An Aussie Salad Sanga

Australians… well there’s no other way to put it, they like beets. A lot.

Consider the Australian hamburger. An Aussie burger with everything–a burger with the lot, as they call it–will consist of a minced beef patty on a bun, much like an American burger (though like much of the Commonwealth Australians mainly call anything in a round bun a “burger” whether it’s made from ground beef or not), and may or may not add cheese. So far, seems pretty familiar. From there, though, things diverge. An American burger “with everything” will have some combination of (recited in the order I still remember 30 years later from my time working at a Wendy’s) mayo, ketchup, pickle, onion, tomato, lettuce, and mustard. An Australian burger “with the lot” will almost certainly have bacon, a fried egg, onion, tomato sauce (which is very similar to ketchup but different in a mysterious way that my Australian friends have yet to sufficiently articulate to me) or possibly Barbecue sauce instead, pineapple, tomato, lettuce, and slices of roasted, pickled beets straight out of a can.

Similarly: the Salad Sandwich. Or “Salad Sanga,” as some Aussies might put it. This vegetarian sandwich was the staple of many an Australian Gen-Xer’s childhood, but is less ubiquitous in recent years according to some reports. The Tribunal’s Australian correspondent Crit said as much to me recently when I asked her about these sandwiches, calling them a “vanishing breed.” At one point, you could buy a salad sanger at bakeries, tuck shops, takeaways, canteens, and snack bars around the country, but they are apparently considered old-fashioned nowadays and are more difficult to find. Though they may just be undergoing a bit of generational gentrification.

It’s not a sandwich I’d have pegged as particularly Australian. Not knowing the culture intimately, I have something of an ill-informed outsider’s… well let’s say an American view of Australia. A Crocodile Dundee, shrimp (yes, I know, they’d say “prawns”) on the barbie, Vegemite sandwich, Steve Irwin vision of cheerful men in leather hats drinking beers, wrestling crocodiles, and dodging deadly spiders. A silly stereotype that seemed to lend itself to a more carnivorous vision of the typical Aussie.

The former ubiquity of the salad sandwich belies that impression. Served on buttered slices of good bread–sourdough or multi-grain or bakery bread, the type doesn’t matter as much as the quality and sturdiness–a salad sandwich consists of, well, salad. At a minimum, it’s likely to have carrots, tomato, lettuce, and roasted pickled beetroot. Cucumber and alfalfa sprouts are also typical additions, and some may include other vegetables like onions. Cheese is a popular addition, though Crit points out that technically that would make it a cheese and salad sandwich. Mayonnaise is a nearly universal sandwich condiment in Australia, in addition to the requisite butter.

Newer takes on the sandwich have added ingredients like avocado, hugely popular in Australia. Alternate sauces like Ranch dressing or honey mustard may be offered. Hummus or chickpea salads sometimes anchor the new breed of salad sandwiches. Critically, they are frequently served in ciabatta or demibaguettes rather than on sliced bread, which would make them salad rolls, not salad sandwiches, at least as I understand how the terms work in Commonwealth cultures. I’ll have to check with Crit on that.

I kept mine simple. Classic even, or so I thought. Buttered multigrain bread–I used Pepperidge Farm’s 15 grain bread, which is sturdy and seeded and tastier than 90% of the breads you’ll find on the shelves of the bread aisle in an American market–julienned carrots, beets, and cucumber; a thick slice of tomato that was better than I expected it to be in this Midwestern Mid-winter; several leaves of butter lettuce; and a good handful of alfalfa sprouts. After slicing or julienning each vegetable I placed it on a layer of paper towels to wick away excess moisture–a sandwich with this many vegetables can easily overwhelm any bread, no matter how much butter you protect it with.

And here’s what it looked like cut open

I thought this sandwich was spectacular, well balanced, fresh, with a variety of flavors and textures making each bite unique–the sweet earthy flavor of beets and carrots, the watery crunch of the carrots and cucumber, the bitter and fibrous combination of lettuce and sprouts dressed with rich and vinegary mayonnaise and anchored by the sweet, tart, and savory tomato. All of it was well contained by the nutty and dense bread, which survived being wrapped in butcher paper with all these vegetables for a good hour or so–letting those flavors mingle–without becoming terribly soggy.

Did the bread stay perfectly dry? No. But it was still able to function as a sandwich.

Proud, I asked Crit what she thought of it, and she gave me her honest opinion. “Technically the lettuce should be shredded iceberg, and the cucumber should be sliced.”

Now I’d read in some of the many many salad sandwich recipes I’ve looked at in the past couple of weeks, no two of which were alike–one person even left out the beets, which I thought would be sacrilege!–that iceberg lettuce was the norm, but that the sandwich was not fussy, and that using whatever you had on hand–up to and including a green like spinach instead of lettuce–would be fine. And Crit didn’t disagree. But, as she pointed out, this sandwich had its heyday in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and Australians as a whole just didn’t do lettuce other than iceberg until more recently.

She knows I’m a sucker for doing things old school.

Same sandwich, different lettuce–shredded iceberg instead of the leafy butter lettuce, and with the cucumbers sliced instead of julienned. And it was a very similar sandwich to be honest–a bit less of the bitter lettuce flavor, a bit more of the watery iceberg crunch.

And frankly, I’d eat either one of them again, and a few more times after that. This is an absolutely enormous sandwich, filling without feeling heavy, crisp and balanced, nutty and sweet, savory and salty, with a bit of bitter flavor from the lettuce and sprouts, and just a hint of vinegary bite from the mayonnaise. I wouldn’t mind putting something pickled in there to give it some more acidity, maybe even a spicy pickle like jalapenos or giardiniera or even just some pepperoncinis. But even as is, this is a complete sandwich, hitting all the flavor notes it needs to.

I see more of them in my future–my near future, even. With cheese, with hummus, with chickpea salad, with hot peppers, or even just like this, a beetroot salad on buttered bread. There’s nothing wrong with that.