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The correct ingredients: 3/4 inch ham, 3/4 inch sliced pork, several slices of swiss cheese, pickle slices sliced the long way, and mustard, all on pressed Cuban bread. (Do you Americans press any of your sandwiches? Do you even know what I'm talking about? It's like a waffle iron, but with smooth flat surfaces, that heat and press the sandwhich.)

If the sandwhich is less than 3 and a quarter inches tall you are getting ripped off.

A medianoche is the same sandwhich but on a sweet roll instead of Cuban bread. While I generally love Cuban bread, I prefer a medianoche because it's not quite so crusty.

The mustard should be between the swiss cheese and the bread. Many places no longer serve Cuban sandwiches with mustard, either because Nicaraguans don't like them that way, or because they don't want to get their sandwhich presses dirty. The sad thing is that now many people don't know the correct recipe for the sandwich at all. This is lamentable, but I can deal with it.

If someone serves you a Cuban sandwich or medianoche with mayonaise in it, you should return after closing and burn the place down.

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A cuban sandwich and a medianoche are essentially the same thing; only the bread differs. A cuban sandwich is on cuban bread, which is similar to french or italian only less crusty, ideally. A medianoche is on a kind of sweet bread. Many Americans get the wrong impression when I say this. It's not sweet to an overpowering degree. Nobody would confuse this bread with a dessert. Either way, within the bread is a minimum of one inch of the following: sliced ham, sliced pork, swiss cheese, pickle (sliced the long way, not the short way) and mustard. The order I gave is pretty much the correct order from bottom to top (though the two meats can go in pretty much either order). The sandwhich should be pressed in a sandwich press.

A lot of sandwich shops cheat by adding the mustard after pressing the sandwich (in the wrong place since the cheese will have attached itself to the bread). They do this to avoid getting the press messy with oozed mustard (a good name for a rock band, by the way). While I don't consider this unforgivable, some purists would disagree.

Any sandwich that comes without mustard is not authentic. Any sandwich that comes with less than a full inch of contents is not authentic. Any shop that includes mayonaise, lettuce, tomato, or ketchup within its sandwich ought to be burned to the ground, and its employees branded.

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-Spreading the Gospel of Cuban Sandwiches everywhere

Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002  |  IP: Logged | 

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1. Cook a package of Jimmy Dean sausage (or other breakfast sausage) in skillet until done. Your choice if you use spicy or mild.
2. Drain fat, and return to skillet.
3. Break a dozen eggs directly into skillet, and scramble along with the sausage. Cook until done.
4. Serve in heated tortilla shells, which cheddar cheese and salsa if desired.

Posts: 1805 | Registered: Jun 1999  |  IP: Logged | 

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There is an art to the business of making sandwiches which it is given to few ever to find the time to explore in depth. It is a simple task, but the opportunities for satisfaction are many and profound: choosing the right bread for instance. The Sandwich Maker had spent many months in daily consultation and experiment with Grarp the baker and eventually they had between them created a loaf of exactly the consistency that was dense enough to slice thinly and neatly, while still being light, moist and having that fine nutty flavour which best enhanced the savour of roast Perfectly Normal Beast flesh.

There was also the geometry of the slice to be refined: the precise relationships between the width and height of the slice and also its thickness which would give the proper sense of bulk and weight to the finished sandwich: here again, lightness was a virtue, but so too were firmness, generosity and that promise of succulence and savour that is the hallmark of a truly intense sandwich experience.

The proper tools, of course, were crucial, and many were the days that the Sandwich Maker, when not engaged with the Baker at his oven. would spend with Strinder the Tool Maker, weighing and balancing knives, taking them to the forge and back again. Suppleness, strength, keenness of edge, length and balance were all enthusiastically debated, theories put forward, tested, refined, and many was the evening when the Sandwich Maker and the Tool Maker could be seen silhouetted against the light of the setting sun and the Tool Maker's forge making slow sweeping movements through the air trying one knife after another, comparing the weight of this one with the balance of another, the suppleness of a third and the handle binding of a fourth.

Three knives altogether were required. First there was the knife for the slicing of the bread: a firm, authoritative blade which imposed a clear and defining will on a loaf. Then there was the butter-spreading knife, which was a whippy little number but still with a firm backbone to it. Early versions had been a little too whippy, but now the combination of flexibility with a core of strength was exactly right to achieve the maximum smoothness and grace of spread.

The chief amongst the knives, of course, was the carving knife. This was the knife that would not merely impose its will on the medium through which it moved, as did the bread knife; it must work with it, be guided by the grain of the meat, to achieve slices of the most exquisite consistency and translucency, that would slide away in filmy folds from the main hunk of meat.

The Sandwich Maker would then flip each sheet with a smooth flick of the wrist on to the beautifully proportioned lower bread slice, trim it with four deft strokes and then at last perform the magic that the children of the village so longed to gather round and watch with rapt attention and wonder. With just four more dexterous flips of the knife he would assemble the trimmings into a perfectly fitting jigsaw of pieces on top of the primary slice. For every sandwich the size and shape of the trimmings were different, but the Sandwich Maker would always effortlessly and without hesitation assemble them into a pattern which fitted perfectly. A second layer of meat and a second layer of trimmings, and the main act of creation would be accomplished.

The Sandwich Maker would pass what he had made to his assistant who would then add a few slices of newcumber and fladish and a touch of splagberry sauce, and then apply the topmost layer of bread and cut the sandwich with a fourth and altogether plainer knife. It was not that these were not also skilful operations, but they were lesser skills to be performed by a dedicated apprentice who would one day, when the Sandwich Maker finally laid down his tools, take over from him. It was an exalted position and that apprentice, Drimple, was the envy of his fellows. There were those in the village who were happy chopping wood, those who were content carrying water, but to be the Sandwich Maker was very heaven.

And so the Sandwich Maker sang as he worked.

He was using the last of the year's salted meat. It was a little past its best now, but still the rich savour of Perfectly Normal Beast meat was something unsurpassed in any of the Sandwich Maker's previous experience. Next week it was anticipated that the Perfectly Normal Beasts would appear again for their regular migration, whereupon the whole village would once again be plunged into frenetic action: hunting the Beasts, killing perhaps six, maybe even seven dozen of the thousands that thundered past. Then the Beasts must be rapidly butchered and cleaned, with most of the meat salted to keep it through the winter months until the return migration in the spring, which would replenish their supplies.

The very best of the meat would be roasted straight away for the feast that marked the Autumn Passage. The celebrations would last for three days of sheer exuberance, dancing and stories that Old Thrashbarg would tell of how the hunt had gone, stories that he would have been busy sitting making up in his hut while the rest of the village was out doing the actual hunting.

And then the very, very best of the meat would be saved from the feast and delivered cold to the Sandwich Maker. And the Sandwich Maker would exercise on it the skills that he had brought to them from the gods, and make the exquisite Sandwiches of the Third Season, of which the whole village would partake before beginning, the next day, to prepare themselves for the rigours of the coming winter.

Today he was just making ordinary sandwiches, if such delicacies, so lovingly crafted, could ever be called ordinary. Today his assistant was away so the Sandwich Maker was applying his own garnish, which he was happy to do. He was happy with just about everything in fact.

He sliced, he sang. He flipped each slice of meat neatly on to a slice of bread, trimmed it and assembled all the trimmings into their jigsaw. A little salad, a little sauce, another slice of bread, another sandwich, another verse of Yellow Submarine.

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Posts: 1368 | Registered: Sep 2002  |  IP: Logged |