This is a post for fun to join in onSandwich Memories Blog Of The Month.
This is not an entry.
The topic of sandwich memories brought me to a few places, that I had recently been thinking about. One of course is the Sandwich contest where amazing creations were submitted and @lizelle was, as you could all expect, one of the masters.
I now eat only a plant based diet but the sandwiches I have fond memories of were not plant based at all. For this post I have plant based stand-ins to recreate the original sandwiches.
In 1993 I took my daughter, then six years old, to Cuba where I had been a few times before. It was not a fancy resort which was fine. We wanted to get away for a bit more for adventure.
We were given meal tickets for the bland food in the restaurant at the resort. There was also a little sandwich shop by the beach which I have no recollection of what it looked like.
One thing I will never forget, is the magic of a Cuban ham sandwich on Cuban bread.
One day we grabbed a couple of these sandwiches, a cold lemonade and took them to the beach. They were put in a paper bag and wrapped in white sandwich paper. The bread was something I had never had before. It was different then any bread we had in Canada. It was kind of dense and grilled. In between was the ham with mayo and mustard, lettuce and tomato. Sounds like an ordinary ham sandwich but if you've never had a Cuban sandwich you wouldn't know how good it could be.
To this day my daughter and I still talk about that sandwich. She was only six and still remembers it well.
This is vegan ham playing the part of real Cuban ham. Playing the part of the Cuban bread is Ciabatta bread.
Another sandwich etched in my memory was called "burger". That's a sandwich right? It's two pieces of bread with something inside?
When I was around 8 or 9 my father would go to Toronto once every so often, and take me with him. He would go to a special newspaper shop to get an Australian paper. He lived in Australia for a few years before I was born and left his heart there.
He had to make it interesting for me, since the trek to the paper store was extremely boring. He distracted me by taking me to a place called the Papaya Hut. It was a little place on Younge street. This little diner, shop, had booths on one side and bar stools on the other typical of a 60's diner.
Before we entered I spent quite a long time staring at the display in the front window. It was a little train set that moved through orange groves.
My memory of the Papaya Hut can be summed up in this childish collage.
The inside of the diner was decorated in a tropics theme. I remember coconuts with monkey faces or something like that. Every time we went inside we ordered the same thing. A burger and a papaya shake.
I remember the burger to be a grilled patty with a soft sesame seed bun with lettuce tomato, ketchup, relish and mustard.
Playing the part of a beef patty is a bean/beet patty. Playing the role of a white hamburger bun is a kamut flour bun.
Sounds like an ordinary burger but this one was beyond just taste, It was an experience that I'll remember until I die.
Another wonderful sandwich experience also took place in Toronto. I was with my band after the gig was over. These guys stopped on the way back home in a shop that they went to all the time. It was a Portuguese sandwich shop. It was always bumping late at night, crowded with people waiting for their sandwiches. It was the first time I had a sandwich like this.
This sandwich was like a pork cutlet and it was inside of a Portuguese bun. The sauce was mind blowing and delicious. It was kind of tangy and peppery and slightly spicy. This sloppy sandwich experience will be etched in my mind forever.
Playing the role of pork cutlet is vegan salmon steaks (difficult to find the right actor for this on short notice but they all did a good job). Playing the role of Portuguese sauce is leftover spaghetti sauce with added Franks red hot pepper sauce. Playing the role of Portuguese bun was baguette.
Photo Sources for collage:1,2and 3
design by: @KidSisters