Alright, ya’ll are gonna think I’m nuts, but my favorite sandwich condiment is dried cranberries. Works better with wraps than with sliced bread.
The best combo ever? Smear a wrap with some Boursin cheese, layer turkey breast (real sliced turkey breast is best, but cold cuts will do in a pinch), lettuce (I use baby spring salad mix instead of iceberg or romaine), thin sliced red onions, thin sliced tomatoes (but only if you have good tomatoes. A plastic tomato is worse than no tomato!) and sprinkle the top with a couple tablespoons of dried cranberries. Roll and enjoy, but beware you’re going to have to make one for anyone within hearing distance of your ecstatic moans.
The most flavoured sandwich I ever eat is jjimm’s ultimate British post-Christmas sandwich:
Toast two slices of bread.
Zap a sandwich’s worth of turkey - breast and thigh - in the microwave until piping hot.
Zap a sandwich’s worth of stuffing, sliced.
Zap a small bowl of bread sauce.
Spread one piece of toast with mayonnaise.
Drizzle cranberry sauce over it.
Season well with salt and pepper.
Add two slices of ham.
Add the turkey.
Cover with the stuffing.
ETA: forgot to mention sliced chipolata sausages.
Spread the other slice of bread with bread sauce.
Put together, slice diagonally.
Mmm.
It’s a very traditional British sauce, made of bread. Here’s my recipe:
Get an onion, and stud it with about 20 cloves.
Put a quart of milk into a pan, season with salt and pepper, and raise to a simmer.
ETA: forgot to say, add a bay leaf.
Seep the onion in the simmering milk for a couple of hours, topping up with water as it reduces.
Remove the onion and bay leaf, and add a few cups of breadcrumbs.
Stir and allow the breadcrumbs to take up the liquid. The final result should be the consistency of porridge.
Melt a large knob of butter into the sauce and stir in. Serve hot.
Aesiron, Alton Brown (May He Cook Forever!) recommends a thin shmear of something oily - butter or olive oil or mayo or cream cheese - if the layer closest to the bread is a wet thing, like tomatoes or lunchmeat. This keeps the bread from getting soggy, even if it doesn’t add a ton of flavor.
Also, much depends on the quality and flavor of the meats and bread you’re using.
If you’re eating pressed turkey and Kraft American cheese on white Wonder bread, you’ll need some kick ass mustard to add any flavor, and then it’ll be all mustard.
But, if you’re having, say, fresh carved rare roast beef with sharp cheddar on crusty sourdough bread, just a bit of garlic mayo, and maybe some “greens” like lettuce, thinly shaved onions and a slice of tomato would give you a world of flavor.
I don’t use butter or mayonnaise on sandwiches when I make them at home. Mayonnaise because I don’t like it at all, and butter because I don’t often have it around the house. My sandwiches tend to be pretty basic of the cheese variety though the cheeses may be somewhat more “exotic”. I have been known to include some chutneys or tapenade.
I am a big fan of that Sun Dried tomato/pesto stuff they sell in the pasta sauce area quite often. Just a tiny bit mixed into some mayo makes for a wonderful treat.
In Mostly Harmless, last volume of the Hitchhiker’s Guide series, Arthur Dent finds a place of honor as the Perfectly-Normal-Beast-Sandwich Maker to the people of the planet Lamuella. His process is decribed step by step, including the spreading of the butter. This stuck in my mind because it was the first time I had even read about anyone putting butter on a sandwich.
Later on, I learned butter is standard on British cucumber sandwiches – but that’s to keep the cucumber from soaking the bread.
