From scratch means: You grow your tomato, you grow your lettuce, you cure your own bacon or pancetta, you bake your own bread (wild yeast preferred and gets higher marks but is not required), you make your own mayo. All other embellishments, creative interpretations of the BLT welcome.

He judged the sandwiches based on best photo, best reinterpretation and best overall preparation. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to submit a recipe. Fortunately I have plenty of time to drool over the photos of mouth-watering BLTs.

In his commentary, Ruhlman hits the nail on the head. Most BLTs are too wimpy, the bacon is so slight that it feels more like a veggie sandwich topped with a little sprinkling of tasty pork. Instead he slightly refines the BLT as “[...] a pork belly sandwich, garnished with L, T and mayo.” Yes! It’s a bacon steak sandwich with some incidental accessories. I can’t wait for this bit of wisdom to percolate through the food industry and BLT’s arrive on plates heavy with pork-belly.

Did anyone here enter the contest? Have any other insights on the BLT?

marinated white anchovies, with soft-cooked egg, roasted onions, salsa verde and frisee
The recipe is straightforward: soft-cook an egg, toss lettuce with oil and vinegar, toast bread, roast onions and make some salsa verde. Assemble and eat! This ‘wich was easy took cook, easy to eat and if you like salty anchovies, delicious to eat (of course if you don’t like salty anchovies, what in the world are you doing making this sandwich?). This is the kind of sandwich I’d never order out but is perfect for a lazy Sunday or if you want to impress a date on a weekday. The egg gives it nice richness, while the frisee and (of course) anchovies give it salt and vinegar. Yum.

We quickly realized that we cut our bread way too thick and after toasting it became a bit challenging to eat without shredding the insides of our mouths (a la captain crunch). The bread should be about a quarter to half an inch thick. The picture quality on these isn’t very good, but don’t let that keep you from closing your eyes, visualizing the sandwich sitting there on the plate, no one’s around, go right ahead, take a little bite, one little bite won’t be noticed, you walk up and can already smell the vinegar and oil, a look over your shoulder, no one’s around, you raise it to your mouth and …

Open:

Constructed:

Constructed, again:

We made a handful of delicious meatball sandwiches and along the way we discovered a few things.

• Meatball Mystery 1: Meatballs are not very hard to make. These took about an hour, which is well worth it for this level of delicious (a lot).
• Meatball Mystery 2: Homemade meatballs taste much better than the deli variety. They are more tender inside, they are a little smaller (in this case) and most importantly, they haven’t been sitting around feeling lonely all day. When your meatballs feel good, you feel good. You can heat them up with the sauce and avoid the wild temperature fluctuation that sometimes happen at delis.
• Meatball Mystery 3: They are much easier to eat when you don’t have excess sauce. By serving just the right amount of sauce, you can avoid soaking the bread all the way through and worrying that it’ll fall apart in your hands. I know I’m not the only meatball sub eater who has day-nightmares about stuffing meatballs into my mouth with my hands becuase the bread has disintegrated under too much hot tomato sauce. It’s horrible! Serve some sauce in the sandwich and in a little bowl on the side in case you want more half-wich through.

Meatball Sandwich Recipe (adapted from Cooks Illustrated “Classic Spaghetti and Meatballs “, published Jan 1 1998):

Meatballs
2 slices white sandwich bread (crusts discarded), torn into small cubes
1/2 cup buttermilk or 6 tablespoons plain yogurt thinned with 2 tablespoons sweet milk
3/4 pound ground beef chuck ( or 1 pound if omitting ground pork below)
1/4 pound ground pork (to be mixed with ground chuck)
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons minced fresh parsley leaves
1 large egg yolk
1 small clove garlic , minced (1 teaspoon)
3/4 teaspoon table salt
Ground black pepper
vegetable oil for pan-frying (about 1 1/4 cups)
Instructions:
1) Mix bread parts and buttermilk in a bowl and mix with a fork until pasty.
2) Mix all ingredients in another bowl (including the result of step 1). Mix lightly with your hands. Use a spoon to grab the mixture and roll 1.5″ diameter balls in your hands.
3) In a large saucepan, add vegetable oil until it’s about 1/4″ deep. Heat until it sizzles when meatballs are added. Brown meatballs on all sides. When finished, set them aside on paper towels. Don’t let the oil smoke or it’s too hot.

Simple Tomato Sauce
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 can (28 ounces) crushed tomatoes
1 tablespoon minced fresh basil leaves
Table salt and ground black pepper
Instructions:
1) Throw out the oil in the meatball pan, saving the bits on the bottom.
2) Brown the garlic in new olive oil, in the same pan.
3) Add all other ingredients. Simmer until sauce thickens, about 12 minutes.

Sandwiches:
1 loaf soft italian bread
Parmesan cheese, sliced and grated
basil, chopped

1) Add the cold meatballs back to the sauce to warm up.
2) Cut the bread into 8-9″ sections and add small slices of Parmesan cheese.
3) Toast the bread to melt the cheese.
4) Add 3-4 meatballs per sandwich and spoon a light portion of sauce ontop. Sprinkle on top with basil and grated Parmesan cheese.
5) Enjoy!

Raw, delicious meatballs:

Sizzle:

Heating with sauce:

The completed sub:

Laid open:

It looks bigger from this angle:

A lot of the article is basic information, but he makes two good assertions. First, his definition of sandwiches, (which I disagree with):

“My definition is somewhat broader [than two slices of bread enclosing a filling]: A sandwich is a filling enclosed in bread or pastry that can be eaten by hand.”

Secondly, his respect for bread. Everyone describes what’s IN the sandwich while forgetting the bread. Thanks for the reminder on the importance of bread, Kevin!

“Wherever a sandwich is from, though, its foundation, its most important single element, is the bread. Great bread can elevate great ingredients to new heights. Bad bread can make even the finest fillings ho-hum.”

He also includes recipes for some under-the-radar sandwiches: Muffaletta, Cubano, Bahn Mi and Shwarma (in a pita).

More importantly, they published the recipe! Now you don’t have to pay $17/wich to discover greatness. Naturally, there are no magic ingredients, they use the same ‘ol ham, cheese and bechemel sauce recipe as everyone else (though they use all home-made ingredients, other than milk).

Other Croque Monsieur sites:
- Wikipedia’s Entry: did you know it first appeared in 1910?
- The Paupered Chef: what would you do with 10 lbs of ham?
- MidtownLunch: Tuesday is Croque Monsieur Day!

Now repeat the words “crispy outside and gooey center” 10 times!