The Prince of Sandwiches

Our family tradition is that on birthdays the celebrant may choose to have anything for dinner he wishes. Today my son turned 15 and his wish was a sandwich. Of course, there's more to it than peanut butter and jelly.

A few weeks ago he opted for a sandwich dinner. This is unheard of in our family. When a person can have anything (and I do mean we are only limited by what is available at the grocery store), why would he have a sandwich? After all, isn't that something you carry in a paper bag and snarf down in two minutes while you're working through lunch? Not for him. He loves sandwiches of all shapes, sizes, and colors.

In some ways, this dinner idea is harder than it appears at first glance. When I logged on to FoodNetwork.com to look at sandwich recipes, I was overwhelmed with the sheer volume of them (thousands). I had the same problem at AllRecipes.com. To compound this, many of them sounded pretty hum-drum, paper-sack, eating for the sake of nourishment. I had hoped to find something interesting for this birthday challenge. Ultimately I approached it from a regular meal point of view, meaning we needed a vegetable, a main course, and a dessert. This helped with sifting out many of the recipes, but it still took a good deal of time to decide what to make. The final menu included creamy vegetable sandwiches; grilled apple, bacon and cheddar sandwiches; Stromboli, and fruit pate (all of which came from FoodNetwork.com). (Of course, we had cake for dessert. Carrot cake smothered in cream cheese icing was the flavor of choice this year.)

The creamy vegetable sandwiches were a hit with everyone except the hubby. They had diced cucumbers (along with bell pepper, carrots, garlic, and green onions), which he dislikes. However, the teenager, the grandparents, and I all enjoyed this one. I especially liked the small crunch of the finely diced veggies with the smooth cream cheese base. The garlic might have been better than the chopped ginger I used by mistake (same size jar, same part of the fridge - go figure). But they seemed none the worse for the wear. The recipe said to serve this on rye, but I had cheese bread from the bakery.

The dried fruit pate squares were the boy's least favorite, but Jeff really liked these. The basic idea was to put dried figs (I used dates instead), apricots, and cranberries into the food processor with some toasted almonds, smoked turkey, and green onions. A little bit of cream cheese and sour cream held the mixture together. The recipe called for pumpernickel or a combination of wheat and rye bread, but I served the mixture on small croissants. The sandwiches had a sweet nuttiness that was offset by the onion flavors which made for an interesting combination. It was unusual and good.

The grilled apple, bacon, and cheddar sandwiches were also good, but would have been better without the red onion mayonnaise that Paula Deen calls for. The mayo overpowered the rest of the flavors, which were already yummy together. Use good sliced cheddar for this and a tart granny smith apple. You won't be disappointed.

Finally the Stromboli began with refrigerated pizza crust stuffed (really!) with Swiss cheese, mozzarella cheese, black olives, spaghetti sauce, and a little Italian sausage. This was the hands down favorite for the guys. After baking this for 15 minutes, the crust was golden brown and just barely crispy and certainly delicious.

I rounded out the feast with homemade potato salad (I like the kind with a balance of mustard and mayo, plus black pepper, salt, and sweet pickle relish.), two kinds of chips (blue corn tortilla and cracked pepper potato), and some whipped cream cheese and chive dip. The predictability of the side dishes was comforting next to the newness of the sandwiches.

Of course, the carrot cake was fabulous - even if I did have to start over today. (Let's just say that it isn't a good idea to forget to spray the cake pans, even when they are made of no stick silicone.)

All in all, the meal went well. Jade was happy and that's all that really matters.