SANDWICHES
Catch the recipe for Marks & Spencer’s famed Prawn and Egg Open Sandwich after this introductory story.
No, sometime in the 1700s, John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich, England, did not invent the sandwich.
He may have popularized it—that is the lore and hence the name—but foods slapped between two slices of bread (or atop a single slice) have been favorite finger food for millennia.
By now, sandwiches, especially if you count in hamburgers and hot dogs, have become America’s number one go-to meal. The USDA estimates that, each day, half of Americans eat one or more sandwiches.
Rankings vary, but among the top five sandwiches eaten in the U.S. are those filled with turkey, ham or chicken meat; the grilled cheese, makeovers of which are very posh nowadays; and peanut butter and jelly, about 1,500 of which an everyday American will have consumed by his or her high school graduation day. (3,000 by burial day.)
We eat close to 200 sandwiches a year per person; the Brits, for whom sandwiches are huge commerce, 150.
Before we get to the recipe from Marks & Spencer, here are some more sandwich twists, turns, variations and vagaries, to slap on something different between your two slices of bread:
After making a slow cooker pot of pulled pork, pile some on sliced brioche buns. Key (not to omit) add-on would be marinated or pickled onions.
Take a classic lettuce wedge, but slice it into a thin wedge, and place it between two pieces of toasted seedless rye. Then schmear on the blue cheese and slap on 2-3 slices of bacon.
My mother was European and always buttered her sandwich bread before adding anything (even the PB&J for our school day sammies). Try doing that on a baguette, sliced long ways, and layered with Polish ham, chunks of Brie or Camembert cheese, and Dijon mustard.
A sweet-and-savory sandwich could be a combo of poached apples or pears with some strongly flavored, well-aged cheese such as Gouda or Comté. Bread? Try toasted raisin bread.
Wait for end of summer for this one: Lightly toasted Pepperidge Farm “sandwich white,” with 1/2-inch thick slices of skinned heirloom tomato, freshly ground black pepper, and Hellman’s/Best Foods mayonnaise. That’s all. Gate to Heaven.
There are as many possible sandwich combos as there are foods that you can stick between two pieces of bread.
I suppose we each are partial to our favorite sandwich. I always choose to make or buy a tuna salad. On a recent trip to be with family in England, however, I tasted the UK’s most popular over-the-counter sandwich, Marks & Spencer’s “prawn mayonnaise,” which would totally eclipse tuna salad as my number one if I could get it over here.
M&S, as it’s known there, keeps its prawn mayonnaise recipe close to the vest—no surprise—but it has published directions for something like it on its cooking website.
If you wish to get closer to M&S’s “prawn mayonnaise,” using the following recipe, pick what they in the UK call a “malted brown bread,” what for us would be a slightly sweet whole wheat or multi-grain bread, and spike the mayonnaise with some freshly cracked black pepper and a sprinkling of a few black mustard seeds.
Do not leave out the lemon juice from the recipe; it’s key. And, given the quantity of the ingredients, this could stand to be either one very large open-faced sandwich to eat with knife and fork, or two smaller two-slice sandwiches held in hand.
In sequence, I guess. Or, maybe, if you're at it and really famished for sandwiches, one in each paw.
RECIPE: Prawn and Egg Open Sandwich
Makes 1, cookwithmands.com
Ingredients (converted from metric)
Juice of half a lemon
1/2 cup loosely packed baby-leaf lettuce
1/3 cup small cooked prawns (shrimp)
1 thick slice bread
1 rounded tablespoon reduced-fat mayonnaise
1 egg
4 cherry tomatoes
Directions
Hard boil the egg and leave it to cool in water. Move on to the next step while you wait for the egg to cook. Spread a little of the mayonnaise on the bread. Mix the remaining mayonnaise with the lemon juice and stir in the prawns. Slice the egg and arrange on the bread with the prawns, tomatoes and salad leaves.