Hot Beef Baguette

Sunday 31/10/2004 - Halloween

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Diary and Notes

Before dinner today I went to Cron & Lanz for a tasty piece of cake. This has become somewhat of a tradition here with me and my chums. Every Sunday afternoon, off we trot to Gottingen's most famous cake shop for something uber-delicious and a cup of fine coffee or hot chocolate. I had an excellent piece of poppy seed and quark cake. I will be doing a full cake review of Göttingen at a later date and no doubt will recieve vast bribes from the tourist board here and Cron & Lanz in particular (and P-Cafe where the marzipan cake is exceptional).

On the subject of today's sandwich: You just know I'm going to go on and on about how to make a sandwich don't you. "Here he goes again, giving us his food snob views on what bread to choose, whether we should use real hand pitted Kalamata olives or can we make do with just some scabby old green ones we have left from our trip to Spain. He's worse than that bloody Jill Duplex in The Times." And your right - of course I am.

Due to a bit of a mix up, I thought I was getting a nice Sunday dinner cooked for me today. I thought I was promised a spicy Mexican pork dish, which unfortunately never transpired. Instead I was faced with the horrifying problem of Germany on a Sunday when you need to buy food - you can't. Germany shuts on a Sunday. It's a lovely old tradition and if you take the effort to get something in on the Saturday, you have no problem at all. I, unfortunately, did not and was caught short. So what did I have available with which to make something at least interesting that could fill a page in my blog? Canned sardines (no), salami (maybe), bacon (useful), cheese (ok getting there)... I could make a nice pasta dish - oh, but I had pasta yesterday. Then ahah says I, with a smile beaming from ear to ear, I still have some cold roast beef. Bakers are open on a Sunday, I could buy some bread and make a super-dooper-scooby-doo sandwich (my hair is a little long at the moment so I look like Shaggy - it's all in keeping with the general feel of things). Yep, a giant hot roast beef baguette with chips and pickle. But sadly I can't make chips as I've no pan to cook them in (I've tried making chips in a stainless steel pan without a tray before and they just stick and make a mess and you don't get no chips in the end either). So I improvised and cooked home made oven chips instead. They were tasty good. So I made a fine sandwich for my dinner, baked in the oven until the beef was hot and the cheese melted.

Now, making a great sandwich, is like making love to a beautiful woman..."Cut!"

Menu

Poppy seed & quark cake,

Roast beef baguette,

Oven chips,

Pickle Stick.

Sauces: Tomato, mustard, mayonnaise, cock sauce (see below).

Franken troken white wine.

Ingredients

Beef baguette: Roast beef, peperoncini (pickled red and green peppers), black olives, spicy Mexican style chilli cheese, fresh tomato, mustard, mayonnaise, black pepper.

Chips: Potatoes, vegetable oil, salt.

Preparation

Baguette: Slice the beef very thinly. Cut your baguette down the length and lay on some tin foil. Spread mustard on one half and mayonnaise on the other. Layer beef on one side, then tomato, the peperoncini , sliced olives and the cheese, give the sandwich another layer of beef and a good grind of black pepper. Place the top on the baguette, roll tightly in the foil and bake in the oven for 1/2 an hour.

Chips: As I said, I don't have the normal equipment for cooking chips. Instead I peeled and chopped them quite thin. Boiled them in water for about three minutes and then baked them on a tray in 1/2 cm of oil, in the oven, for about 3/4 an hour.

A note on 'cock sauce'. This is actually Sriracha chilli sauce and is excellent with chips (not too hot, not too sweet). It is known in California where it's made, as cock sauce as it has a picture of a cock on the bottle.

JCBorresen@gmail.com