Many years ago when I was living in London I used to have a morning ritual on my way to work, I would buy a Bacon, Tomato and Avocado sandwich (everyday) from Pret a Manger. I think you will agree with me that it is probably the worlds most consensually liked sandwich (unless you are a vegetarian). The only way to make it better is to add some grilled chicken!

Whenever creating a new plate I always like to try and have a story attached to it as this makes me believe in it more and also you tend to try harder in making it better than the already fond memory.

In this case I have been working for about 3 years on this plate with no success so far, today is the closest I have come to happy. I believe that avocado tastes better when it is light, so I remembered a dessert named Viennetta from when I was a child. This form would suit the idea perfectly! So I shaved the avocado into very long thin ribbons the width of the croutons, this was layered with Jamón Iberico de Jábugo (some of the best Spanish ham), this held the perfect wavy form required. For the bread I used a seeded soy loaf as it has to be paper thin while still having a very distinct bread flavour, the reason for being cut at 1.5mm thick is so when the guest breaks through the bread it doesn’t compress and crush the avocado. The bread was then pressed between 2 baking trays and baked at 170 degrees for 13 minutes. To cut through some of the fat in the dish I used a combination of green and red tomato pulp. And of course this sandwich would not be complete without mayonnaise, for this I made a sorbet (this is a cold dish and by serving a sorbet it gives the illusion of a higher temperature), it is a combination of Greek yogurt and mayonnaise with plenty of extra virgin olive oil. An interesting discovery that came from this was that when I put the sorbet into the pacojet it held so much air from the stabilizers that it was like a sorbet mousse.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 8th, 2009 at 10:44 and is filed under Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.