My Sandwich and Me
Ok, all jokes aside, I’m about to give you the best sandwich recipe of all time.
You see, along the daily adventure of choosing my lunch, I usually end up skipping it all together or buying a salad. Yum, right? I’m just so disciplined.
But when the stars align, when all the right ingredients are gracing my fridge, I like to go full Yugoslav with a hint of Aussie-breakfast to create the perfect sandwich.
Let me introduce you to The Bildo.
Pickle my heart
First, you’ll need to find a Yugoslav friend because what you need you can’t find in your local shops. You need your Yugoslav friend to introduce you to a legit Eastern European deli.
Because if you want the perfect sandwich, you need the key ingredient.
Kiseli kupus.
Kiseli Kupus | Pickled Cabbage | Image Credit: Zdrava Hrana
I didn’t studder and you’re not reading that wrong. This is not a case of auto correct, this is very much the key to the perfection that’s The Bildo.
Kiseli kupus is, in fact, pickled cabbage.
Don’t roll your eyes or turn your nose up.
And don’t get it twisted – I’m not talking about sauerkraut. That’s German. And also, trust me when I say I’ve eaten my fair share of pickled cabbage, and sauerkraut comes in all sorts of weird flavours. I like my pickled cabbage salty and sour – that is all.
But obviously this is not the only ingredient. It gets better.
The star of every show
The next ingredient is the star, but not just of this sandwich – it’s the star of any meal known to man, ever. You could literally eat this with chocolate and it would enhance the flavour.
The next ingredient is none other than – slanina, also known to you plebs as smoked speck!
Slanina | Smoked speck | Image Credit: Miesto Pre Muža
This is where it’s at people.
Fuck your short cut bacon, that will not do here. You need your streaky chunk of speck to be lovingly cured, dried, prepared, just the right way.
To wrap up the Yugoslav ingredients, you will also need Thomy mayonnaise, which you may be able to find in your local shops, but whilst you’re at the deli, pick it up anyway.
Don’t forget to check out the snack isle for Smoki and Jaffa cakes.
Every-day-people ingredients
Then, you need some bakery bread. Like a nice sourdough or whatever is crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. Choose carefully because you don’t want to cut up the roof of your mouth, that’s a bitch to deal with.
I would recommend getting a nice sliced loaf rather than bread roll for this exact reason.
Your last ingredients are mushrooms and onions.
Stay with me.
Let’s do this
First, since you had to buy the whole head of cabbage, you’ll need to cut that shit up. If you’re still with your Yugoslav friend, you might want to give them some. If they are anything like me, they will eat kiseli kupus with basically everything.
If for whatever reason your Yugoslav friend doesn’t want it, dump their fake ass immediately and I’ll take whatever left overs you have.
Now that we have cut up the right amount of kiseli kupus, get to the speck. To make your life easier, you’ll need to cut your speck up like this:
How to cut your speck | Image Credit: Telegraf
Remember, we’re not dealing with the basic streaky bacon, so don’t cut it length ways. It will be too chewy to bite through so when you take a bite, it will come out in one big chunk and take all the ingredients with it, making for a very messy lunch. I don’t want to have to say I told you so, so just follow the instructions, ‘kay?
Now fry that speck up. Cut extra up because when fried, the speck pieces will shrink. So when you think “that’ll be enough for my one sandwich,” lemme tell you that it won’t, so don’t be shy!
The last little bit is to thinly cut up some onion and mushrooms and fry it up in the speck fat left over in your pan. That will infuse the veggies with that smoky, bacon-y flavour that every vegetable in the world would benefit from.
Ingredients – ASSEMBLE!
The layering of a good sandwich counts for more than you think. Because you don’t want to put juicy ingredients in direct contact with your bread lest it turn it all soggy, BUT you also want the right mix of textures in there. It’s a delicate process.
So we begin by putting down a good, thick, layer of mayo first. Then, I like to go speck next, as it’s now crunchy and will protect the bread from the kiseli kupus. So you do a nice spread of kiseli kupus, then another few pieces of speck (told you you’d need loads) to add more texture, before you top it off with everyone’s favourite breakfast side – the mushroom and onion concoction you’ve created.
Prijatno, or bon appétit!
Close that bitch up with your second piece of bread – you may or may not choose to lather that on with mayo, I don’t go too crazy there, but I’ll let you decide that one for yourself!
Prijatno!
Prijatno, or as you might say in a different foreign language, bon appétit!
I hope you enjoyed the adventure that was the assembly of Eastern Europe’s official sandwich, The Bildo.
If you require assistance in gathering any of your ingredients, I’ll be happy to allocate you with a Yugoslav friend or discuss alternative ingredients, although that’s really not officially recommended.
If you have an amazing sandwich recipe that you think will top The Bildo, I mean, I doubt it but I’d like to see you try, so hit me up!
Happy eating and remember – don’t be a dick!
B.
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