Sandwich

Just down Smallman Street from our Lidia’s restaurant, I have serious sandwich competition in Primanti’s, a Pittsburgh institution. I am charmed by their incredibly oversized warm capicola sandwich stuffed with French fries and coleslaw. I am not sure where in the U.S.A. this tradition of stuffing a sandwich with French fries became Italian, but the sandwich was so tall that I could not open my mouth wide enough to get my first bite. Primanti’s started as a sandwich pushcart, manned by Joe Primanti, in the Strip in the 1930s, selling sandwiches to truck drivers. One night, a trucker wanted to check if his load of frozen potatoes were good, so Joe Primanti cooked them up. Customers began asking for them, and to expedite the service they were added to the sandwich.

The gizmo, a glorified sloppy joe or Italian grinder, is Italian America on a sub roll. This is a great sandwich to make for a picnic or a party. Just make a big pot of the filling and keep piling it on the grilled bread. The filling can be reheated and even frozen—just be sure that it is wrapped tightly, so it won’t get freezer flavor. The one I tasted was made with sausage and beef, but just crumpled sausages would be fine; even chopped turkey fits the bill.

Chicago is the birthplace of this sandwich, and Al’s “#1 Italian Beef Sandwich” claims to be the best. The last time I was there, there was a line, and the outside tables were full of people munching on the beef sandwich. However, I think the recipe below will give you a sandwich much closer to what the Italian American immigrants were and still are making for their families. The Italian beef sandwich seems to have its roots in Italian weddings and celebrations as a frugal way to offer meat. The boneless beef rump, an otherwise tough piece of beef, when marinated, roasted, and cut into thin slices, and then topped with lots of Italian-style vegetables, went a long way served as a sandwich. This recipe makes enough for a crowd, or you could halve the recipe and feed a smaller group. That will be a problem if you just want a sandwich for yourself, but I think the only true way to get this sandwich to be as good as it can be is to make it from a whole rump roast. You can always enjoy the leftovers later.

It seems that the muffuletta sandwich originated in Sicily, set on what most likely was flatbread sprinkled with sesame seeds. And since the Sicilians were the first mass wave of immigration to the port of New Orleans, it would seem that the soft sesame-seed bread of the muffuletta is an American cousin of the bread of the pane ca’ meusa (spleen sandwich) still sold in Palermo markets today. This meatless rendition of the muffuletta was made on All Souls Day; the one with the cold cuts and salad is served on more festive days.

There are many versions of the muffuletta sandwich around New Orleans, but it seems that Central Grocery in the French Quarter is the place to go. The store is charming enough, but at the back counter, seated on a stool with a muffuletta sandwich in front of you, is where you want to be. We sat down across from a man who told us he’d had his first muffuletta sandwich here fifty years ago and came back regularly for more. Next to him were a couple who have been coming to Central Grocery to enjoy the muffuletta sandwich for more than forty years. We ordered one without any hesitation. The large hamburger bun–like bread was soaked significantly with the olive-oil dressing of the olive salad; then layers and layers of the salad and the cold cuts were added. The sandwich was cut in four and wrapped in parchment paper. It was ten in the morning, one would say time for breakfast, but the two of us savored the muffuletta sandwich as did all the other customers.

Salumeria Italiana is the place to go in the North End of Boston to buy Italian specialty foods. The store is small but meticulously furnished with some of the best of Italian imported and domestic products. For nearly five decades, the Martignetti family has upheld the time-honored tradition. It was early on a rainy morning when Tanya and I, camera and notepad in hand, paid a visit to the Salumeria. The workers were beginning to set up the products and sandwich of the day, getting ready for lunch. The resident salumiere, a timid elderly gentleman, repeatedly skirted the lens of our camera, but we did get some really good close-ups of the Salumeria panino of the day. No one was willing to share the recipe, either, so here is my rendition of what we saw and tasted; it is simple and simply delicious. Don’t miss out on visiting Paul Revere’s house, almost around the corner!

I had this sandwich in Baltimore, in a small, quaint mom-and-pop shop in Little Italy. Turkey is not too popular in Italy. After all, it was brought back to Europe after the discovery of America, and in Italy chicken and rabbits ruled the roost, along with other courtyard animals. In America, though, the turkey is the celebrated and celebratory animal, the one that fed famished early explorers coming to America. Well, this is a great sandwich to make on the days following Thanksgiving—or anytime, for that matter. The condiment and the greens are the Italian part, and the turkey is the American part—the perfect Italian American civic club sandwich.

