About sandwiches

(number 73. september.)   

Before Lucas and I both graduated college and moved to Portland, then figured out how much we liked to cook and started Secret Restaurant, there were three events I think helped Secret Restaurant come into being. Their stories have not yet been told, so now that we are 9 years into the project, it might as well be time. 

The chronology is unknown. 

1. Getting completely shitfaced (for the first time ever) watching the Korean horror film Old Boy while eating pastures of Eden fresh sheep’s feta and frozen blueberries. Does this sound like the most delicious thing in the world? Probably not. Was it only this delicious because we were shitfaced? Maybe, but I make the following arguments. 

a. Sheep’s feta is the most delicious feta on the planet, and this was my first time eating it. Pastures of Eden is an exceptional producer in Isreal.   

b. Lucas’s father worked for the nursery responsible for a vast amount of the blueberry plants in the United States. He knows his blueberry varieties (they produce hundreds there, maybe even thousands), and always picked a ton for freezing. Lucas was born in Hawaii, and I’m pretty sure they always had an active fresh juice/smoothy practice, requiring the best blueberries. So we are talking highest form of feta and highest form of blueberry here.

What I remember most is after we’d been eating the cheese plain or with forgettable crackers or something, and the salt was starting to be the only thing we could taste, Lucas got up suddenly and came back with a giant bowl of the frozen blueberries. The coolness and the sweetness influenced us to keep eating the entire block of cheese and the entire bowl of blueberries. 

2. Making wine in Lucas’s garage from a kit. But we did it– we were 19, we made wine. I remember it was a sangiovese, but absolutely nothing else. I drank mine 9 months later in the copy machine room at my dad’s office after breaking in to illegally photocopy my zine. Yep. 

3. This time we ran into each other at the East 13th street stalwart coffee house Espresso Roma in Eugene. We were both there all the time, but on this particularly day we hadn’t made any plans to see each other, but there we were. I think this was one summer when I was home from college. Somehow we got to talking about sandwiches. The conversation last for easily an hour and a half. We just kept going. Talking about favorite sandwiches we’d ever eaten out, favorite sandwiches we’d made for ourselves, even some fantasy shit where we made up sandwiches that we wished existed. 

THE SALADS AND SNACKS

harissa potato salad

A classic giant potato salad made by me. Seasoned with harissa I had painstakingly made with hours of pounding in the mortar and pestle for another food event and saved a jar for the freezer, pickled Whiskey Farm red onion, diced little red/yellow/orange sweet peppers. 

three bean salad of the future

The entirety of the 2019 Borlotti Bean harvest from the Whiskey Farm, very good Oregon grown garbanzo beans and Oregon grown farrow. Green and purple beans from the Whiskey Farm. Nettle and parsley salsa verde. Whiskey Farm sun gold tomatoes. 

tomato salad with lovage and capers

The biggest, ripest, most ridiculously beautiful slicer tomatoes from the Whiskey Farm. The ridiculously good salt packed capers from Real Good Food. Lovage from the herb patch. The combination of tomato and lovage is one inspired by a salad I had at St. John Bread & Wine in London once. A little bit of Katz vinegar. Maldon and black pepper. 

green salad– frisée, lettuces, dill, parsley, basil, fennel, celeriac, kohlrabi

A simple vinaigrette of very good grassy olive oil, Whiskey Farm garlic, and Katz sauvignon blanc vinegar. All of the pieces listed above washed and dried lovingly and then tossed with the vinaigrette right before serving. 

paprika potato chips

We bought some funny jumbo bags of Tim’s Cascade Style potato chips and seasoned them with the paprika I brought back from Hungary which I have continued to hoard. 

THE SANDWICHES

Cinque e cinque 

This sandwich is the speciality of Livorno, a coastal city in Tuscany. I had it once when Burrasca, a wonderful Tuscan restaurant in Portland, was just a small food cart where Paolo, the chef, cooked for you one at at a time. One day this was the special and I ordered after he explained it was a sandwich with chickpeas and eggplant– but I had no idea what to expect. I will never forget this sandwich– I can remember the sun and the sounds of the birds chirping nearby while I ate it, Paolo’s smile when I told him how good I thought it was. 

