Never be a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic...

June is here. Which means Summer is this close. Which also means my birthday is coming up*. I like June. June is usually warm enough to comfortably wear tank tops and Summer dresses, even in the evening, without the fear of needing another layer. But June is also not yet the dog days of summer, where one feels the need to hop from one air conditioned space to the next, without ever really being exposed to the outside. June is green, not brown. June is not anticipatory and hopeful, like April and May, or exhausted and wilted like August. Rather, June is confident, pert and happy. June does cartwheels. And June is pleased as punch to be right where it is. In June.

I also think June likes picnics. Don't you think? Not too hot, not too cold, not too mosquito-y, not too humid, not too smoggy. Even Goldilocks would concur, it's just right. And clearly I'm not the only one that feels this way. NPRjust had a story about picnicking through the ages last week, I'm seeing picnic-themed foods and the like all over Pinterest, one of my peers had a blurb about gourmet picnics in the most recent Westways, Lucques is having their 'Tennessee Indoor Picnic' in a couple of weeks and I recall last year, exactly at this time, Splendid Table aired a piece about the most perfect, most neat-est, most conceptual picnic sandwich I've ever heard of. This sandwich originated, and is a specialty, in the South of France – Nice, to be exact. It is sold in every bakery and market there. This sandwich is the pan bagnat. Fred and I even made a couple of them to take on our weekend trip to the Santa Ynez Valley for my birthday last year. I have not made one since, but I have never forgotten about the pan bagnat.

It's hard to say which part of the pan bagnat made it so memorable. But if pressed (like the sandwich), I'd have to say it was Melissa Clark's story about it in that Splendid Table piece. Yes, it was an impressive sandwich, but Clark's story was really special. She spoke about being a seven year-old, on family vacations in the South of France. About the daily picnics they would have at the beach, and how her mom would make the most amazing sandwiches. It sounded like a sandwich which originated with the base ingredients of a tuna nicoise salad, but turned into an everything-but-the-kitchen sink sandwich that was stuffed full of ingredients a mile high. Her mom would have she and her sister sit on the wrapped sandwiches, in the car, all the way to the beach so that it would end up with all the salties and juicies, the burst capers, anchovies crammed into a paste, tuna, oil, everything perfectly married in addition to then being flat enough to eat properly.

It just sounded so romantic to me. I always do love a process, a story. And this one comes with the most perfect picnic sandwich I could possibly imagine. One with everything under the sun in it. That sandwich is a picnic.

So last weekend, Fred and I, for the second time, exactly a year apart, made our pan bagnats again and had ourselves a picnic. Since we were not driving to wine country and we didn't have a seven year-old on hand, we opted to weigh our sandwiches down with our biggest, heaviest cast-iron topped with a full tea kettle. Our Sunday picnic menu was as follows:

Pan Bagnat

Dill pickle spears

Potato salad with peperoncini & bacon

Dolmas

Cherries

Fresh squeezed limeade

All of the food ended up being perfect for a picnic. But the pan bagnat was undoubtedly the star. Pan bagnat is literally translated as ' bathed bread' or 'wet bread', and that is an accurate description. When it's ready to eat, the bread has absorbed a lot of the liquid from the filling and all of the ingredients are pressed to form a tight strata with all of those textures and flavors in a perfect union. This sandwich was also a favorite of Julia Child and Jacques Pepîn. You can even watch them make one here. I have to say, I bet the pan bagnat would be a sandwich to make Dagwoodhimself quite proud.

*I will be accepting birthday gifts all through June. Inquire within for suggestions and ideas.

Pan Bagnat
(recipe inspired by Melissa Clark on The Splendid Table)

Makes one big-ass sandwich that can feeds at least 2

Ingredients

3 anchovy fillets, minced

1 tablespoon capers, chopped

1 garlic clove, minced

1 1/2 teaspoon red wine vinegar

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

Pinch of salt and freshly ground pepper

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 baguette

1/2 regular cucumber

1 medium-size, ripe tomato, sliced

¾ roasted red pepper

½ avocado, sliced

½ cup arugula

1/2 small red onion, sliced

1 jar (8 oz) tuna packed in olive oil, drained

8 large basil leaves

4 tablespoons chopped Kalamata olives, pitted

1 hard-cooked egg, peeled and thinly sliced.




Directions

In a small mixing bowl, whisk together the anchovies, garlic, vinegar, mustard, salt and pepper. While continuing to whisk, gradually add the olive oil. Whisk until an emulsion forms.

Peel cucumber & halve lengthwise, and scoop out seeds from one half. Thinly slice seedless half. Add sliced cucumber to vinaigrette and toss well. Set aside.

Coarsely chop the olives and capers, then combine in a small bowl with the minced garlic and set aside.

Slice the baguette horizontally into 2 pieces. Tear out some of the soft bread in the center of each side, making a slight well in the bread.

