luncheon

Our deli-sandwich lunch eon is now over, and I've got pics! Service was a little weird and awkward because we just don't have enough table space to lay everything out in one place: I had to use an empty work station for the cold cuts and cheeses.

Station 1: bread, tapenade, pesto, cornichons, mayo, mustard, caprese, chips.

I brought mayo and mustard for timid souls who might not want tapenade and pesto.

a closer shot of the bread and condiments

a horrifying glimpse of the gullet of the chip bag

Station 2: cheese and cold cuts.

cold cuts: a closer look

cheese: a closer look; "Normanthal" on top; Emmenthal below

Emmenthal is a Swiss cheese, but the Emmenthal that I bought was billed as a French variant: Emmenthal français. Then there's the Normanthal. I'm guessing that "Normanthal" is a portmanteau of Normandie and Emmenthal, i.e., another French variant of a Swiss cheese, this one made in Normandy. (I'm discovering that French knockoffs of Swiss cheeses are a thing. Ever heard of Comté? It's basically a French version of Gruyère.)

provolone up close

For my sandwich, I halve my quarter-loaf and slather on cream cheese.

Tapenade goes on next. The cream cheese balances the tapenade's tartness.

At the other station, I add pesto and pile on the cold cuts.

And here comes the cheese.

I added chips, and that was it for the sandwich. Salad would come later.

side view: letting it all hang out

the standard bite-taken-out view

What do you do when the sandwich is too tall for you to take a proper bite out of it? I use what I call the "diagonal bite" approach. This means first biting part of the top half of the sandwich at a comfortable angle (hence "diagonal"), then biting the bottom half at a comfortable angle, proceeding that way until the sandwich is down to the last few bites and has shrunken considerably. This makes getting through such a sandwich a lot easier.

layers (top to bottom): bread, pesto, Emmenthal and provolone cheeses, salami, mortadella, chicken breast, tapenade, cream cheese, bread 

a porny food-porn shot

That was a really good sandwich. Now, finally, the salad—

caprese with ground black pepper, balsamic vinegar, and rustic pesto

The boss initially complained about the bread's being too thick for a proper sandwich, so I showed him some pictures of what a muffuletta (also muffaletta) looks like. True: some people dig out the center of the muffuletta loaf so as to pile on more olive salad and other sandwich fillings, but many people don't do that. Still, the boss ended up saying everything was good. My Korean coworker didn't throw my food away for once; he claimed to have eaten too much. I have mixed feelings when people compliment something that I didn't even really make except for the bread. It's like complimenting me on successfully pouring out a bowl of cereal and adding milk. Wow, Kevin! Great job! Even the caprese is a simple salad that doesn't require any talent to put together; there, the only thing I can be proud of is the pesto (still awesome the second day, by the way), and even with that, I'd say I got lucky.

I have some ideas about the leftover tapenade, which I think I can turn into a crazy Mediterranean salad very loosely based on a Niçoise (see here). So there might or might not be more photos soon. Hang tight.