been so long it looks like > > > egg salad to me ...

it has been so long since i contributed to my own blog. so here we go with a great egg salad on whole grain baguette.

i use quail eggs for this because i can get them on most any bangkok salad bar these days and they are already peeled. nice and creamy and i now prefer them over chicken eggs for this application. i mash them with some chopped chives and curly parsley, minced shallot, french's ball park mustard, some 0% cholesterol japanese mayonnaise (a bit sweet, but that's cool because i usually like to throw in some salad cream which is also sweet), a dollop of olive oil margarine and finish it with fresh ground sea salt and black pepper.

note that my chives, shallot and parsley are not 100% up to par.
this is due to the airport having been closed for 8 days
as it was occupied for political demonstrations
(go democracy thailand)
and there is not a lot of fresh stuff around.
things should get better now as the airport opened today.

note that i use a potato masher, works just great for this application,
and it is easy to clean too.

salad is ready and the baguette has been just barely toasted
and allowed to cool down.
we don't want to heat up the salad
and have it get warm and runny now do we?
that would defeat the purpose of the margarine
which is added not only for flavor, but also to bind it.

the sandwich garnished with arugula and all ready for slicing with the
trusted dropped-edge sandwich maker's knife.

every time i take a pic of this knife and look at the broken tip on it
i want to find the cook who abused it and stab him with the damn thing.


the sandwich has been sliced on a bias and is now ready for eating.
note: when i sliced it, i sawed through it carefully,
i did not cut straight down.
that would have caused the egg salad to ooze out
and that is not what we want.


there are two reason for cutting this way.
one, it looks good, and two -
it makes the first, all important bite, easy and proper.

if you turn the sandwich on its side, and bite into it
so as not to push the top and bottom together,
the egg salad will not squirt out.
this is easily done when the sandwich
has been cut on an angle as you see here.

the arugula adds a nice nutty flavor and some bite to the already sweet salad.
notice i choose not to add tomato slices to my sandwich.
just pure creamy quail egg and arugula is about
all i want to taste here set off by the robust baguette.


i wash this all down with a steamin' hot fresh cup of
fresh ground hill tribe coffee
my friend brought me from chinag mai last week.

not as robust as i prefer, but for thai beans,
o'tay buckwheat!