h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

As everyone knows, today marks the 250th anniversary of the sandwich A144299

What's your favourite in this most convenient of convenient foods?

To get us started - two slices of bread thickly lathered in Lurpak and one packet of cheese & onion crisps - culinary perfection. A mix of textures topped off with an explosion of taste.

I have many- most involve cheese. One that doesn't and I can eat anytime, is these little rectangular tins of Mackerel fillets in tomato sauce. Other sauces are available including curry and chilli , but plain old tomato is the best.

Cook some bacon (any sort will do) until crispy, leave to go cold. Two slices of multigrain bread, spread one with butter, the other with mayonnaise. Add thinly sliced tomato, the bacon, a handful of mixed lettuce leaves and plenty of black pepper. If you're feeling decadent you can also add some brie or smoked cheese.

One of my favourites, but not very complex...

Open sandwich, mayonnaise, and slices of cold boiled potato. A little salt and white pepper, finely ground.

Ooh, thought of another one that gets me strange looks from the wife; plain pasta (no sauce) boiled in the same pot with some runny-yoked poached eggs. Use the pasta to wipe up the yolk.

Oh sorry, I misread the title; this is about sandwiches not snacks in general

Fish Fingers Sandwiches...

thick, white bread, heavily loaded with butter, hot juicy fish fingers, salt and a liberal dousing of vinegar!

Hard boiled egg - one large tomato ( or a few cherry tomatoes) - a spring onion (scallion). Black pepper, salt if desired.

Put them all in a bowl and chop finely together. The tomato will provide enough juice to bind everything together without mayo or butter.

Any filling you like - just put it between two slices of warm frshly-baked bread.

Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are great. Millions of kids eat them for lunch at school or at home.

Some other sandwiches that deserve a mention:

1. Turkey club sandwich. This sandwich uses three [not two] slice of bread or toast, and there are two sets of filling which include sliced turkey, tomato, bacon, lettuce, and some salad dressing such as mayonnaise.

2.Reuben sandwich, which consists of some sort of deli meat [salami, perhaps], sauerkraut, and cheese

3. Turkey/avocado sandwich, which is a favorite at such chains as Au Bon Pain and Panera.

Extra mature cheddar, mature ham, fresh pain rustique roll, lettuce, tomato, then either English mustard (ideally fresh), mayonnaise or marmite. Salt and pepper to taste.

Then good robust inexpensive



MMF

What you've described is high-end ham and cheese, a type of sandwich that I forgot.

One of my favouritestest ones is best with a fresh baguette.

Then chicken, mayonnaise, and sliced pickled gherkin, and black pepper. That's the essentials: it gets even better when you start adding lettuce, tomato, scallions and whatever other salad stuff needs to be used up.

I heard an unusual one earlier - Frys chocolate cream between two slices of buttered bread.

a hot pitta bread filled with any tinned fish in barbecue sauce

I'm a lover of all sandwiches, but my highlights include:

Parma ham, parmiggiano and rocket on wholemeal brown.
Manchego and quince jelly on white.
Pastrami and dijon mustard.
Panini filled with grated mozzarella, cheddar and monterey jack along with a good shredded salami.
Chicken tikka, mayonnaise, mango chutney, cucumber and onion.
Crispy-fried smoked streaky bacon with plenty of butter on white.
Banh mi - Vietnamese baguette stuffed with spicy chicken, cucumbers, carrot relish, fresh herbs, shallots and chillies.
Pulled pork shoulder with a ton of coleslaw on a batch roll.
Beaten-out chicken breasts coated with crushed tortilla chips, fried and topped with red onion rings and lime-coriander mayo on a white roll.
Thinly-sliced seared fillet steak on a ciabatta with sundried tomatoes and shredded red cabbage.
Good quality tuna (must be in sunflower oil) with some fresh tarragon and a bag of chicken crisps.
Halved sausages with chilli sauce and burger mustard.
KFC's Zinger Tower.
Subway's Meatball Melt with jalapenos.

Now I'm bloody hungry.

B

A cheese sandwich shouldn't include butter/marge if it can be helped... just use a really ripe brie or stilton instead as the spread, adn then put the desired cheese onto the bread

I am rather partial to baguettes, and one of my favorite ones to do at home, which just takes a bit of effort to time it so the baguettes I've made come out just* as the fillings are ready to go in.... Bacon, obviously, grilled preferably and moderatly chrispy, (back bacon, smoked but not maple), sausages (fried useually work best, with very little oil though, and cooked until they're really well done, nothing too powerful flavoured like wild boar, or one of the fancier ones with strange 'extras' in, just a decent meaty one (Newmarket ones are good near here, Steppings in Suffolk win awards, and there are probably others), a couple semi-hard boiled duck eggs,.

one 15 inch Baguette, slicedd, along its whole length, but not cut in half into small half baguettes Butter, plenty, enough bacon so each rasher can be folded, and still have enough to cover the entire length of the baguette, and duck egg slices all the way alon, then the sausage cut kinda diagnally so it fits in well... I've never seen any need to interfer with this by adding 'sauce' to it ideally the duck egg shoudl be just soft in the middle and still a bit runny, so that kinda fills the baguette in place of having any sauce.

Works quite well as a filling too for fresh made pitta

Anohter one for soft rolls, or sort of deli baguette things (the softer ones not the French style proper bageuttes), turkey slices, slami, smoked cheddar, lettuce, tomato, gherkin, plenty of mayo, tomato and cucumber oh, and the cheddar should be grated really hmm... spring onions oughta go well in that too

Tuna mayo, but with cucumber and gherkin, or just the gherkin and tuna mayo, works well, or again spring onion.. damnnit I'm hungry again and want sausages.... but I've already had half a pound of them today

These are magnificent specimens.

When I was a kid a sandwich was 2 slices of bread and a smear of jam. Nothing else. My dad got meat paste for his work sandwiches. The family next door were considered posh because they had sugar sandwiches - just bread, margarine and a layer of sugar. When I was about 7, my sister and I had to stay with a neighbour after school and we were introduced to the decadent luxury of peanut butter. Wow! It took years of nagging before we could persuade mum to buy it (I was at least 11 and at high school).

The only time I ever saw sandwiches with anything else was at funerals and weddings.

At least you had bread. When I were a lad, we had to make do with salt sprinkled on two slices of wood.

B