There are some ideas so inspired that they deserve a place in the history books. The shooter's sandwich is one such idea.
The long evolution of the sandwich has been a recurring topic throughout the ESL textbooks from which we teach. The students are tickled by the tale of a fat British man who couldn't be bothered to stop gambling long enough to use a fork and knife on his steak. John Montagu, the famed fourth Earl of Sandwich, chose simply to sit his meats and cheeses between two slabs of bread so that he could eat with one hand and gamble with the other. This improvisation has allowed humanity to eat and multitask for centuries, and we owe a great deal of delicious variations to the inspired Earl. Today's sandwich is a marked departure from what Montagu originally held at the card table, but then a friend of a friend discovered a recipe being touted on The Guardian's website as "head and shoulders above the rest"
The Edwardians in the early 1900's designed this sandwich for the hungry hunter who didn't want to skip his beef Wellington, thereby branding it for "the shooters." It is a manly enough plan for the title: hollow out a loaf of bread, fill it with steak, mushrooms, shallots, another steak, horseradish, and mustard, all of which is compressed down to avoid a sloppy mess. There weren't but a few moments in between my seeing this recipe and my decision to follow in the Edwardians' historic footsteps on a journey to make something closer to what Montagu himself might have eaten 300 years ago. The added twists, as usual, were the physical restrictions of a microscopic kitchen and the geographic restrictions of food availability on Asia's peninsulas.
For ingredient shopping, my partner E and I pulled out all the stops. Where could we get fresh yet abnormal produce like shallots, loaves of bread both expertly prepared and sans cream filling, and quality cuts of beef? Only one place seemed viable: Itaewon. The very same location as the authentic Thai and Arab cuisine from mere weeks ago, Itaewon is the best hope for not only foreign restaurants but also foreign ingredients. Though they were scattered around the district, we managed to gather all the necessary materials to make the sandwich.
Don't be alarmed if these images follow The Guardian with an accuracy akin to plagiarism. The recipe flowed so smoothly that it turned out to be a perfect replica of the website. One notable difference is the quantity of steak: whereas the source material called for 2 steaks, the loaf of bread we procured was from a limited selection and a great deal larger than the one from the recipe, so we doubled. That's right, you heard it. Our sandwich, once completed, was four steaks in a loaf of bread.
The last unmentioned challenge this sandwich posed was one of compression. There came a point when it was on my countertop under a 3 foot stack of books and I was pressed (no pun intended) to stabilize the tower. I asked myself the eloquent question: "What else weighs things?" The final solution was the bookshelf, and it ended up providing a two-fold benefit. The shelf itself added a significant amount of even weight on the sandwich while simultaneously allowing for the safe addition of almost twice as many books without balance becoming an issue. To keep the shelf itself from toppling, we tried securing it with the remaining twine, but it was shredding everywhere that we pulled it taut. A questionable link of belts made for a comical yet functional finish.
Would I make this sandwich again? For sure. In hindsight it definitely needed some garlic in the mushroom-shallot mixture, as well as about twice as much Dijon. Additionally, we probably could have benefited from a little steak trimming, as the gristle proved difficult to gnaw off without compromising the integrity of the structure. The sandwich may have been on the expensive end (about $11 per wedge), but it was so dense that three people enjoyed as many meals off of it. I tip my hat gratefully to E for a fruitful kitchen partnership, Itaewon for having my back when it comes to food, The Guardian for the superb recipe, and of course none other than John Montagu himself for creating a vein of culinary history that I am proud to reenact.
The long evolution of the sandwich has been a recurring topic throughout the ESL textbooks from which we teach. The students are tickled by the tale of a fat British man who couldn't be bothered to stop gambling long enough to use a fork and knife on his steak. John Montagu, the famed fourth Earl of Sandwich, chose simply to sit his meats and cheeses between two slabs of bread so that he could eat with one hand and gamble with the other. This improvisation has allowed humanity to eat and multitask for centuries, and we owe a great deal of delicious variations to the inspired Earl. Today's sandwich is a marked departure from what Montagu originally held at the card table, but then a friend of a friend discovered a recipe being touted on The Guardian's website as "head and shoulders above the rest"
The Edwardians in the early 1900's designed this sandwich for the hungry hunter who didn't want to skip his beef Wellington, thereby branding it for "the shooters." It is a manly enough plan for the title: hollow out a loaf of bread, fill it with steak, mushrooms, shallots, another steak, horseradish, and mustard, all of which is compressed down to avoid a sloppy mess. There weren't but a few moments in between my seeing this recipe and my decision to follow in the Edwardians' historic footsteps on a journey to make something closer to what Montagu himself might have eaten 300 years ago. The added twists, as usual, were the physical restrictions of a microscopic kitchen and the geographic restrictions of food availability on Asia's peninsulas.
For ingredient shopping, my partner E and I pulled out all the stops. Where could we get fresh yet abnormal produce like shallots, loaves of bread both expertly prepared and sans cream filling, and quality cuts of beef? Only one place seemed viable: Itaewon. The very same location as the authentic Thai and Arab cuisine from mere weeks ago, Itaewon is the best hope for not only foreign restaurants but also foreign ingredients. Though they were scattered around the district, we managed to gather all the necessary materials to make the sandwich.
Don't be alarmed if these images follow The Guardian with an accuracy akin to plagiarism. The recipe flowed so smoothly that it turned out to be a perfect replica of the website. One notable difference is the quantity of steak: whereas the source material called for 2 steaks, the loaf of bread we procured was from a limited selection and a great deal larger than the one from the recipe, so we doubled. That's right, you heard it. Our sandwich, once completed, was four steaks in a loaf of bread.
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Would I make this sandwich again? For sure. In hindsight it definitely needed some garlic in the mushroom-shallot mixture, as well as about twice as much Dijon. Additionally, we probably could have benefited from a little steak trimming, as the gristle proved difficult to gnaw off without compromising the integrity of the structure. The sandwich may have been on the expensive end (about $11 per wedge), but it was so dense that three people enjoyed as many meals off of it. I tip my hat gratefully to E for a fruitful kitchen partnership, Itaewon for having my back when it comes to food, The Guardian for the superb recipe, and of course none other than John Montagu himself for creating a vein of culinary history that I am proud to reenact.
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