Obložené chlebíčky

Don’t ask me how to pronounce the name of this sandwich.

I have asked my linguist son Damian multiple times to say it for me, and he (not a fluent Czech speaker but with a basic understanding of Slavic languages) has obliged, but each time the pronunciation has slipped through my brain without leaving an imprint.

However it’s pronounced, Obložené chlebíčky is a Czech-style open faced sandwich that can feature a number of ingredients. While I’ve spent the past couple of weeks–at least, while I wasn’t obsessing over the naan sandwich–poring through Czech cookbooks for the footprints of this strange beast, my two primary sources have both been websites. First and foremost is a very thorough page on the sandwich, hosted on a relatively bare family website kolarsky.com, that describes the sandwich’s history and many variants. Second is the delightful czechcookbook.com, whose host Kristyna has many a droll story about minor misunderstandings and a wealth of knowledge regarding Czech recipes.

While the Wikipedia article states that the base of this open-faced sandwich is a simple spread of butter, both Kolarsky.com and czechcookbook.com make copious use of Vlašský salát instead, a Czech-style potato salad used as a spread or dip. Kolarsky also mentions other base spreads–lobster mayonnaise, anchovy spread, shrimp salad, even plain old butter (so Wikipedia wasn’t too far off). I’m going to be hewing fairly closely to these renditions, as I’ve painted myself into a corner this month. Between the holiday, work situations, school breaks, and multiple automobile breakdowns, I’ve put off writing this article until the very last moment. So I’ve made my own renditions of three of these spreads–Vlašský salát, based on Kristyna’s recipe, Lobster mayonnaise (though I couldn’t find tinned lobster so it’s really crab mayonnaise), and Anchovy spread.

The Vlašský salát is a mild but pickle-flavored potato salad minced into very small pieces. The “lobster” salad… well, I don’t care for it, and I understand fully that it’s my own fault for using an unsanctioned substitute ingredient but you’re not the boss of me. Finally, the anchovy spread is great, just softened cream cheese, enriched with some butter and whipped heavy cream, and intensified with a small amount of anchovy paste. This could easily become a staple.

Kolarsky’s page notes that the original Obložené chlebíčky consisted of

Prague Ham, eighth of a hard-boiled egg, a slice of good Emmental cheese, Hungarian salami, slice of tomato on a bed of piquant potato salad made with home-made mayonnaise, the recipe for which went with Jan Paukert into his grave.

Well I don’t know what makes Prague ham so special but I think Polish ham will probably do in a pinch. Hungarian salami is a paprika-heavy smoked sausage, Emmental is a pretty strong-flavored type of Swiss cheese, and while we don’t have Jan Paukert’s recipe for potato salad, we do have Kristyna’s, and that’s good enough for me.

From watching Kristyna’s video I could see that the strategy for putting together Obložené chlebíčky is not to try to stack the ingredients flatly with equal coverage across the bread, but rather to stack them vertically, putting different items on different parts of the sandwich, making each bite a different experience. There’s something to be said for that way of doing things, especially for visual aesthetics.

The Kolarsky page mentioned a “Russian Egg” type of Obložené chlebíčky that uses a mayonnaise sauce made with crushed egg shells. While I love my readers dearly, I have elected not to make that particular variant at this time, instead focusing on things that I might conceivably enjoy putting in my mouth (apart from my fake lobster mayonnaise).

Edam cheese, it turns out, while much cheaper than Emmental, is overall a more pleasant cheese for eating. While the Emmental I bought had a hard rind, it was slimy on its exposed surfaces with some bacterial remnants. The Edam came in a nice red wax shell and was otherwise 100% edible.

By the time I got around to making sandwiches with something other than the potato salad, I was shocked to find that I missed it. However, the Anchovy spread did turn out to be a more than reasonable replacement, far more flavorful though lacking in texture. If I were a fancy lad, I’d have piped it onto the bread in attractive patterns. Unfortunately, my presentation skills are lacking.

The less said about the crab–I mean “lobster”–mayonnaise though, the better.

Caviar is very salty. I’m not sure dill pickles are the best accompaniment, but other lands, other customs.

My favorite of them all, though, was the combination of anchovy spread with smoked salmon. Of course, since the anchovy spread was basically a slightly richer, saltier cream cheese, that makes a lot of sense.

Naturally, the idea of these sandwiches is not so much to eat individual pieces but rather to present a tray full of them to a gathering of friends or family. In that sense, it is more of an hors d’ouevre or canape than an actual sandwich. Still, I’ve made enough of them here, I can oblige.

I’d love to break it down sandwich-by-sandwich and present you a detailed analysis of the flavors, but who has time? November is almost over, December is coming, and soon I’ll be chasing after three new sandwiches. In any case, these little Czech bites are beautiful and vary wildly on the deliciousness scale between yes-please and no-thank-you-I-couldn’t-possibly. If I were to make them again, I’d stick to one kind and work them up assembly-line style. But I’ll be keeping that anchovy spread recipe in my back pocket, just in case. Thanks for reading!