It was a moderately healthy meal…

…and it was a freakishly unhealthy meal.

The first up there is a pizza I made using a crust of Na’an bread. I spread it with a bit of extra-virgin olive oil, onto which I put some minced garlic. Then I topped the thing with a bit of cheese (an Italian blend from a bag — I got lazy), followed by sliced plum tomatoes, onions, and banana peppers. I sprinkled a bit of basil and oregano on the whole thing, and it was just so good!

And then there’s the Monte Cristo sandwich. Hoo boy.

I haven’t had Monte Cristos very often over the years, as they’re not the most common menu item in restaurants, and…well, they’re not terribly healthy. It’s probably been seven or eight years since I had one. But I got to thinking about the Monte Cristo after I watched an old episode of Good Eats on YouTube. I’ve been watching a bunch of these lately, and one of them had Alton Brown holding forth on a food item that is very dear to my heart: waffles.

At the end of the episode, after he’d made his perfect waffles, he said that you could top it with butter and maple syrup, but that’s not his favorite waffle topping. I figured he was going to put some kind of fruit topping or something like that on there…but instead, he plunked a piece of fried chicken right down on top of the waffle! He said that he tosses the chicken with a bit of hot sauce, puts it on the waffle, and then pours maple syrup over the whole thing. This struck me as very odd.

But when I did a bit of online research as well as talked to a guy at work who knows a lot about food, it turns out that fried chicken and waffles is actually a very common food pairing down south! I love southern food, but I’d never ever heard of this. And as I thought about it some more, I realized that the fried chicken and waffles bit isn’t that far off, conceptually, from the Monte Cristo sandwich.

And what is the Monte Cristo? It’s a meat and cheese sandwich — I used ham, turkey, and Swiss — which you then dip in an egg batter on both sides and then cook in a frying pan. You then serve the sandwich with a sweet sauce to dip it in. You can use fruit preserves, if you like, or you can do what I did here: maple syrup. Of course maple syrup goes well with this; I’ve often had maple-cured ham or maple-cured turkey from the deli, and basically this is a sandwich made from French toast. And wow, was it awesome. As of this writing, I ate that sandwich four hours ago, and I haven’t touched any food since.

(The egg batter I used was just two eggs beaten with a bit of half-and-half. I’ve seen recipes online for thicker batters that you smother the sandwich in before deep-frying the whole thing, but that seems like overkill to me. Most recipes also suggest dusting the sandwich with powdered sugar, but I didn’t bother with that.)

So there you have it. It was a meal of moderation, it was a meal of excess; it was a meal of healthful vegetables, it was a meal of fattening meats and egg-batters and bread. But both were far, far better meals than I have eaten recently!

(If you’re wondering why I’m talking like this, well, I’ll hold forth in a future post about it, but this may explain things:

Ach! I’m becoming Dickensian!)

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From The West Wing, Toby Ziegler on the merits of salads:

As much as I love Toby Ziegler, I gotta disagree with him here. I love salads, and I eat them frequently. Here’s one I had for dinner just the other night:

Generally, my approach to the salad over the years has been pretty minimalistic when I make one at home: some greens and some dressing, and I like to beef things up by putting tuna on top (yes, the entire can). But lately I’ve decided to start adding more stuff to my salads, so I’ve started keeping a couple of plum tomatoes on hand at all times, for instance. I’m not a huge fan of raw tomato, but I like it just fine in stuff, so fresh diced tomato on a salad is great. I also adore banana peppers to an almost obscene degree; I bought a jar of ’em last week and I’m already a third of the way through it. Carrots are great, as are sliced mushrooms. Grated cheese? You bet. Oh, and hard-boiled eggs go great on salads. You make a nice big salad with all that stuff on it, and you don’t even need any meat.

I do tend to have a heavier hand with the dressing than I probably should, although I do balance this out by getting lighter versions. My favorite dressing is actually a light Italian, preferably made with extra-virgin olive oil. But I do like good old Ranch, too. I used to be a big fan of Thousand Island, but I haven’t had that in years, and Russian dressing can be pleasing, too. Haven’t had that in years, either. I also like to use olive oil and red wine vinegar or balsamic vinegar, and I sometimes cap the whole thing off with a torn-off piece of flatbread (pita or na’an being my favorites) to sop up what’s left of the dressing at the end.

Long live the salad!

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