Sandwich-craft

Ever get the food blahs? You know, when you find yourself eating the same thing over and over again day in and day out. When no matter what you eat, it all tastes the same. When after you finish chewing it only feels like your mouth was moving up and down over a cloth gag because your stomach is full but there's no taste left over from the food in your mouth. (this intro has the promising beginnings of a solid infomercial, but I'll press on) When you're like, "Yay! It's din-din time! I think I'll have....the same thing as yesterday."

I was there - bored so dull with my mind molding with the rotten, fly-eaten thought of consuming another sandwich. So what did I do? I treated my problem like a fully fledged homeopathic quack. I ate another sandwich. Like treats like as they say. Though I did it without the whole "potentization" via the super serial dilutions they so love. (i don't know how i'd dilute a sandwich. that'd be gross. pureed and diluted salami on rye anyone? reminds me of hospital food).

But before I arrived as this brilliant solution (get it? dilution....solution.....baDUM TISH), my crazed mind came up with the fantastic idea of creating my own mint extract.  The things that happen when you love science and you stare at an ingredients label so long you begin to think, "Hey! I might be able to make this by extraction with alcohol and then distillation!!"

I've talked about awesome sandwiches before like the FatSandwich, Chicken Parm and this egg monster, but this sandwich from Rosario's Deli in Freehold, NJ is my ABSOLUTELY favorite sandwich ever.

I don't even know what it's officially called.  I just point to it and say, "I'd like the eggplant sandwich."  That's it.

But before it looks like that...

...it looks like this...

...and then this.

Really nothing special.  Other than the smell (which is awesome) and some solid ingredients this cold, plastic-wrapped dinger of a sandwich may as well be Dream #8 in the Nightmare of Food Blahs. But I help it realize its full potential.

Enter the Chamber of Transformation. It's a magical little box that things go into and mysteriously come out 1,000 times better. So I set it on broil and let it do its thing.

One issue.  There are two halves (duh.) though i sometimes wish there were three. But that's not the issue.

"So what's the issue?" you ask.  "Just stick the sandwich in that ol' magic box, wait for the cheese to reach the perfect bubbly lava melt and for the bread to have that crisply browned crunchy crust (a result of my favorite reaction of all time) and then pull it out."

godbite problem:

The better half is eaten last. Because it's eaten last it cools and can become soggy and cold again.

Take a look at my awesome Awesomeness vs. Time graph of awesomeness.

As I am a fan of eating up the curve rather than eating down the curve, the solution, as suggested by the graph, is to take the 1st half of the sandwich out at a point halfway up the curve timing it such that you finish it and are ready for the second half when it is at the max point and when....

 ...it looks like this...

...creating this.

The best sandwich I've ever had: eggplant, toasted bun, melted mozzarella, basil, roasted red pepper and a tiny bit of olive oil with the bread catching the juices pressed out from each bite.

Nothing short of magical.