The perfect sandwich

My father had many talents. Born in 1919, he was an old-fashioned gentleman who strove all his life to be current. He wore clothes like a dandy - apple green suits with feathered hats in the 1940's, silk shirts deeply unbuttoned with a gold Buddha at his olive-brown neck in the 1970's. When he died my mother counted some 200 shirts in his closet. He wrote radio plays before television was invented, then moved on to directing cult advertising commercials for Coke in the early 80's along with music clips for AC/DC and the first cooking videos for Australia's original celebrity chef, Charmaine Solomon.

He was a hopeless romantic, or else a bit of a Lothario. He was married three times before meeting my mother who was some 30 years younger than him. I was his first child, born when he was well into his 50's.

Dad taught me how to grab onto life, to be excited by it, and to never stop learning. He would sit at the end of my bed, a glass of scotch clinking in his long fingers, and improvise whole essays on art, literature, war, Greek mythology, the colonialistation of Australia (I did very well at school). He spoke fluent French, played piano, was a fine drawer and a writer of many (unpublished) crime novels.

But, foremostly, my father's motto was "I don't eat to live, I live to eat". While my mother churned out beautiful meal after meal all throughout my childhood without much fuss or performance, my father hogged the culinary spotlight, writing an Italian cookbook that took us all over Italy as guests of the best restaurants in each province.

But the one project that he never got off the ground, that was dearest to his gourmet heart, was his plans for a book in search of the perfect sandwich.

A good sandwich is very hard to find. I was lucky enough (or fated, it seems) to work in one of Sydney's most fashionable and favoured cafes - Latteria in Darlinghurst  - back when the press-down sandwich maker was still quite new to Australia. My boss was Italian. He used only the best ingredients: huge rounds of pecorino cheese hung from meat hooks, mayonnaise was made by his mother each night, mellow mortadella was imported from Italy, and the bread came hot each morning in a taxi from the Turkish bakery in Surrey Hills. We offered only 5 things for lunch. But they were 5 perfect sandwiches. And the recipe I am about to give is for the sandwich I ate every single day for over a year when working there. It's all to do with proportion - the proportion of each ingredient is paramount. And good bread of course. I have yet to find a brilliant sandwich in Manchester - it's all industrial mayonnaise slathered around defrosted caterer's chicken strips, tinned corn mushed in with bucket-loads of grey tuna. I'm sure it's different in London. I recently had an amazing courgette, smoked ham and taleggio pizza (which is, in essence, an open sandwich) at Story - a deli that reminded me of the kind of food and atmosphere I miss, that reminded me of what great cities can offer.

So, here it is, for you Dad: my perfect sandwich.

Tuna, pickled veg, parsley and mayonnaise


Best quality tinned tuna - I use Serena in Australia and Rio Mare in the UK
Pickled veg mix - or green olives
Parsley - leaves picked or chopped
Good mayonnaise - Helmans or home-made
A little lemon juice (optional)
Maldon salt, ground black pepper
Either light rye or Turkish pide

Method:

The thing is, not to use too much tuna - just cover the bread in one layer, rather than a great mountain of it., Make sure there is enough mayonnaise to moisten the whole thing, but not to make it gluggy and bland.
You can go crazy with the parsley - no-one ever felt sick from too much parsley. The pickles should be in nice small pieces, dotted evenly amongst it all. This sandwich also works really well in a hot sandwich press - press down hard so that the oil from the tuna and mayonnaise sneaks out a bit and turns the top of the bread gold and crisp.