Sāndevich-e Kālbās

Kālbās is the word used in Farsi to describe a group of bologna-like sausages, coarser maybe, generally–but not always–made using halal meats instead of pork, garlicky, sometimes spicy, sometimes containing pistachios or peppercorns or chunks of fat. Mortadella, basically. The word comes to Farsi from the Russian kolbasa, meaning cold-cut style sausages like bologna and salami, and is distinct from the thinner hot dog-like sausages called sosis in Farsi, a Turkish loanword deriving from the French saucisse. Sāndevich means… well, you’ll figure it out.

Sāndevich-e Kālbās is a Persian mortadella sandwich, served cold or room-temperature in a baguette-like roll, with pickled cucumber, tomato, lettuce, and perhaps some herbs. The descriptions vary. The Pomegranate Diaries recipe calls for Kalbas with tomato, pickle, lettuce, and mayonnaise on soft French bread. The Persian Mama on Facebook describes the sandwich as mortadella, herbs, and spicy pickles on crusty baguette. The “Fusion Food Blog” specifies a soft baguette or fresh sub roll with kalbas, tomatoes, Persian pickles, and lots of mayonnaise. Others have made it with flatbreads or with a type of rustic ciabatta roll called bulki in Iran.

I think perhaps my favorite description of the sandwich, and the most evocative I’ve read, is by Houchang Chehabi, an Iranian professor teaching at Boston University, who wrote about Sāndevich-e Kālbās in a piece published on Claude Chahine Shehadi’s blog Claude Cooks. My friend (and avid food historian) Cathy Lambrecht sent me a link to this piece a few years ago and I’ve been holding on to it in preparation for this sandwich ever since.

The bread was nān sefid, “white bread,” a sourdough wheat loaf about ten inches long and 2.5 inches in diameter, with a thin crust that was much less crunchy than that of a French baguette. Cut lengthwise, one half was buttered, upon which the sandwich was filled with kālbās and an assortment of other ingredients, collectively known as mokhallafāt, a word that in Persian means something like “miscellaneous secondary accompanying ingredients.” These included tomato slices, pickled cucumbers, some raw onion rings, and a few sprigs of parsley. The better the deli store, the more varied the mokhallafāt.

In fact fresh herbs are a universal presence in Persian cuisine. Sabzi is the word for fresh herbs in Farsi, and the national dish of Iran is an herb stew called Ghormeh Sabzi. A common accompaniment for nearly any meal is a fresh herb and vegetable plate called Sabzi Khordan, consisting of herbs like cilantro, dill, basil, parsley, fenugreek, mint, scallions, and others, along with vegetables like radish and cucumber, along with cheese, bread, and walnuts. With some slight alterations, this herb plate would become my mokhallafāt and I would make the best deli version of a Sāndevich-e Kālbās I could.

I bought 2 different kinds of mortadella from a shop called Sahar International Market in the Albany Park neighborhood of Chicago, the nearest thing to a Persian market we have in the area, I believe. But I’ve seen similar, if not the same, packages of halal mortadella at middle eastern markets I frequent in Bridgview, such as Al Amal on 87th Street and Harlem Foods near the 95th / Harlem interchange and I imagine you could find them in many other places. I bought the best tomatoes I could find in May, and a jar of “Tabrizi-style” Persian pickled cucumbers, and as many of the necessary herbs as I could find at my local grocery store–scallions, dill, flat leaf parsley, mint, basil, and cilantro–and made them available for my family’s sandwiches, along with thin-sliced red onion.

As for the bread, I went with a soft French bread from a grocery store bakery, which seemed to fit the spirit of what Chehabi was describing, if not the exact letter.

One of the two mortadellas was a mildly spicy beef mortadella, and had a darker brick-red color, while the other contained pistachios and was light-pink like a traditional pork mortadella, though it also specified that it was made with beef. The pistachio mortadella had a texture and taste comparable to the Italian mortadella I’ve had in the past, though I did not try them head-to-head.

To this, I added seasoned slices of tomato, strips of pickled cucumber, slices of red onion, sections of scallion green, handsful of dill, parsley, mint, basil, and cilantro with the thicker, woodier stems removed (mostly from the mint), and some red leaf lettuce as a garnish.

The sandwich was stunning to look at with all that greenery.

But more than that–it was terrific. The idea of replacing, or at least supplementing, a more boring green like lettuce in a sandwich with a collection of herbs instead is exciting, it’s amazing, it’s brilliant! Spike the bitter watery crunch of lettuce with sour, grassy dill or with cool, sweet mint. Give it the freshly citrusy snap of cilantro or the pungent, peppery punch of parsley. Or all of the above, and more, sweet basil, pungent scallion. I’m excited to try it with the burnt sugar flavor of fenugreek or the licorice taste of tarragon.

In such a lineup of big flavors, the nominal star of the show–the Kalbas or Mortadella, the sandwich’s sole named ingredient–is almost an afterthought. I could taste it in there, and it was very nice, it did not clash but sat alongside the rest of the flavors and waited its turn on the tongue. It was well-suited for this sandwich. But I almost think you could put anything into a sandwich like this and have a good outcome. Sliced chicken or turkey; roast beef; ham; any of the typical American deli meats.

But the thing about this sandwich is that the herbs, vegetables, and their prominence mark it as distinctly not an American sandwich. I’m excited by the possibilities and I hope to come across more sandwiches that use copious fresh herbs in the future. At the very least, I may start using them in my own sandwiches more often, especially during the summer months when I have an herb garden to choose from.