the bun and moisten it, then traditionally the meat gets a pile of cole slaw on top.

Barbecue can also be served on a plate, with the cole slaw on the side and hushpuppies to go with. Hush puppies are made by deep-frying balls or elongated nuggets of thicker-than-usual corn bread batter. The legend is that they were named because they were thrown to the dogs to quiet them. That story has never really been substantiated, but hey, it brings up a picture of folks sitting around on the porch trying to eat and throwing goodies to the dogs to keep them out of the plates. Some people eat their hushpuppies plain but I prefer to butter mine. I’m not a huge corn bread fan so butter helps the corn go down.

I’ve seldom eaten barbecue from a plate. It somehow seems wrong to me. My memories are of the warm spicy barbecue and the cool creamy cole slaw combined in a single bite of a sandwich.

After we moved “north” (as far as Washington, DC) we used to go to the beach near Morehead City, North Carolina. I always made sure I got at least one barbecue sandwich. We would go by the drive-in or walk-up-to restaurant on the causeway between Morehead City and Atlantic Beach. I don’t remember the name, and I doubt that it still exists. They made a perfect pulled-pork barbecue sandwich with cole slaw that was just the right texture. It tasted best on one of those days that wasn’t a good beach day: overcast and chilly with a smell of rain on the air. We would take long day trips on those days and explore the area around the beach. A barbecue sandwich was a perfect travel companion.

Sometimes one can find real North Carolina barbecue up “north.” Many years ago there was a place in Kensington, Maryland that had nothing but barbecue and Brunswick stew. It was where Antiques Row is today, right across the street from the railroad tracks. Inside it looked more like a market. The walls were white tiled. There was a long counter where one could, if one wanted to, eat in-house, but mostly one bought the barbecue and Brunswick stew to take home.

There’s now a place in Derwood, Maryland (between Montgomery Village and Gaithersburg) that sells and serves North Carolina and several other regional barbecues. The man is from Indiana so he doesn’t really know about North Carolina barbecue. There isn’t enough vinegar or hot pepper in the preparation so it tastes more like long-cooked plain pork. The idiot seems to shake on the “pig juice” at serving time instead of cooking it in. It doesn’t work too well. He serves the hush puppies and cole slaw, though.

I miss good North Carolina barbecue. I haven’t had it in years and don’t have the facilities to cook it at home. I live way too far away from any barbecue place to get it, so mostly I live without. I have my memories and they’ll have to do: watching the old man baste the pig while my grandmother made her deal for the barbecue for the sandwiches she made and sold; eating the warm barbecue with the cool cole slaw in the back seat of my parents’ car at the beach; and going to what is now Antiques Row in Kensington, across the street from the train tracks, to a place whose only ambience was its food.

(c) 2008 Katherine DeWitt

Shrimp Creole

When I was a young teenager, in the late 1950’s, my family vacationed in Atlantic Beach/Morehead City North Carolina. The bed-and-breakfast where we stayed was in Atlantic Beach. There was a small marina attached and in residence were a creative and playful black standard poodle and a really dumb Dalmatian. One of my favorite dog stories is about the poodle. One afternoon the proprietors decided to try out a trimaran, a very new hull design for that part of the world, and wouldn’t let the poodle go with them. I stayed on the dock with him as he watched the boat go out, make a big loop, and come back in. As the boat approached, he waded out in the water and waited for his people. When they stepped off the boat he carefully shook all over them. It was deliberate because he didn’t shake until they were within range. He also chased butterflies.

The only food available on the island was breakfast at the inn and fast food. If we wanted a real meal we had to go across the bridge and causeway to Morehead City.

After a hard day of shell-hunting, salt and sand there was nothing like getting clean and dressed up and going for a good dinner. I remember walking on the dock where the shrimp boats came in, the salt marsh, salt water, fish and creosote making a not-quite-unpleasant smell on the soft evening breeze. Sometimes a shrimp boat would come in while we were there. The holds were emptied and the fish sorted out from the shrimp and packed in ice. The shrimp were dumped onto long tables, where young boys would snap the “heads” off, leaving just the tails to be packed in ice and shipped north.

At the time, Morehead City was the farthest-north shrimp fishery. Almost all shrimp were sold frozen, but these were sent by truck directly to the New York markets, where they commanded a premium price as fresh. There were cats, of course, one of whom refused to eat anything but fresh shrimp. I know how it felt.

The shrimp dock had a restaurant attached, but they offered only the standard: fish, shrimp, bay scallops, crab cakes, soft shell crabs, cole slaw, hush puppies, and French fries. All fried, all accompanied by tartar sauce. It was all good because it was all fresh, but it got to be too much of a same thing to eat it every night.

Just up the road apiece was a different restaurant. It billed itself as Italian, but that was only part of the story. That’s where the good shrimp were. They bought fresh shrimp from the dock so it hadn’t been frozen. They offered “Cold Boiled Shrimp” which was basically a giant shrimp cocktail with a really good horseradishy cocktail sauce. And then there was shrimp creole. It was wonderful. Lots of shrimp in a chunky sauce of tomatoes, green pepper, onion, and celery served over rice. It was my introduction to shrimp creole and I measure all shrimp creole recipes by that dish.

In the years since, I have duplicated that shrimp creole. I used to use just canned tomatoes and chop them up but the variety on the market has improved and I can get diced canned tomatoes. When I can find it, I stir in some filé powder (AKA gumbo filé): powdered sassafras leaves used for thickening and flavor. If I can’t find the kind that has ground thyme in it I add thyme leaves. One of the saddest things in my life is that my grandchildren don’t like it.

Over the years I’ve been served some disastrous messes that masqueraded as shrimp creole. Most of them use tomato sauce instead of tomatoes and leave out any real flavoring. I’ve now given up eating any shrimp creole but my own. In New Orleans, believe it or not, I was served something that was really shrimp in tomato soup over rice. It was dreadful, but we were in a real tourist trap. We should have known better because there was no line outside. It was the only bad food we had in the Crescent City.

Every time I smell the “holy trinity” of green pepper, onion, and celery sautéing it brings back those vacations at the beach. The bed-and-breakfast with the standard poodle and the Dalmatian in residence; hunting shells, trying to swim in a gentle surf, getting sunburned and trudging through the sea oats on the dunes; dressing for dinner and enjoying shrimp creole and cold boiled shrimp; and dancing at the dance pavilion with Coast Guardsmen from the locally based CGC Chalula and Marines from Camp Lejeune.

(c) 2008 Katherine DeWitt