Sāndevich-e Kālbās
The idea of replacing a more boring green like lettuce in a sandwich with a collection of herbs is exciting! In such a lineup of big flavors, the nominal star of the show, the Kalbas, is almost an afterthought, but it works.
The idea of replacing a more boring green like lettuce in a sandwich with a collection of herbs is exciting! In such a lineup of big flavors, the nominal star of the show, the Kalbas, is almost an afterthought, but it works.
The rye crust was too thick, brittle when it should be strong enough to hold together yet hard and impenetrable when I wanted to bite through it, unleavened and dense, with the molasses flavor of dark rye.
It’s colorful and has an interesting variety of textures, the soft and moist outer layer of egg and crepe studded with toasty sesame seeds and little pungent bursts of scallion barely holding the crisp fried crackers and cabbage inside
Toasting does a really nice job of bringing the sandwich together, the cheese melting into the garlicky porkfat of the salami, mingling the brine of the pepperoncinis and the pungent mustard into the crumb of the bread.
The spice mix hit my sweet spot, hot enough that I felt it, that pain-high of a dish that’s good and hot, the clarity of thought that arises even as your nose runs and your eyes water up.
I will be taking my cue from Tarantino and talking thematically rather than chronologically. To paraphrase the wisdom of Grease, some of these items just go together, like shoo-bop sha wadda wadda yippity boom de boom.
It was soft, it tasted like cheese, the mouthfeel was cheeselike, it had the sharpness of cheddar punctuated by the savory Coney sauce and the pungent bites of pickle, onion, and mustard. It shouldn’t have worked but it did.
The pita bread was slit open and filled with a thin layer of a meat mixture that stayed pleasingly moist after baking, mildly flavored with onion and garlic, with pickles on the side to act as palate cleansers between bites.
Combining the sausage and the tomato sauce deadened the unique but subtle flavors of each a bit, but the combined flavor was good, and the butter kept the sandwich from being too dry. A solid combination, but nothing I’d rush to repeat.
The sharp mustard has a bit more bite than a typical yellow American mustard but between it and the sliced onion there’s enough of a pungent, acidic punch to cut through the richness of butter and a thick slice of cheese.
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