Wednesday, 02 June 2010

• Condiment Sandwiches: A Defense

  
  
  I know, I know.  The idea of a “condiment sandwich” is, to the average person (I have learned from experience), rather repulsive.  But I’d like to defend the idea.  

  I remember the first time I heard about sushi.  It was on an episode of “Doug” on Nickelodeon, and the description mostly focused on the rawness of the fish.  I still remember watching Doug’s cartoon hand shake violently as he attempted to fight his own disgust and shove the (crudely drawn) sushi roll into his mouth, failing in the end to manage to do so.

  “Ew, raw fish!” I remember exclaiming to my sister and fellow-Dougfan, Sarah. “Ew!” she exclaimed back.  We vowed never to try such a gross dish as long as we lived.  This vow has been broken by us numerous times since then, as we have become such avid sushi consumers that I would argue it is both of our single most favorite food.

  Similarly, I remember the first time I came into contact with a cheese sandwich.  My mom had, for as long as I could remember, been packing me either peanut butter and jelly or ham and Swiss sandwiches in my school lunchbox. 

  One day, in 1st grade, I opened up the well-known plastic baggie and lifted up the top slice of bread only to come face –to-face with a slice of cheddar cheese.  I was shocked and horrified.  I showed my friends, and they were just as stricken.  Where were the other ingredients, we all asked each other amidst fits of giggles?

   My mom was so silly, I remember thinking, she must have forgotten the rest of the sandwich!  I even called her from the school cafeteria phone to get her reaction, but she responded simply, “No, Fiona, it’s a cheese sandwich!  People eat them all the time.”

  I went back to my lunch table and ate the sandwich – and I loved it!  I asked my mom if she could only pack me cheese sandwiches from then on.

  Now let’s look at what happened with the sushi and the cheese sandwich – both of them sounded unfathomably disgusting to me, because both of them were so completely unfamiliar.  The ideas were too much for young me to wrap my head around, and so I dismissed the initial dish ideas entirely.  In both cases, when I found out that the ideas were accepted and consumed on a regular basis (i.e. that the meals were not actually strange in the slightest), I gave them a chance and loved them.

  Let’s not get picky – condiments are just sauces we add as extra flavor to our food.  I’m not going to separate out which sauces are condiments and which ones are “not” for the purpose of this article.  All sauce sandwiches are, by my definition, “condiment sandwiches.”

  So let me make condiment sandwiches sound a little bit less strange:  we like sandwiches with peanut butter and/or jelly (both are condiments), as well as cream cheese and jelly (also condiments).  We like bagels (which are bread) with cream cheese (a condiment).  We like toast with butter (a butter sandwich separated out), and we like to dip our bread in pasta sauces (pretty much condiments).  We like Nutella sandwiches (a condiment) and we also like our bread soaked in balsamic vinegar and/or olive oil with salt (essentially, condiments).  I can only begin to list the number of people who have admitted enjoyment of and indulgence in hummus sandwiches (yes – a condiment).

  Think about it:  what’s so gross about sauce on bread?  In certain sandwiches, the sauce is all you taste, anyway.  Sauce and bread are two very complimentary items, and some cultures largely rely on this relationship for their national platters (Ethiopia and many South American countries, as well as India in times past). 

  Go ahead and try a condiment sandwich – just grab a slice of bread, squirt a little sauce down the middle, and fold the bread together over the squirted line.  No, it isn’t substantial – but it’s a great-tasting little snack.  The top five best condiment sandwiches, to me anyway, are the following:

  1. Vodka Sauce sandwich (really good with a little sprinkling of parmesan cheese.)

  2. Ranch sandwich.

  3.  Thousand Island dressing sandwich.

  4.  Honey mustard & teriyaki sandwich.

  5. Ketchup sandwich (reserved only for ketchup-obsessives such as myself).

   

  What about anyone else?  Like or hate condiment sandwiches?  Any other good-tasting condiment sandwich ideas?

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