Dave's Sandwich: Revisiting my first one, the grilled cheese with brie and capers. This time, minus the pepper (an oversight), more capers, capers mixed into mashed brie, topped with a slice of brie, topped with caper juice, and slightly burnt on the bottom (a fortunate accident). The bread was a heavy white rice bread. Fried with butter.
Angelica's Sweet Repeat: cinnamon and pepper cream cheese, 9 blueberries apiece, melted semi-sweet chocolate, and a sprinkling of salt on buckwheat bread.Music accompaniment: Deathcab for Cutie, Truckasaurus, The Battles.
Sides and Drinks: tortilla chips and mango salsa, shiraz
Intermediary event: The Festival of Lights fireworks finale, viewed from a rooftop deck.
AS on Caper Grilled Cheese: While I am still puzzled that the capers faded into the background on this sandwich, it was definitely a huge leap from its first showing. The brie oozed out in exactly the right way and the later addition of the caper juice brought is flavour up from a tab bit too subtle to just the right kind of subtle. The return of this sandwich was very much welcome.
AS on Sweet Repeat: my two earlier sweet sandwiches were either too bland or too sweet; I was hoping for a better balance this time. I had had my heart set on cherries rather than blueberries, but it seems we are at the end of cherry season and the pickings are slim. So blueberries it was and they were a more than adequate substitute. The flavours blended perfectly for me on this one and the additional dollops of chocolate on the last few bites took the sandwich up a notch into a dessert I'd gladly finish off any meal with.
DM on Sweet Repeat: Sublime (full stop)
Nota Bene - i maintain that the most effective manner in which to approach this open face meal is thusly: name the 9 blueberries with numbers starting at 1, moving upward in chronological order from left to right and row by row, resulting in the following pattern (which touch-tone telephone users will be familiar):
1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
Holding the bread with thumb at a position between 1 & 4, index and middle fingers at 3 & 6, and letting the ring and little fingers support the bread from beneath position 9, bite the entirety of blueberry number 7, including the bread beneath it, taking care to avoid brushing chocolate topping with the upper lip or teeth. Follow similarly with blueberry numbers 9, 8, 4, 6, 5, allowing your fingers to retreat so as not to be also consumed. While blueberries 1 through 3 may be consumed in chronological or anti-chronological order, good form dictates that 1 be eaten first and 3 last. Attempting to eat 2 first will curry favour only with the lower order.
DM on Caper Grilled Cheese: That's what i was talking about in the first place! Though the pepper may have driven this winner into mythical status, it was nice to see what the capers and brie could do unaided and unmasked. Half way through our halves, i took the sandwich back to the kitchen to add the caper juice, as it seemed (yet again) that the capers' flavour abandoned ship at the sign of heat. i agree with AS that the brie to bread balance was nicely done, and has to measured against the character of the bread - in this case heavy and biscuit-like; perhaps all the cheese held it together.
AS verdict: Any sandwich that leaves me wanting more is a fine, fine sandwich. I wanted more of both...last night...and now. These sandwiches are too different to compare to each other so I will compare them to their respective categories. While I think I would stand by my original winners (AS for grilled cheese and DM for sweet), these would have been a very close second.
DM verdict: i will repeat what i said last night: this was less a competition than a collaboration: dinner and dessert made a well formed evening of eating (rounded out, of course, by appetizers and wine). i think i might have called a tie on the grilled cheeses if this entry could go back in time to replace it's malformed predecessor. And AS's Sweat Repeat, i think, would have taken the prize if it too had access to my time machine toaster.
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