Sandwiches for Tea

I was paid a little money today so I bought a roast chicken from the butchers down the road. I was going to maybe make something tofu-ish for tea, probably another curry, but I wasn’t sure, and nothing else in my freezer was really doing it for me. Normally there’s nothing left after four in the afternoon, but today there was a row of bronzed rotisserie babes visible through the window, and I knew. Today is a roast chicken salad sandwich kind of day. The type where the seeded bread is soft and the butter is thickly spread, the chicken is generously torn into chunks and salt is sprinkled with abandon. The salad: anything I have in the fridge, probably romaine and spinach, with cornichons chopped up, and a little mayonnaise between the chicken and the greens.

While roast chicken sandwiches are one of my favourite things to eat, they aren’t my favourite sandwich. The best sandwich you can make me is tuna mayo. You can add cheese if you want, and toast it if you feel like it, but just a plain tuna mayo sandwich, when it’s done right, is a song.

I put vinegar in my tuna mayo mixture. I can’t remember when I started doing this, but instead of using lemon juice, which I think is too acrid for the sweet blandness of tinned tuna fish, adding a dash of malt or cider vinegar adds a piquancy that lifts the whole dish. I also add freshly ground pepper to the mix, and a sprinkle of salt—but then I always buy cans of tuna in spring water, not brine.

I will eat a plain tuna sandwich, especially if it’s on buttered Warburton’s Toastie bread, but my absolute favourite type of tuna sandwich is one with mixed salad leaves on it. Even just baby spinach will do. I need that little addition of freshness to really elevate the butty. Cucumber? Sure, if you’ve made it on a white baguette. But on a sandwich? Kindof sloppy, not very tasty—I’m not that into it. A controversial opinion I’m sure, but cucumber shines in so many other applications, it just doesn’t need to be included here. Put it with the chicken instead, in chunky coins, or in quick-pickled ribbons.

Other Stuff

• Eoghan Walsh on waiting

• “Summer is made of the memory of summer” — writing on the Solstice, by Nina McLaughlin for The Paris Review

• This whole thread and comments section about babies learning how their sense of humour works is a joy

• Ruvani de Silva on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion burnout

• Making feathery-light sculptures from marble with Håkon Anton Fagerås

My stuff

• Beer Has A Sex Problem

• I drank a pint of White Rat and was reminded how much I like it all over again