Sandwich Prep Finale (finally!)

We’ve seen baby pictures…

Freshly home from the plant sale.

We’ve seen growing-up pictures…

About a month in.

About three months along.

And, finally, we have a grown-up, no-longer-green, red tomato picture:

Let’s discuss:

I feel like the momentous nature of this occasion requires me to go through all of the steps of a recipe, even though I really just want to go straight to the sandwich. So, here we go…

Ingredients:

Because it takes the longest, I start the egg frying...

The pan is a decent quality non-stick, but I still hit it with just a quick shot of spray, since I wanted to be able to flip the egg without issue.

If I’m having eggs just for the sake of having eggs, I usually take my fried eggs “over medium” – no longer runny, but not quite solid. For a sandwich like this, though, I like the yolk to be firm.

Covering the pan holds the heat (and the moisture) in so that the egg cooks faster, without having to crank up the heat and worry about burning.

While the egg is frying away, it’s time to turn to the star of the show. I almost felt a little bit bad cutting into it – but not that bad.

By the way... I’m a firm believer in using what is traditionally a “meat board” style cutting board for juicy vegetables. After all, I did not want to deal with having to wash dried tomato juice (which somehow always has one or two straggling seeds in it) off of the counter.

Though we don't often have garden-fresh tomatoes to cut, we do have a tomato knife. It's almost the same as a sausage knife, but the tomato knife has prongs on the end. I've been told that they're there so you can life the tomato slices without getting your hands dirty, but I also use them to poke around and remove anything that looks unsavory in the tomato.

With almost perfect timing, the egg was ready to flip by the time I had my slices cut.

See how the white is set up but the yellow hasn't really cooked, yet? That's what adds a little thrill to the flip.

I don’t have video of this, but I did actually flip the egg without the aid of a spatula. In the next photo, you can see the slight streaking of the white along the bottom/side of the pan – that’s because I didn’t quite stick the landing.

Assembly of this sandwich, for me, has a few steps.

First of all, I love doing this on English muffins, because they fit the tomato and egg so well. But since toasted English muffins can be a bit dry I start with a little bit of margarine (which melts in and softens everything).

Then I go for mayo. Yes, I’m one of those people who likes mayo – and although I’ve made it from scratch (which is so much easier than you might think), I am perfectly fine with it coming out of a jar for most applications.

I put the egg on the bottom, with the tomato on top for this one, but I don’t know that it really matters (though it does make for pretty pictures that way).

I think that if I were doing a more complex sandwich (like a club sandwich with a fried egg on it), I’d put the egg on top simply because I could make the rest of the sandwich while the egg was cooking. In this case, though, everything was done at about the same time, so I went for aesthetics.

How did this make me feel? Well, let's find out:

And, yes, this is what the plate looked like about 45 seconds after the camera was turned off. I honestly believe that it was worth every moment of the 5 months that I’ve been tending those plants.

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Have a fall recipe that you'd like someone else to try, first? Let me know! Or, if you're looking for a recipe for the Holidays, drop me a line and I'll see if I can find it. This time of year - even more than others - the kitchen is my happy place!