Two Salad-Adjacent Sandwiches
Eggplant! Roasted Peppers! Pesto! Mozzarella! Herbs! Cottage Cheese! Toast!
WHEN I MOVED BACK DOWN south about a decade ago, I lived for a while in an industrial building beneath an adorable couple whom I’d assumed were artists but who turned about to be drug dealers. I didn’t notice the signs of their trade because I liked their dog so much.
But another neighbor tipped me off. He’d figured it out, he said, because they had a bumper sticker on their car that said NOT ALL WHO WANDER ARE LOST.
“All who wander are drug dealers,” he said. I disagreed with him. But a few months later they moved away, leaving customers knocking on the door of their empty apartment—and on mine once or twice.
I still disagree with him on the wandering part, though, especially when it comes to creating recipes. Often when I feel like I’ve really lost the thread—that I am simply flitting around like a bee in a meadow full of flowers or floating away from the planet in a spacesuit—I’ll switch directions and land in a better place.
This happened to me recently. I got so far away from my original intention that I took a break and went for a “veggie” sandwich and a coffee, at a nearby fancy food market/bakery, Alon’s. It turned out to be the best veggie sandwich I’ve ever had in my life—or, at least, recently (as you may know, we are big proponents of the salad sandwich—scroll down if you click the link). I went back and got it again the next day, even though my fridge was full of vegetables.
So I have a Department of Salad Official Imitation ™️ edition of that sandwich for you today, continuing our tradition of offering you salads that have been turned into sandwiches and vice versa. And I have a second salad sandwich, an absolutely delicious and very snackable open-facer sent to me by my agent, Nicole Tourtelot, that immediately brought to mind the March Hare, one of my favorite salads of all time, from Mollie Katzen, who was our very first guest in the very first edition of the DOS.