Saturday, August 05, 2006

The perfect tuna fish sandwich

ventresca2

When the sandwich girl heaves her enormous picnic basket round the office, if you are not elbowing your way to the front within nanoseconds of her arrival you miss out on all the good stuff, well, certainly you'll be missing out on the edible stuff. Wandering over some minutes after the pack of jackals have left, you'll be confronted with a few sorry looking cheese and pickle and maybe a tuna fish and sweetcorn. Now, I love tuna fish sandwiches, but these sorry examples are indicative of what a sorry reputation they have. Dry shards of fish coupled with what can only be described as semen-like mayonnaise, dotted with graying sweetcorn. Pretty miserable stuff, the tuna is that overly browny-pink mush, the bread too thin to maintain any sort of structural integrity, so you end up with dollops of the foul inner mix down your new trendy t-shirt. Of course, the main question you have to ask is whose dumb idea was it to put sweetcorn in the damn thing in the first place. Unless it's on a cob swimming with butter and cayenne pepper then it's chicken feed as far as I am concerned.

At the risk of sounding redundant, the prefect tuna fish sandwich starts with decent tuna. Ortiz or Campos branded Ventresca and Bonito del Norte, which are cuts of white tuna belly or loin. Fattier meat from sound fish that stays moist and retains some of the delicacy of the fresh fish. You can happily eat this straight from the can and it is one of those food epiphany moments everytime I do. Empty the whole can, oil and all over boiled Anya potatoes and die a happy man/woman.

Mayonnaise. Make. It. Yourself. Come On! How lazy are you?? Make your own damn mayo. How can you call yourself a lover of food if you are willing to slap that acrid cat vomit they sell in jars over your lunch? It's simple to make, and deeply satisfying and the only excuse that I'll accept for you not doing it is having tennis elbow, or no elbows at all. I'll want a note from your mum if that is the case.

Thinly sliced cucumber. Adds a little fresh crunch to the proceedings.

On the bread front, go your own way. I don't think baguettes or ciabatta work terribly well and tend to like a quality tin loaf or some kick ass granary but I've been dictatorial enough this post.

Grab a beer. Feet up. Unfold paper. Do not disturb.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I challenge you, Monkey Gland, to make me a tuna sandwich (or any other kind of fishy bocca) that doesn't make me feel slighty naseous and somewhat like I'm eating a rainy date with a trawler. Go on...

lobstersquad said...

I fully agree. you´ve grossed me out a little with your description of mayo, but I´ll forgive that in face of the good sense you´ve shown re: sweetcorn.
add a few salt and vinegar crisps to that beer and I´m in heaven.

Anonymous said...

Aye Aye. S&V crisps and maybe 4 rounds of those sandwiches, and maybe, just maybe, i'll be done for brunch.. im not a fat man, but i do love my tuna mayo sweetcorn sandwiches. mmm mmmm