So as I dug into these two recipes, a roast beef sandwich with a radish slaw and beef-drippings mayo and a fried calamari po’boy with avocado and an ancho-chipotle burnt-chili oil, I kind of remembered why I’ve looked at recipes in the book and thought to myself either “eh, that’s just the obvious thing” or “really don’t feel like going to the trouble”. A lot of the recipes in the book take a classic and they jazz it up via a custom condiment or two, and some of the condiments are a bit of a fussy hassle and not really something you’d make to keep in the fridge for a few weeks and use again.
That said, the results were pretty delicious. Let me walk you all through what I did, including my adaptations.
First off, I made bread for the po’boy. The roast beef I just stuck to a commercial ciabatta roll heated up a bit until it had a crunchy crust.
I didn’t have daikon radish, as it turns out—the intention with the roast beef sandwich is to have a neutral daikon radish being the main component of a slaw and then some spicier radishes on top. So what I did is made the slaw with a bit of napa cabbage as the substitute for daikon—it’s crunchy, pretty neutral, and stands up to vinegar well. And then I put a single French breakfast radish in the slaw and sliced them on top as per the recipe.
The red onion condiment is pretty delicious and not all that complicated. I’d make a bigger load of that to save in the fridge for use on other things.
The thing that needed some thinking was the tongue.
I’m sure Colicchio could get in my face about it being a bad substitution for a conventional piece of roast beef. But I had it, I wanted to use it, and at least one of the people at my table is super-phobic about tongue and this felt like a chance to sneak it through. So what I did is braise the tongue in the Insta-Pot for 35 minutes with some onion, bay leaves, garlic and a sprig of rosemary. Then I roasted it in the oven at high heat in a cast-iron pan, 425 F, about fifteen minutes.
So then what I did is put some of the braising liquid from the pot in the pan and reduced it to get the pan drippings that Colicchio wants for the mayonnaise that goes on the sandwich, basically to recreate the au jus that roast beef sandwiches sometimes have.
I think I did that pretty damn well, but I question the goal. I mean, I was ready to just put the reduced braising liquid straight on the sandwich and not screw around with a mayo. Anyway, the tongue worked out ok. Yes, ok, it might have been even better with a roast beef cut that had a bit more fat on it and a bit more mouthfeel—the tenderness of tongue worked against it here.
The chili oil for the squid po’boy was pretty tasty and simple. I just did what I always do when roasting chilis and did it straight on the burners (which is why there’s disgusting stuff under the burners, I guess).
Po’boy bread came out well, squid fried up nice,
sandwiches assembled pretty well.
Verdict:
The eaters liked everything.
Me? I still have reservations about the condiment ideas, which either strike me as fussy or not all that special, and about whether most of the sandwiches really grab me. But this performed well enough to stay on the shelf. I’ll keep trying to get ideas from it.
Verdict: STAYS ON THE SHELF