Spread the olive and caper mixture evenly across the bottom half of the baguette, then spread other half the cucumbers on top. Next up, spread the tuna over that. Top with tomato and onion slices, then with pepper, arugula, avocado, basil, olives & egg slices. Top egg with remaining cucumbers and vinaigrette. Cover with second bread half and firmly smush sandwich together.

Wrap sandwich tightly in foil or plastic wrap, then place in a plastic bag. Refrigerate and weight sandwich under a cast-iron skillet or a pot of water for anywhere from 2 to 8 hours, flipping sandwich occasionally. Unwrap, slice and serve immediately or you can keep it wrapped for up to 2 hours at room temperature before serving.

Printable recipe.

One year ago: Fresh Mint & Chip Ice Cream

Two years ago: Yerp: Part 2 - An Evening in Gruissan.

Three years ago: Fresh Strawberries, Chocolate Mint & Chantilly cream with Cornmeal Shortcakes

Yerp: Part 2 - An Evening in Gruissan.

My first morning in Armissan.

May 13, 2011

I had this vision of the France leg of the vacation. I saw a lot of nothing. I saw myself reading, writing, eating, cooking, staring into space and sipping wine – all in a lovely, pastoral milieu. I envisioned a lot of silence. Save for the birds chirping and the rooster crowing. 

There was no reading or writing. At all. There was little to no silence. There was, however, a great deal of eating and sipping wine. There was a great deal of the wine. All in a lovely, pastoral milieu.  

The little house.

The first time I was there, three years ago, Chris, Jean-Jacques and I dined at a restaurant called La Cranquette, in Gruissan. It was my favorite, and most memorable, meal of that trip (and we even went to Vieux Puit in Fontjoncouse). It was a tiny, charming, casual, spot in a tiny, charming town on the Mediterranean. All of the food is cooked in a kitchen the size of my thumbnail, and everything is cooked on a griddle. Even my seared ahi tuna over a slab of foie gras. Yes, you read correctly.

  

So, for our second night in France, all fourteen (14) of us occupied the expanse of outside tables at La Cranquette (had we sat inside (my preference) we would have filled the entire space)). The place hadn’t changed a bit, which warmed my heart. Our waitress, Nadeen, was sweet and was able to keep us sufficiently herded, so to speak. And, although she spoke with a perfect regional French accent, she was from New York. This made things easier as well. That's her above, holding plates and whatnot.

 

Dinner was excellent. With such a large group I imagine we ordered everything on the menu. But I ordered pretty much exactly what I had ordered there three years ago. I started with tellines, which are little wedge clams sautéed in a little foie gras. And then I had the duck breast served under a generous slab of foie gras (yes, I did) with a reduction and some Pyrenees honey. Holy little baby Jesus. 

Decadence.

Jean-Jacques (who ordered a dish aptly, and cleverly, titled "Mars Attack" (see picture below)) took over in the wine department by selecting all local, regional (and delicious) bottles for the table.

What a truly beautiful meal. I highly recommend this restaurant.

For a full set of pictures of the evening click here.

I believe Emma and I capped off this evening with a bottle or two more bottles of wine while laying in our beds, sighing, giggling, and taking stock of the last few twenty-four hours, the whirlwind, of our adventure.

Which had, really, only just begun...

Armissan

 

FOR MILO, WHO NOW KNOWS THE WAY.

My absolute favorite book as a child, and perhaps my favorite book of all time, was/is The Phantom Tollbooth by Norman Juster and illustrated by Jules Feiffer. The book tells the story of a young boy named Milo who would rather be anywhere other than where he is, values little and considers time and all things that exist within it a waste of, well, time.

One day Milo comes home from school to find a large, mysterious and anonymously delivered package that contains a miniature tollbooth and a map of "the Lands Beyond" in his room with a note that reads "FOR MILO, WHO HAS PLENTY OF TIME". And with nothing better to do Milo assembles the tollbooth and, in his toy car, travels through it onto the road to Expectations.

As a result of not paying attention, he first travels through The Doldrums; a place where thinking and laughing is not allowed. But soon gets out (with thought and laughter, of course) and finds his way through Dictionopolis and Digitopolis and must save the two princesses, Rhyme and Reason, by helping the kings of each kingdom settle the debate on which is more important, letters or numbers. We learn, along with Milo and Tock, that both are equally important.

On his journey he meets and befriends Tock, a watchdog with an alarm clock attached to his body, the Whether Man, who contemplates whether or not there will be weather, and so many other fantastic characters. We meet The Humbug, Officer Shrift, King Azaz the Unabridged, The Mathemagician, Terrible Trivium and the Senses Taker and Alec Bings, a little boy who sees through things and grows until he reaches the ground, and he even got to watch Chroma the Great conduct his orchestra in playing the colors of the sunset.

