Thomas Head, well-respected Washington, DC foodwriter, is at the Lunch Encounter, over there in booth three, eating a sandwich and reading Nigel Slater, one of his favorite food writers. Mr. Slater’s latest book is called The Kitchen Diaries, the record of a year in the kitchen and he often talks about sandwiches. For a taste, read on. Marbled coppa. Mmmm.
A deli sandwich
If the bread is perfect, by which I mean it has a crust that crackles and shatters when you split, if the ham is thinly sliced from the bone and the mustard is fresh and hot, then I am not sure you can improve on a baguette au jambon. But sometimes you need just that little bit more. It is then that the bottled artichokes come out. If you slice them and toss them in olive oil and chopped parsley, they work superbly with the ham. Or, of course, you can add some thinly sliced cheese, a mild nutty Gruyere perhaps. Whatever, it must have mustard too. The really hot stuff that packs a punch.
Too often, all my corner shop has left is soft, open-textured ciabatta. At one time it was the small brown loaves and pita bread that were left hanging around at the end of the day. Now it’s ciabatta. The soft, flour-topped bread makes a good enough ham sandwiches if the ham is paper-thin and Italian, otherwise it just doesn’t feel right. Adding mustard becomes precarious here, the large holes in the bread holding enough to make your eyes water.
What I end up with today more than makes up for the lack of a baguette. I slice the short, slipper-sized ciabatta in half lengthways, then drizzle it with my best olive oil. I cover one half with thinnish slices of fat-marbled coppa, some leaves of arugula, eight pitted black olives and a shower of neat little curls of Parmesan taken off the block with a vegetable peeler. For once I throw in some oil-bottled sun-dried tomatoes. Another drizzle of oil, then I press down the top and squeeze. You have to squeeze hard so that the oil soaks into the bread a bit. A bottle of cold San Pellegrino and an exceptionally sparkling Nasturo beer, and that is supper.
Excerpted from The Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater
The Lunch Encounter 