It is universally acknowledged that we here at Chez Venza make this food blog stuff look easy. Most people are not aware of the level of research that goes into what we do here. Allow us to give you a glimpse into the process we go through for most (if not all) of our recipes (we are so hard core).
A couple of months ago we read a recipe in Bon Appetit magazine for a sandwich called “Victory at Sea.” The recipe came from Victory Sandwich Bar in Atlanta, GA. It is essentially an anchovy and frisée sandwich on a ciabatta roll. Now, this is unusual sounding…so we had to investigate. We went to ATL and tested the sandwich and were thoroughly impressed. Having vetted the sandwich, we were finally ready to hit the kitchen.
Half of us here at Chez Venza have become enamored with typical anchovies …. especially on pizza. They are salty and packed with flavor (and umami.) These are the anchovies you see on the right in the tin.
However, the anchovies in this sandwich are a different beast. These are boquerones (in Spanish) or fresh, white anchovies marinated in citrus and oil. They are not especially salty or “fishy.” Instead they are bright, tender, and quite delightful. They must be refrigerated, because they are fresh and not cured like canned anchovies. We had to go to Whole foods to find them because they’re too “fancy” for the likes of HEB.
While we were there, we went ahead and got the other specialty ingredient we needed: frisée. This is a kind of endive, with densely curly and faintly bitter leaves. It’s hard to get perspective in this photo, but this is a whole head…it’s probably about the size of a grapefruit. The guy at whole foods had such a hard time finding the produce code for this that he didn’t charge us for it. More like FREE-sée, Amiright?
We cut the frisée from its core and dressed the greens with lemon, oil, salt, and pepper.
Now the recipe calls for the sandwich itself to be dressed with mayo, which is seasoned with lemon zest, lemon juice, salt and pepper. We aren’t huge mayo fans, so we swapped in sour cream.
Snicket, that sauce is lemony!
As for the bread, luckily our grocery store sells frozen ciabatta rolls that we finished baking at home. They are awesome.
A little sour cream on both sides, and a nice layer of anchovies.
Then a healthy mess of frisée.
Victory! Light and packed with omega-3s and lemon flavor. Trust us, this sandwich is awesome.
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