— Maria Allen

You know, uh, well, I enjoy sandwiches for sure, and, um, you know, well, we bake bread at home, uh, different styles of bread and what goes in between those couple of slices or, or rolled up in that flatbread varies a lot. And so I don't have a favorite. I mean, it's gotta be, maybe my favorite is just very simply a, a delicious sandwich, right? Um, but the, the filling, uh, you know, I mean, you name it, and I think we can probably construct something that tastes good, right between, um, legumes and cooked vegetables and raw vegetables, you know, maybe sliced thinly as a slaw, you know, as a, as a secondary component. We've got a lot of sauces to work with. I mentioned saroja earlier. Um, I'm a big fan of tahini. I, I buy it by the, the gallon sized jug down at the halal market here. And, uh, to, to make a quick tahini sauce. You thin it out with some, um, some water generous squeezing of, uh, lemon juice, you know, a little bit of, um, salt, you know, maybe other spices. Uh, it could be, uh, uh, you know, whether something is as mundane as black pepper or, you know, maybe in place of the lemon juice. It's, it's sumac to bring in some of the sourness. Um, and, and just whisk that together. And you've got a nice little drizzling sauce to go on a sandwich or anything else for that matter. Um, you know, sometimes it, it could be a, a, um, a, a nice sauteed cauliflower steak. Um, you know, that kind of makes up that, that core meatiness of a sandwich. Um, you know, sometimes they're legume based patties. Um, and again, they can be flavored in all different directions. I don't necessarily follow a, a recipe. Um, I'll just grab the, the, the spice box, the masala dba, and then start adding things to that mixture. And, uh, you can alter the texture, um, based on the degree of cooking of your legumes or other internal ingredients. And, uh, you can have some fun with it. Um, so that's my favorite sandwich. Um, you know, I hope that, uh, you'll, you'll give it a try, you know, sort of freehand some of these things and think in terms of components, um, rather than a single recipe, right? One thing that we outline in our courses is this framework approach to cooking, where, you know, you've got bread, you know, you've got the, the main internal component, call it a, a patty. And, you know, you've got a garnished, a slaw of some sort, and you have a sauce, maybe two or three of them. And all of those categories of foods can be altered, um, in many, many ways. And so you can come up with, um, dozens and dozens of variations right of, of the sandwich in this case. And so approach cooking in that manner. And, uh, you'll have a lot of variety to carry you forward.