I am always a mix of dubious and excited when I come across something which claims to be the world's greatest anything, especially when it comes to food. Taste is something which is essentially a very personal thing, and what is my idea of the tastiest is not necessarily somebody else's idea of tastiness!
So a part of me is a bit dubious, but this is also intermingled with the excitement of the hope that it actually is the World's Greatest! I don't know about you, but . . . generally speaking . . . that isn't something that I actually want to miss out on!
That's why when I saw this sandwich the other day on Delish, I was instantly intrigued. As a sandwich aficionado, something making such a bold claim definitely had my attention!
I put the ingredients on my shopping list to pick up the next time I went to the shops. They weren't extraordinary, but there were a few things that I didn't have in my house at the moment, such as sliced ham.
You might be able to fudge a few things, but ham . . . well, ham is ham! There's no getting around that reality! And I didn't have any red onion . . . or sour dough bread either!
And so I went to the shops a few days later with the express desire to pick up what I needed . . .
Predictably I came home with the ham, three bags of mini Easter Eggs, a box of Jaffa Cakes, some Dentastix for the dog, milk, eggs, rocket, tomatoes, etc. Everything but the sour dough bread and the red onion! Grrrr!
I am not one to give up however, so I decided to make the sandwiches anyways. I had some sweet pickled red onions in the refrigerator after having made Tacos, which I thought would work beautifully . . .
I also didn't have any Provolone cheese. I don't think I have ever seen that here where I live, but I did have some sliced Jarlsberg cheese which goes fabulously with ham, so I went with that!
I also messed a bit with the order of how I layered things onto the sandwich. I wanted the ham and cheese closer to the mustard, and the tomatoes and greens closer to the mayo! I have never been truly really fond of mayo with either cheese or ham . . .
But hey . . . I was willing to try it in a combination in order to fulfill my quest to eat the World's Greatest Ham Sandwich.
Well . . . what I ended up with was one very, very tasty sandwich! I think the pickled onions were a taste hit, and probably infinitely better than the raw onion might have been!
World's Greatest Ham Sandwich
Yield: 4Author: Marie RaynerThis is one pretty darned delicious ham sandwich!
ingredients:
For the Herbed Mayonnaise- 110g good quality mayonnaise (1/2cup)
- 1 TBS chopped fresh parsley
- 1 tsp chopped fresh thyme
- 1 clove garlic, peeled and minced
- 2 tsp olive oil
- 8 slices good quality white bread, sourdough if possible
- Herb mayonnaise (see above)
- 4 TBS Dijon mustard
- 12 slices deli ham
- 8 slices Jarlsberg cheese
- fresh baby rocket leaves (arugula)
- 1 large ripe tomato, thinly sliced
- 1 small red onion, peeled and thinly sliced
instructions:
- Whisk together all of the ingredients for the herbed mayonnaise. Set aside. Set your slices of bread out in a single layer. Spread 2 TBS of the herbed mayonnaise onto spread four slices of the bread. Top each with 1/4th each of the sliced tomato, rocket leaves, sliced onions, and then three slices of ham. Finish with 1 slice of cheese on top of everything. Spread the remaining four slices of bread each with 1 TBS of the Dijon mustard and place on top of the cheese, mustard side down. Cut in half and serve immediately!
These were everything a great sandwich should be . . . generously filled, a well balanced mix of flavours and textures, a little bit messy to eat, and quite quite delicious! Now its up to you to decide. Is this the World's greatest ham sandwich or not?? If not why? And how would you make it any better? I really want to know!
