Cuban Sandwich

As anyone who knows me will tell you, I love pork. So it should surprise no one that I love Cuban sandwiches. It's hard for me to find foods that I like prepared exactly as they were intended, and the Cuban sandwich is no exception. However, the Cuban sandwich comes much closer than many in that the only change/omission I make is leaving off the pickles. In fact pickles make my top 5 most common ways to ruin a sandwich list. That list goes:
1. Mayonnaise
2. Pickles
3. Onion
4. Tomato
5. Any combination of 1-4 (Note: I completely avoided cole slaw and sauerkraut as those are too obvious)
Now, lettuce is also a good way to ruin a sandwich, but a sandwich with lettuce on it is usually not irreparable, though shredded lettuce does mean a bit more work in clearing the sandwich. When it is cleared though, there is usually not much hint that lettuce was ever on the sandwich, unlike onions. Everything else is on the list because it leaves behind some sort of liquid which ruins the sandwich. This list should not be construed as "complete". It only covers the most common mistakes I have encountered in sandwiches.

For a sandwich so nearly perfectly suited for The Newtster, it is sad that I can probably count the number of times I have had a Cuban sandwich on two hands. The Mid-Atlantic region, where I have spent nearly all of my life, just isn't the hotbed of Cuban sandwiches and I was too young to get into them when we lived in South Florida for a few years. The first time I can recall encountering this wonderful creation was at a Cuban restaurant in Virginia Beach. One of my good friends in high school was of Cuban descent, her parents having come to the United States like so many others to escape the Castro regime. I went to dinner with them one night to try a new place simply called 'Havana'. As luck would have it, before we even ordered, her parents discovered that they were from the same place in Cuba as the waiter and knew his parents back in Cuba. It made the evening much more special for them. What made the evening the most special for me though was the ridiculously delicious sandwich my friend suggested for me. That was probably 1997 or 1998.

Over the next decade, I haven't had much of a chance to have Cuban sandwiches. I have had a couple here and there, but those times are few and far between. Then, in the middle of 2008, my Mom told me about an article in Garden & Gun magazine called 'Death By Cuban Sandwich'. It's a great article from a great magazine and it created a strong desire for me to have a Cuban sandwich, a desire which has gone unfulfilled until now. After watching numerous CSI: Miami re-runs this past weekend and learning that the Wake Forest basketball team will be losing....errrr..... playing in Miami to start the NCAA tournament at the end of this week, I determined that the time was right to attempt to make this simple sandwich for myself.

The start to any good Cuban sandwich is Cuban bread. Perfect. I can't get any here in DC. Cuban bread is apparently similar in nature to French bread, except it is made with lard for added moisture. Knowing that I could not get any Cuban bread, I settled on two nice loaves of French bread from Harris Teeter.

The next ingredient is yellow mustard. That's easy. After the mustard comes ham. My choice of ham happened to be the variety of Virginia baked ham that was on sale in the grocery store. I probably should have gone with some sort of glazed ham for sweetness but the baked ham was just fine.
Next comes the roasted pork. Based upon some research, one way to prepare Cuban roasted pork is by marinating the meat in a mojo sauce. After seeking out some recipes, I discovered that Goya makes a Mojo Criollo sauce. I bought a small pork shoulder (just under 2.5 lbs), poked numerous holes in it with a fork, and marinated it for a few hours in the Goya mojo. Let me tell you, the sauce smells fantastic. If I had the foresight to marinate this thing overnight, it would have been better but it still gave the pork a nice flavor, at least on the outside. I roasted it in a 350° oven for 30 minutes per pound and it came out nice and tender. Unfortunately a lot of the meat was darker and fatty but it did yield a good amount of tender meat for the sandwiches.

After the roasted pork comes the Swiss cheese. Again, I went with what was on sale, which was Finlandia. Traditional Cuban sandwiches, as I mentioned earlier, are topped with pickles. I did actually buy some hamburger dill chips for Julia's sandwich since I knew she wouldn't mind them. After some more mustard on the top piece of bread, the sandwich was complete.

The last step in preparing a Cuban sandwich is toasting it in a sandwich press. While we don't own one of these, we do own a George Forman Lean Mean Fat Reducing Grilling Machine. Close enough. I brushed some butter on both the top and bottom pieces of bread and put it in the Forman, pressing down on the top to collapse the bread and toast it faster. After five minutes or so, the bread was toasted and the cheese was all melted.

The result came out pretty nicely. To accompany the sandwich, I finally bought a mandolin slicer and prepared some fresh baked potato chips in the oven. We were both pleased with the results.