Bocconcini picnic sandwich

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Heeee!

I just read about fanny food — food that is warmed up and flavour-enhanced by spending an hour under someone's buttocks.

Food writer M.F.K. Fisher once made a guest at her home sit on a cling-wrapped baguette sandwich for an hour before proclaiming that lunch was ready. She then instructed him to stand up and retrieved the squashed sandwich, cutting it into finger lengths and serving it with baby pickles and red wine.

Wish I could have had lunch with Ms. Fisher! I never would have thought to involve bums in a cooking process.

The French have a similar but more sophisticated approach named pan-bagnat or bathed bread, in which a baguette is hollowed out, spread with olive oil, filled with salade niçoise, and then tightly wrapped and left to soak.

S makes a sandwich like this that we've taken on road trips and to picnics. The secret is to make it a few hours in advance and tightly wrap it to let the flavours blend before eating. Unfortunately, neither of us had the brilliant idea of sitting on it until now ...

If any of you make this, I would love to hear from you! The recipe has already been taste-tasted by friends Squeaky and Shady and they love it.

Bocconcini picnic sandwich

baguette
cherry tomatoes, halved
olive oil
balsamic vinegar
bocconcini, halved
fresh herbs
arugula
salt and pepper

Generously drizzle baguette halves with olive oil. Add a layer of arugula and halved cherry tomatoes. Season with salt and pepper. Add some fresh herbs, such as thyme or basil. Cut the bocconcini balls in half and lay on top, cut side down. Mix some balsamic vinegar and olive oil together and drizzle over top.

Wrap sandwich in cellophane and let rest for about an hour — underneath someone's bum if you wish — to let the flavours meld.

Eat and enjoy!

Sandwich melt with yellow tomatoes and olive tapenade

Sandwich melt with yellow tomatoes and olive tapenade on Flickr by beFOODled.

Last week S made trés haute cuisine ;) open-faced sandwich melts with yellow tomatoes I found at the grocery store. I think the colours are beautiful — chocolate brown, bright green and fresh, lemon yellow.

Yellow tomatoes and purple carrots are a few of my favourite things about summer, when the heirloom varieties of produce become available. Often these are the original colours from when the vegetable or fruit made its Old World debut.

This sandwich melt follows the same method as my previous recipe, but is layered with different ingredients — slices of old cheddar and yellow tomatoes under a sprinkling of chopped green onions and grated parmesan. The tomato slices are seasoned with salt and pepper and topped with a couple of dollops of olive tapenade and a drizzling of olive oil, which is a very tasty combo.

Open-faced vegetable melt sandwich

Open-faced vegetable melt sandwich on Flickr by beFOODled.

This sandwich pretty much got me through life as a student. Now I make it on weekend mornings when it's my turn to do breakfast.

You can switch different toppings in and out, but the mainstay is lots and lots of grated cheese. I like to use cheeses that are good melters, like cheddar, fontina or mozzarella. Mozzarella is a bit bland in the flavour department, so I always mix it with a sharper cheese like cheddar.

And when I buy baguettes, I cut them into four sections, wrap each section in plastic wrap and freeze the whole lot together in a big freezer bag. Whenever I take one out to make this sandwich, the bread still tastes fresh.

Open-faced vegetable melt sandwich
Serves two

two quarters of a baguette or four slices of brown bread
cherry tomatoes (or any tomato)
two spring onions
cheese like cheddar, fontina or mozzarella
olive oil
balsamic vinegar (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and take some bread out of the freezer.

Halve the cherry tomatoes or slice regular tomatoes. Slice the spring onions into thin rounds, including the green parts. Grate the cheese.

Slice open the baguette and add the toppings — tomato, onions and then cheese on top. Drizzle with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, if using.

Bake in the oven for about 12 minutes or until the cheese has melted.

Lunch at the Château

S and I roamed the countryside on our third day in Provence, stopping in random towns and wild corners, wherever looked interesting or like it had secrets to give up. We had rented a car in Valence for the week, so the world of Provence was ours for the exploration. We started what was to become a habit during our free time: Pack a lunch, look at the map, plot a random winding course and go.

My favourite part of this particular ramble was our discovery of the little vieux village of Soyans. As we were rounding one of the scary blind corners that seem more common in Provence that straight roads, I saw an old crumbling château on top of a small mountain in the distance. "Let's go there," I shouted. Yippee — I had found a castle, one of my favourite things!
We parked as close as we could, and walked through an ancient little village — can you imagine owning the view from this little backyard on the right? Then we walked past a sign that we couldn't completely translate but which was some official notice from the mayor saying Interdit (forbidden), and up an ancient-looking, sunken stone staircase already half reclaimed by the soil.

Many stairs later, we came across this crumbling church, and just behind it to the north, some castle ruins where men were busy doing restoration work (hence the interdit signage). There was a sign identifying the church as Église St. Marcel. It was built in the 12th century and is dedicated to St. Marcellus, the 5th century bishop of a nearby town called Die.

The church dominates the valley of the River Roubion to the east and the village to the west. The view, as you can see from my photo, is breathtaking.


We ate lunch here while enjoying the scenery. We had done some grocery shopping the previous day, so I had packed baguettes. Here's the recipe for our French lunch at the château:

Take one-half of a baguette from the boulangerie, generously slather on some Dijon mustard, fill with strips of local picodon goats' cheese and prosciutto slices, and enjoy on top of a French mountain with eroding medieval ruins in the background!