rainforest recipes

Once again, I am late posting the Craving Ellie in My Belly recipe this week, which was for "New York Breakfast", and was chosen by Nick & Sara of imafoodblog.com. You will notice that my version is most definitely not the "New York Breakfast" that Ellie wrote the recipe for. Since smoked salmon is the basis of her sandwich, and you probably can't find a smoked salmon within thousands (well, hundreds) of miles of here, I at first thought to just skip this week. However, part of my mandate here in the jungle is not to let the lack of ingredients hold me back from creating any recipe that I want to create, so I started thinking how I could produce something along the same general lines. I wanted to retain the "seafoody" nature of Ellie's recipe, along with the cream cheese on thin crisp toast base. I still had one more can of the good tuna that I had brought back from Canada on my last visit, so decided that this was the recipe that I had been saving it for.

New York Breakfast

Ellie Krieger, All rights reserved

Preface:

1. Pumpernickel bread is about as rare here as smoked salmon, so I used my own home made whole wheat bread.
2. I used a good quality of canned tuna instead of the smoked salmon.
3. I used normal yellow onion.
4. I skipped the cucumber ... it didn't seem like it would blend or add to the modified ingredients.
5. I added some strips of grilled, peeled red pepper which I think always adds to cream cheese based sandwiches.
5. The only tomatoes we can buy right now are roma tomatoes that are red outside and still green (always green) inside ... I presume it is from the tons of herbicides and pesticides combined with early picking. I can hardly wait until I have some organic tomatoes from my own garden.
6. Given that I was using tuna, I decided that I would prefer cilantro to the chives.
7. I decided to make a dressing of mayonaise combined with some balsamic vinegar to drizzle over the top of the completed sandwich

Ingredients:


8 pieces packaged, thin pumpernickel bread (3 1/2 by 3 1/2 inches))
1/4 cup whipped cream cheese
8 ounces thinly sliced smoked salmon
1/2 red onion, thinly sliced
1/4 English cucumber, thinly sliced
2 medium tomatoes, core, seeded and diced
2 teaspoons chopped, fresh chives
Salt and pepper

Directions:

Toast the bread and spread 1 1/2 teaspoons of cream cheese on top of each piece.


(At this point, I added the strips of grilled, peeled sweet red pepper)


Put a slice of smoked salmon (or tuna, as the case may be),


a couple of slices of onion, (or more if you like onion)



one or 2 slices of cucumber (if you want), and about 1 tablespoon of chopped (or very thinly sliced) tomato on top of that.


Sprinkle with chives (or cilantro) and season with salt and pepper.


AND ... for an extra jolt of flavor, mix together a couple of tablespoons of good mayonaise with a few dashes of balsamic vinegar ...



And drizzle over all ...


Verdict:

Delicious! The thing I really like about sandwiches like this is that there are surprise bursts of flavor with each bite ... the smoothness of the cream cheese is a perfect match for the grilled red peppers. The cilantro and tuna were meant for each other. The onion adds its own crunchy zing. And the balsamic mayonaise marries all the elements into a balanced whole.