Mom said you want my goat cheese sandwich recipe, so:
•1 long, crusty French baguette, the crustier the better
•1-2 packages of plain chèvre, maybe 3 since it’s far, far better to have too much than too little, but I don’t recall ever using more than 2. Though I have, on occasion, used one of those very long tubes and I think those might be more than double what’s in the shorter ones.
•1 cucumber, English cucumbers are nice, but any will do
•2-4 Roma tomatoes, specifically Roma because they’re more meat, less juice and they fit nicely on the bread, if you want to use another type of tomato you can buy make sure it’s meaty
•half plus some of a small red onion, small because the small ones taste better, less bitter
•extra virgin olive oil
•a nice aged balsamic vinegar
•salt
•freshly cracked pepper
•dried basil
Let the chèvre come to room temperature.
Cut the baguette in half, then cut the halves in half to make 4 sandwiches. Do this before splitting the bread into tops and bottoms, it makes it way easier to handle. Split the bread into tops and bottoms.
Sprinkle the inside of the bread with a little bit of salt, top and bottom.
Make the dressing. I usually eyeball this, but I’d say to use equal parts balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil—maybe about 1-2 tablespoons each, depending on how much bread you have. Maybe err on the side of using slightly more vinegar, if anything. Add a good amount of dried basil—you could also use oregano, or both—maybe about 1/2 a teaspoon, maybe a little more or less, whatever feels right. I’d probably add a bit more, mostly because a lot of it will end up sticking to the side of the cup or bowl or whatever you’re mixing this in. Add a pinch of salt to the oil mixture and pepper to taste. Mix well.
Cut the veggies (fruits?). You need to slice the cucumber, tomatoes, and onions as thinly as possible. It helps if you have a mandolin, because you really do want them that thin. For some reason the sandwiches hold together better and are easier to eat if the fruits and vegetables are sliced very, very thinly. Also, you’re probably only going to need to use about half the cucumber, so start there and cut more slices if you need them later. That way you have cucumber you can cut chunky and add to a salad.
Now to assemble the sandwiches.
Give the dressing another good mix. It probably settled while you were slicing the vegetables, but don’t worry overly if it’s not completely emulsified. I usually just give it a cursory mix and then use a spoon to do this next part. Take a spoon, like a normal eating spoon, and spoon/drizzle the dressing the top and bottom pieces of the sandwich. You want them to be covered but not soaked. Make more dressing if you need to. If you have too much sandwich dressing, it makes a good base for a salad dressing: add some crushed garlic, some more olive oil, salt maybe, and it’s just lovely. Let the bread rest to soak up the yummy, but not too long that it becomes soggy.
Once the bread is dressed, spread a healthy amount of chèvre on the top and bottom piece of each sandwich. If the chèvre is room temp this’ll be easy. And I do mean healthy. You want a nice fat little layers. Always err on the side of adding more cheese.
Layer the veggies on the bottom of the sandwiches. Cucumbers on bottom (and if you got them real thin, add several layers of cucumbers). Then tomatoes. Then onions. You should have more cucumber than tomatoes and more tomatoes than onions.
Close the sandwich. Put the top of the sandwich on top of the bottom of the sandwich, keeping all the vegetables inside.
Eat the sandwiches. Take a bite, chew, swallow. Enjoy!
If you’re not going to eat right away, the sandwiches keep best if they’re individually wrapped in plastic wrap. Tightly. Wrap them tight. They’ll keep a couple days in the fridge, but after a few hours the bread won’t be crunchy. Though if you got an appropriately crusty bread, and didn’t overdo it with the dressing, it should get soggy.
Knotting the Wind 