Notes on a Sandwich

In the 1990s film Meet Joe Black, Anthony Hopkins's character tells a moving story about how his dead wife turned him onto cold lamb sandwiches. 

“Not as chewy as roast beef, not as boring as chicken. She knew stuff like that … My wife Joan.”

“Everything reminds me of her. There’s not a day that goes by, that I don’t think of her.”

Such is the evocative staying power of food in the human memory. When we cook and when we eat, we are also so often trying to remember, trying to relive something from the past. 

The food that we eat, the people that we love, the work that we do: what is more formative to our lives than these things? 

Like many of us this last year I’ve been thinking a lot about change and impermanence. What are the things and the people that we can’t live without?  

All this somehow takes me to the sandwich I’m about to tell you about and the person who created it: my mother.

My mother is a terrible cook. When we were growing up my sister and I would bemoan the fact that our mother was not one of those cake baking, cookie decorating mothers. She had strong opinions, and she rejected all pretense of what motherhood was supposed to look like.

I realized later that she rejected domesticity partly for symbolic reasons. Like a lot of other women of the 90s, it was her way of giving the finger to the world her own mother had inhabited with all its prescriptions and prohibitions. Now that I’m older I also see that there just aren’t enough hours in the day of the working parent. That’s not to say she didn’t care about what we ate. She did. 

When I was studying for my final school exams my mother would show up to school with freshly made steak, cheese and caramelized onion sandwiches. They were delicious and she had made them herself. A few days ago, I tried to recreate this sandwich myself, without asking her how. But somehow it was just wrong. Something was missing. So I called her and she told me what was important, what I was missing, what I needed to do.  

She gave me exactly what I needed to make it right. 

Steak, cheese and caramelized onion sandwich 

Serves 1

Cooking time 20 minutes

1 piece of steak (I used rump, but you could use sirloin, flank or many cuts)

a small onion, peeled and sliced

1 ½ teaspoons of brown or raw sugar

2 pieces of cheddar cheese

2 slices of fluffy white bread

a few strands of arugula

a large tablespoon of olive oil

sea salt

black pepper

butter (optional)

a little fresh thyme

Generously salt and leave your steak aside until it's exactly room temperature. While that’s happening, slice the onion, discarding the outer layer and put the onion in a pan on low to medium heat. Cook the onions gently in the oil, add the sugar and cook until caramelized, about 20 mins.

While the onions are still cooking, get another pan and put it on the highest heat until it's searing hot. Cook steak for about 2 minutes on each side, depending on its size and how you like it. (You could smear a little oil on the steak before you cook it, but it’s not essential because the fats from the meat itself will come out in the pan) But don’t move the steak around in the pan, and only turn it only once. Then take it out of the pan and let it rest on a plate for 5 minutes. While that’s happening take the bread, slice and butter each side. Sprinkle the thyme onto the butter. (Adding thyme is my own addition to this recipe, but it's not essential.) And then take the steak and arrange, putting the cheese on top. Layer the onions over the cheese and finally the arugula on top of all this. Cut in half. 

Eat with satisfaction and take a spoon of mustard to smear on the side if you feel inclined.

Secrets to make this recipe work

Steak: The most important thing you need to know about steak is not about cuts, but that it must be room temperature when you cook it. And the second most important is that it needs to be salted, preferably with sea salt, before you cook it. REALLY. And if it was previously frozen or came out of the fridge don’t be tempted to expedite this process by putting the steak on the stove next to hot pots and pans or to using water to help defrost it, or doing anything other than letting sit on your kitchen bench until it is in no way cold any longer. Someone recently served me a steak that tasted like it had been boiled in a teacup, and that was because they had put it in a microwave. 

Also, depending on what cut of meat you use, if you need to make the meat more tender, you can use a rolling pin to briefly bash it. It will make it more tender when it’s cooked. 

Onions: Make sure you don’t use the outer layer (aka the first layer of the onions) in this because they aren’t as sweet as the layers closer to the center. You want small, new onions for this, which have just arrived with spring imminent.

Also, don’t be tempted to skip the sugar. This is what makes it.

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