In Digitopolis they eat Subtraction Stew, which makes the diner hungrier and in Dictionopolis they attend a banquet where guests literally eat their words.

There is so, so, so much more to this story. It’s filled with puns and has been compared to Carroll’s, Alice in Wonderland.

What I love about it so very much is, as an only child, a “latch-key” kid raised by Boomers in the Reagan era – I very much related to Milo. But the moral of the story is what really got me and is something I have not taken for granted since my first reading of the book as a very young child. I learned that information, education, words, numbers, colors, experience – the world, is beautiful. Time is important and should never be wasted. Everything can be interesting.

All from a little children’s book.

I have owned at least six or eight copies of the book, all of which I‘ve either given away, loaned (never to be seen again) or lost throughout the years. Lamentably, a few of them were beautifully and emotionally inscribed by my mother. That’s okay, because I want it to be out there. I want people to read it. I just bought another copy. Used. I like that it’s used. I like that it’s been read.

Why did I buy another copy and why am I writing about The Phantom Tollbooth now?

My cat.

Yes, I have had a cat. I got him a month or two out of college when I lived with my boyfriend at the time and Paz. It was late summer, 1996. The Atlanta Olympics were going on. I named him Milo.

Milo lived with me in our many homes (one next to a crack house), and two relationships, in Atlanta, traveled across country with Mark, Besito and me, and lived with me for quite a few years here in LA, through four or five different apartments and houses. 

About five years ago my then boyfriend, Liam, and I moved into a house in Canyon with Milo and Besito. After some time Liam and I went our separate ways and not long after that Milo, Beso and I moved to a different house, higher up in the Canyon. Milo continued his predatory and manly behavior proudly depositing his dead, neatly eviscerated prey as gifts to me. He and Beso played and played. Milo could have kicked Beso’s ass in a New York minute, but he always let Beso think he won.

Then, two years ago, the three of us moved back down lower in the Canyon – a stone’s throw from the first spot with Liam. Within thirty-six hours Milo was missing. My friends were tremendously concerned. Perhaps he had been attacked by a coyote, hit by a car, kidnapped by aliens. I don’t know why but I was not worried in the least. That cat is tougher than a coffin nail. No coyote could outsmart him. Hell, he’ll outlive us all.

A few months later, on a hike, I noticed an old faded sign that read, “Lost Cat”. And there was a picture of Milo.

Guess where he was that whole time?

At our old house.

The new residents named him Claus von Boosboos. When they first found him and took him to the vet, the doctor estimated his age at six years. He was thirteen.

I tried to take him back but he would simply return to the old house. So we all decided that rather than have him running back across the street every time, risking getting hit by a car, he could continue living at "his" house -- the tenant was pleased with that decision.

When the house was sold and the owner moved we decided I had to take Milo for real. I tried everything (four times) but he kept going back. I even scaled the gate and broke into the property one time to retrieve him.

Finally I spoke to the new couple that moved into the house and we all decided – that is Milo’s house. Really, they’re just renting from him.

I think about him a lot. He was the coolest cat I’ve ever had. About a month ago I walked past the house and there he was, lounging on the stoop, in a sun-spot. Happy as a lark. I was sad, then happy, then sad, then happy.

Then I realized, Milo is Milo. It’s his adventure and his world, and he has found happiness and beauty.

Milo turns fifteen this summer and is still owning this canyon. 

Recent photo of Milo, at his house.

At the end of The Phantom Tollbooth, once Rhyme and Reason have been restored to Wisdom, Milo says goodbye and drives off, feeling he has been away for many moons. He then sees the tollbooth ahead and drives through. Suddenly he is back in his own room, and discovers he has been gone only an hour.

He awakens the next day full of plans to return, but when he gets home from school the tollbooth has vanished. A new note has arrived that reads, "FOR MILO, WHO NOW KNOWS THE WAY."

As I recall, my Milo didn’t care much about milk, but that cat loved him some tuna fish.

Classic Tuna Salad

 (makes two sandwiches, one each for Milo & Tock) 

Ingredients:

1 5oz. can solid white tuna packed in water

2 tbsp Duke’s mayonnaise

1 tbsp chopped celery stalk

1 tbsp chopped celery leaves

1 tbsp finely chopped red onion

2 tbsp chopped dill pickle

1 ½ tsp capers

Juice of ½ Meyer lemon

Salt & pepper to taste

Directions:

Place the tuna in a colander and drain well.

Shred the tuna with your fingers, breaking up any clumps until it has a fine and even texture.

Fold in the mayonnaise until mixture is evenly moistened.

Put the tuna in a medium bowl and mix in the lemon juice, celery, onion, pickles, capers, salt and pepper until well blended.

Salad can be kept covered in the refrigerator for up to 3 days.

Printable Recipe