Well a toasted sandwich anyway, which makes more sense. If you can do baked beans then why not bolognaise? A good way of using up those leftovers if you have any. Not that I have a jaffle maker. Well I think there might be one up in the Gatehouse, but I never use it down here. Perhaps I should buy one because I do like toasted sandwiches. The other problem is that the bread we have is not square. And that was an interesting thing too - Guy Grossi, top Italian celebrity chef used ordinary white sliced bread! And maybe when it comes down to it, it's the best bread for toasties.
The stimulus for this post came from the latest Melbourne Food and Wine Festival newsletter - and yes picnics are the next big thing. There was quite a big section on high end picnic baskets. Might do something on that, might not. I know I've done picnics way back when.
Anyway I was intrigued by the notion of a toasted sandwich with bolognaise in it and, well Guy Grossi is a bit of an Italian food hero to me. Have loved all of the restaurants of his that I have very occasionally been lucky enough to visit. And this particular recipe is apparently on the menu at his latest venture - currently closed I'm guessing, except for takeaway, called Arlechin. I think it's just around the corner from Florentino's and it's more of a bar kind of place than a full restaurant.
So I clicked on the video above and was quite entertained and enlightened a bit as well as to making bolognaise.
For there were some quite significant differences in the way that he made bolognaise and how I make bolognaise. He swore it was his mother's recipe, so I guess we have to believe him, and he was nicely unfussy about it all. No mystique here, although he did refer here and there to other ways that people cooked it.
So what were the main differences? A mix of nine parts beef mince to one part pork mince. Masses of garlic chopped up fine. No tomatoes - just a couple of big dollops of tomato purée. Not passata - purée/paste. Flavourings - fresh chopped parsley and sage - quite a lot, a couple of ground cloves - yes cloves, and half of a nutmeg. The nutmeg was not much of a surprise - the Italians do use it a fair bit in their sauces, but cloves! And a, to me anyway, horrific amount of salt which he said you should put in early on. A glass of red wine, but most of the liquid was water - because it's pure he said. It was also instructive to see him cook the mince with a metal spoon, chopping at it all the time to break up, and also cooking it for much longer than I would. And this, he said, was vital. There was a lot of water and it was cooked for a long time - a couple of hours he suggested - which reduced it all down to a fairly dry mix. So obviously I have been doing it all wrong all these years, so will try his way next time I make a bolognaise. I only have one recipe book of his - the Italian Food Safari book, so generously given to me by my good foodie friend, who found an as new copy in an op shop.
As to the jaffles. This is them. Well, as always I'm behind everyone else and actually bolognaise jaffles seem to be relatively common. Well jaffles are a biggish thing and bolognaise is a sub section of the genre. Some with cheese, some without. Guy Grossi just grated some Grana Padano on his. And interesting that he used Grana Padano rather than Parmiggiano.
Here are the others that I found: from left to right, top to bottom - the first one I found on Pinterest, but couldn't find the actual recipe - they obviously have cheese in them anyway, Bolognaise and egg jaffles from Honey Kitchen, in which you drop a bit of beaten egg into a depression in the bolognaise before toasting them, from delicious a Beef lasagne jaffle, that included a cheese sauce and lasagne slices as well - much more complicated this one, and last of all a Western Star butter recipe that pops up here and there, including the Woolworths site, and which includes cheese.
But actually there is not really a recipe. It's more of a thought really. But do watch Guy Grossi - it's a pretty good video. And do go to the Victoria Together Celebrity Sandwich website - where you will find all the other Melbourne celebrity chefs making their own Celebrity sandwiches too. And the recipes as well. They add a new one each Thursday.
I watched Shane Delia make a pretty interesting - and easy Maltese sandwich called a Hobz biz-zejt which is a bit of a mouthful. Here it is. This one wasn't toasted - it was just a baguette kind of sandwich. But very different.
SOME ELTHAM POSTCARDS
I have been taking pictures, but not particularly inspired ones of late. I went on a different walk today and took lots. And I did take an actual camera and I did feel a bit more like a tourist. This is just a selection. Our family photo competition subject this week is lines - the shoe doesn't really fit into that, but I just liked it. Some poor child somewhere is missing a shoe.
When you're looking for lines you see them everywhere.