Because of this memorable experience, I knew I had to find it there when I went to Italy this summer. I’ve written about it a bit for my next book, and may as well share that here now:

I drive to the sea, to find the sandwich Paolo made me once. 5x5 “cinq et cinq’ – an olive oil rich chickpea patty, with mysterious spices and delicately grilled slices of eggplant, on a roll kind of like if an english muffin was made of ciabatta. 

I have heard this is the special street food of Livorno, a coastal town. My half Italian cousin Cheryl has a friend, a former student of her mother’s, who lives there. I ask her where the best one is and she sends me there. It has no sign, just a bead curtain and a line.

The smell of the olive oil and the chickpeas hits me as I move the beads aside. I hand over my 3 euros and 30 cents (?!) and watch my sandwich being made. The bread is sliced in half. Put near the oven to toast. A section of the chickpea patty, which has been cooked in one flat mass, is cut off and picked up with a spatula. One half is put on the bread, then layered with eggplant and seasoned from two cans of secret seasoning, then the other half, then the other piece of bread. Wrapped in paper and handed over. 

I can’t wait so it’s barely out of the beads before biting down. It’s so hot the roof my mouth catches a little. When I wait it is only 1 minute, while I walk by a tiny restaurant serving seafood in a similar manner a few doors down. I eat the whole sandwich while contemplating if I want anything else (of course I do). They have octopus and potato salad, a favorite, so I get some for take away. 

I walk down to the docks, past the touristy food stalls (though pause to pick up a stubby bottle of Sardinian beer) and sit down across a piazza from a super tan man who is sunbathing. The octopus tastes of the sea, and is perfectly tender. The potatoes balance the strong spice from the sandwich and the cool succulence of the tentacles. The beer is malty and ice cold. The breeze blows gently.

For the Secret Restaurant version, I made the chickpea patties by pouring olive oil rich chickpea pancake batter into hot baking trays and cooking in the convection oven. We used the flawless focaccia recipe from the flawless Saltie cookbook. Though it’s not the same as the authentic roll, this was the closest and most consistent way to make breads like for a crowd. It was a good move. 

I grilled lots of eggplant. Gently massage calvolo Nero from the garden. All-savory tomato jam from the garden. They were made curiously spicy– the kind that is just on the wind– with a bit of cayenne and piment d’espelette. 

Chicken salad of Lucas’s dreams

An old school style terrine, seasoned to be like “Mediterranean chicken salad.” Served with super garlicky tome sauce and greens on milk and butter enriched large loaf pan white bread, which I made using a recipe from James Beard’s Beard On Bread. 

Steelhead en sauer on fennel seed kamut 

Fresh Columbia River steelhead grilled, then layered with loads of slowly reduced Whiskey Farm sweet onions, topped with good white wine vinegar and left overnight to lightly pickle. Ample pieces of the fish and a scattering of onions on each sandwich. Slaw made from fennel, kohlrabi, and celeriac, little gem lettuces, and fresh made mayonnaise using Whiskey Farm eggs. 

Served on a classic Tartine loaf using Kamut flour and Whiskey Farm fennel seeds. 

THE DESSERT

fig crumble tart

A classic Nigel Slater recipe. You basically just cook very ripe figs (which we get this time every year from Kate and Peter’s big old fig tree) with butter and other delicious things, then press pastry over the top and bake it in a pan. We put it out self-service style with full fat yogurt in little coffee cups.

After several dinners taking break, Peter and Kate Schweitzer were back with us helping! Peter took these photos, Kate worked the bar and set the scene pleasingly as always. My roommates at The Whiskey Farm– Sofie, Bryan, and Viv also did quite a bit of hosting and are responsible for how nice the garden and house were. A special shout out to Holly Meyers, who has taken photos for the last several dinners. Will had to take this one off, so Holly got deep in the kitchen-prep-and-serve zone with us! I love that this project is a perpetually rotating family of friends chipping in.