Chef G. Makes A Sandwich

Hi folks, Chef G. here!  After a flurry of excellent food blogging back in June, I took a long, well-deserved summer vacation which included a couple of bicycle trips and lots of laziness.  Today, it's time to get back to the serious business of being a celebrity chef, and I'm surprisingly happy about going to work again.  In fact, I'm happier than a film buff who just watched five Coen Brothers movies in a row.  I'm happier than a drunken wine aficionado visiting Napa Valley.  I'm happier than a tyrannosaurus rex chowing down on mastodon meat.  

I could go on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on and on about how happy I am, but I'm not going to.  That would be excessive.  I mean, all of my millions of fans know that I'm a humble man, a man of few words, a man who wouldn't go to such great lengths to lengthen a paragraph with unnecessary verbiage and dumb jokes.

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Today's topic is sandwiches.  I've made several of them in past episodes.  Off hand, I can remember putting the unique Chef G. spin on a Juicy Lucy, a Reuben, a pizza burger, a grilled cheese with ham, a BLT and a chicken salad sandwich.  You can look up those recipes someday if you get really bored.  

I like sandwiches because good ones contain something from all of the food groups.  The BEST ones are heavy on the #1 most important food group--meat.

Last week, Mrs. Chef G. and I brought my dad to a fast-food restaurant called "Freddies Frozen Custard & Steak Burgers" in Waterloo, Iowa.  To my surprise, my dad ordered a Pork Tenderloin Sandwich.  It was one of the few items on the menu other than variations on "steak burgers."  (By the way, what they call "steak burgers" looked and tasted an awful lot like what I call "hamburgers."  Don't worry, though, I didn't go so far as to register a complaint with management about it.)  

Anyway, my dad's pork tenderloin sandwich is what gave me the idea to try making one of those middle American delicacies for my cooking blog.  I've had one of those monsters in the past, and it was okay at best.  However, that thing my dad was eating looked a lot better than my Freddies Original Double, which consisted of not one, but two patties of steak burger.  Maybe a PTS was worth a try?

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It seems small town diners in states like Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa and Indiana take great pride in their versions of the Pork Tenderloin Sandwich--especially when it comes to how far they can extend the breaded greasy meat beyond the bun.

Here are a couple of PTS pictures I stole from the internet.

I think they try to use small hamburger buns to emphasize the largeness of the meat.

No bun on earth could cover this thing.  In the Pork Tenderloin Sandwich world, bigger is better, I guess.

Chef G. F--ks Up and Settles for a Substitute Sandwich

Note the humiliation and dumbfoundedness on Chef G.'s face after he realized he wasn't infallible after all.

Oh yeah, I planned all along to slice up a big pork tenderloin, pound the slices into flat slabs, dip the slabs into egg & milk & bread crumbs, and fry them in hot oil.  

Unfortunately, this afternoon I found that I forgot to defrost the pork tenderloin I had in the freezer.  As a result, everything I've written about pork tenderloin sandwiches so far is all for nothing. 

Never one to waste perfectly good words and paragraphs, I could not bring myself to hit the "Cancel Post" button.  So, I scrambled to find ingredients to make a substitute sandwich.  Luckily, I had enough stuff in my refrigerator to make a passable Philadelphia Cheese Steak Sandwich.  Here are a few photos of how I made my substitute sandwich--they're a testament to my impromptu cooking genius:

I sliced some sirloin steak as thin as possible.

Onions are the second most important ingredient after the steak.

I didn't have the third most important ingredient for my ad lib recipe--that would be green peppers.  Therefore, salt and pepper became the third and fourth most important ingredients.

Heat up some olive oil.

Get some shredded cheese ready.  Provolone is the cheese of choice for Philadelphia Cheese Steak experts.  I didn't have Provolone.  In the heat of the moment, I had to go with Mozzarella.

Slice a decent bakery bun in half and assemble the Philly Cheese Steak.

The meat and onions are ready to scoop onto the bun.

I sprinkled the Mozzarella on top and chowed down on one of my best sandwiches ever.

So, I guess you could say I pulled the old bait & switch trick.  Sorry about that.  Chef G.'s pork tenderloin sandwich will have to wait for a future episode.  I believe I have the ability to make the biggest one anybody has ever seen.