The Shooter – An ode to the sandwich

Well, I am a foodie. Wikipedia describes a foodie as “a term for a particular class of aficionado of food and drink. (…) an amateur who simply loves food for consumption, study, preparation, and news. (…) a foodie wants to learn everything about food, both the best and the ordinary, and about the science, industry, and personalities surrounding food.” Well, that’s true, that is me. And I am in love with a certain kind of food: sandwiches.

If you follow me on twitter or on instagram, you would recognize that I eat a lot of sandwiches. Mostly I prepare them myself, but I also love to get good sandwiches in restaurants, bakeries, or coffee shops. In fact I just collected a lot of sandwiches I had within the last year. The flickr album is called An ode to the sandwich.

The definition of Wikipedia is quite easy: “A sandwich is a food item, typically consisting of two or more slices of bread with one or more fillings between them”. And the king of the sandwich is the burger. And it’s so special it should not be categorized as a sandwich when you talk about “The best sandwich in the world”. Tim Hayward, a food writer and photographer from London, wrote an article for the guardian last year: The best sandwich ever? And his start into the article is so damn good, I have to quote it, because it simply says what I have on my mind:

“Like most men I love a sandwich. I like the immediacy and functionality of food shaped to post into the mouth. I love the convenience – I’m happy knocking one up out of the ingredients to hand while I’m working – and I don’t care if it is a complete myth that the Earl of Sandwich invented it while gambling. The sandwich could only ever have been dreamed up by a bloke who was insanely hungry and totally preoccupied so the story’s so perfect it should be true.
But for me the sandwich is also something altogether more serious. Beyond the convenience the mere scratching together of random ingredients between assorted breads, there has evolved a canon of great sandwiches; mighty works as fully formed and set in stone as anything Escoffier ever laid down.” (via guardian.co.uk)

And then Tim Hayward defines the best sandwich. It is interesting what he has to say. He ends the article with his personal best sandwich ever: The shooter’s sandwich, “a beef Wellington portable so a gentleman needn’t get peckish while hunting”. It sounded very good. The ingredients were more than down-to-earth: a loaf of bread, some steaks, mushrooms, seasoning and mustard. So, me and my neighbor Brian (also a foodie) decided to give it a try. The perfect occasion was last week, when we went to Norrköping, to play our playoff-finale in Rugby. We won, on the pitch and culinary.

So here is my visual documentation of the preparation of the shooter’s sandwich:

The sandwich was really really good. Especially for a long bus ride. But it was kind of difficult to eat. And for me it goes more into the category of a burger. I would prefer a nice sandwich of prosciutto, mozzarella, tomatos, and some basil on a roasted ciabatta. The next time I will give a grilled chicken chipotle sandwich a try.