Shrimp rolls with baby heirloom lettuces and refrigerator pickles, or The Odyssey

I have done it. I have created the perfect sandwich. BEHOLD MY CREATION! It is the way, the truth and the light. With an ice-cold Czech pilsner, salt and vinegar potato chips and some quick pickled radishes and Persian cukes, this sandwich is a religious experience. Praise the sandwich! Amen.

Let me tell you more about why this sandwich puts the other sandwich to a blushing shame.


Could it be the homemade mayonnaise, achingly sculpted from free-range organic eggs, white wine vinegar and olive oil from the teats of vestal virgins? Perhaps.

Is it the fresh bronze fennel fronds and parsley flowers plucked directly from my garden's nether regions (and fresh tarragon and thyme from the uh, store) minced powder-fine with sweet shallot? Could be. Heirloom bunte forellenschuss lettuce and rocket, harvested at the tenderest infancy? Oh yes, that too.

Maybe it's the pain au levain, with its shattery exterior and gossamer interior, baked fresh atop an ancient megalith. Okay, the stone isn't really ancient, but it does have cool black stains from a calzone that exploded once.

Vernal sugar snap peas, luscious wild gulf prawn meat, and the mineral serenity of celery join forces in a sandwich fit for gods and heroes, to be supped in the lazy twilight that follows epic battles and lovemaking.


And refrigerator pickles. You, pickle of impatience. Pickle of haste. Quickle.

You are hewn from delicate Persian cucumbers, translucent radishes and hairline slivers of shallot. Your three vinegars are white wine, for elegance; white balsamic, for eloquence; and apple cider, for spunk. You are spiced with the seed of coriander, black mustard, caraway, fennel and celery. You are the salt of the earth (err... of the sea, actually).


O, shrimp roll and refrigerator pickle, for whom I wax majestic: I breathe unto you creation! Now go! Fulfill your destiny and become my dinner. Circle of life and whatnot.