When in season, soft-shell crabs are a big seller in all of our restaurants. People just love them. We make a light batter, fry them nice and crisp, and set them over a salad for our guests. During one of my trips to Baltimore, I wanted to go visit Crisfield Seafood in Silver Spring, Maryland, known for its soft-shell crab sandwich. The experience was good: the soft-shell crab, nice and crispy, was the best part; the sesame bun and the coleslaw were the usual suspects. In this recipe I’ve added my own twist to the bread and ingredients. Get a good semolina roll, and top the crabs with an arugula-and-egg salad, an Italian American solution. If you want to serve this as a salad, double the salad and dressing and omit the rolls. Serve crabs on top of the greens, with dressing dolloped on the side.

With me being a Southern girl, there was no way I was going to get married without some fried chicken in the house! But how was I going to pull that off and still keep things elegant? In the kitchen at The Lady & Sons, we’re constantly on the go and very rarely have time to stop and fix a plate, so we satisfy ourselves quickly and deliciously with what we call a handle sandwich. This is simply a piece of white bread wrapped around a chicken drumette, doused in Texas Pete Hot Sauce. The only thing left when you’re done eating is the handle—get it? Well ,we feel like we came up with a new look for an old favorite. I hope y’all will try these and love ’em like we do.

What’s wrong with zucchini in a sandwich? Since my mother made these all the time for my brother and me, I’ve always considered it a perfectly normal idea. So, when Joe and Tanya were little, I’d make them each a lovely sandwich of a crusty roll filled with egg-battered zucchini strips for lunch at school. Years later, they confessed to me that they were ashamed to take such a peculiar sandwich out of their lunchboxes—so they threw out the zucchini before other kids could see it! Now, of course, they love the combination of crisp bread and moist, flavorful zucchini, and regret all the empty rolls they had to swallow. I tell Olivia, Lorenzo, and Miles to eat whatever they like, and forget about what other kids think.

SHELBI One of my fondest memories is of Mom cooking collard greens on Saturday afternoon in preparation for dinner after church on Sunday. It was like a mini–Thanksgiving feast! GINA It’s true, Shelbi grew up on collards, and she got that love from me. Nana’s garden had rows and rows of those big leafy plants. Sautéing these Southern favorites in a buttery onion-and-garlic sauce is the best, and putting them on toast is just another twist to stay creative with collards.

PAT I can eat grilled sausage all by itself: there is something about the mix of pork and spices that just makes my belly happy. Now, I can also eat grilled peppers and onions all by themselves—or as a veggie side dish. Combine the two, however, and it’s “Look out!” (I like to add spicy Creole mustard for a little extra kick.)

PAT Gina introduced me to drunken goat cheese, and if you haven’t had it, you haven’t had cheese. (You can find it at Whole Foods and other fine food stores.) Drunken goat is semifirm and cured in red wine, so it has a maroon-colored skin. Flavorful and smooth, it goes great on a ripe-tomato sandwich. If you don’t have softened butter at the ready, a good shortcut is to spread plain mayonnaise on the outsides of the sandwiches instead. They’ll fry up just as crisp and golden as they will with butter.

Spenser loves those little fried-chicken sandwiches from fast-food places, so we thought we just had to take a stab at our own down-home remix. You would not believe how many of these bad boys folks can put away! The sweet-pickle mayo gives just the right tang to the crunchy and tender fried chicken. We like these sandwiches on soft dinner rolls, but you can also make mini-biscuits if you’re really feeling buttery bad.

Make this with homemade ricotta and you will be rewarded with a starter that is rich, pretty, and piquant. It is perfect for entertaining, because you can prepare the crostini, ricotta mixture, and salsa verde ahead of time and put the bruschetta together when your guests arrive.

Not an authentic bruschetta (you’d never eat this dish in Italy), this appetizer is damn good all the same, with the garlicky aioli making a rich bed for the crispy grilled crabs. Look for soft-shell crabs in May through July, when blue crabs begin to molt and shed their hard shells. Once they do, it takes about four days for their new shells to solidify, and it’s during this window that they are perfect for eating whole. It’s best to buy soft-shell crabs live and kill and clean them yourself, but you may have them cleaned at the fishmonger and cook them as soon as possible once you get home.

Tongues have an awesome richness that goes completely underappreciated because people don’t serve them, fearing a food that can taste them. That’s silly. Tongues are cheap and delicious, and enjoyment of this unique cut is all in the preparation. Once I found a reliable tongue source, I was elated, and I started putting them on the restaurant menus in an attempt to win more converts. For this dish, the meat does need a while to cook, but you can poach them up to a day in advance.

My dad was the unusual male who didn’t like to grill—he was a cast-iron fryer—so I became the family griller as soon as I was old enough; except for the three or four times a year when Peter makes burgers, I still am. This buttery, tangy, grilled steak sandwich—a favorite of my mother’s—is supereasy, and it was one of my first specialties.