Jason M. Jones

Saturday night’s meal turned into a collaboration the moment I left the produce store. I didn’t make any rules against collaboration, nor did I consciously intend to collaborate, but when I got back home, I realized I had forgotten the bread. Ordinarily this wouldn’t have been a huge deal. The produce store is, after all, right across the street. But it was doing that half-rain/half-snow thing, and it was disgusting outside. I didn’t exactly want to run back out in the storm. “Why don’t we make bread?” My wife suggested, and for a moment, I just stared at her like the neanderthal I sometimes become when I’m otherwise distracted. “What?” I said. “You know, bread machine, thing that sits here on the edge of the kitchen table? Thing you bought me for Christmas a few years back. It does make bread.” Oh, right!

I was a bit daunted by the idea of making the baguettes, but Kristine looked up a fairly simple recipe. We combined the ingredients together. Put them in the bread machine and, as they say, voila: an hour or so later, we had dough. Kristine showed me how to roll it out and cut it up, and we put it aside to let it rise. After another 40 minutes, it rose, and we popped it in the oven, and cooked up two smaller rolls before deciding we should use the last of the dough for one bigger baguette. Now, I’m a sucker for fresh-baked bread. I can remember wandering around Paris through Montmarte taking bites off a roll I’d bought that morning. Or stopping by Sacrcone’s in South Philly before heading to work and tearing off pieces of a seeded roll on my way to work, trying to think myself back to Montmarte. Fresh-baked bread is one of the most magnificent things in the world. And I’m pretty sure it made all the difference with this sandwich. Or almost all the difference.

Let’s not detract from how good a few slices of provolone slathered atop portobello mushrooms sautéed in olive oil and balsamic vinegar on a bed of broccoli rabe and roasted red peppers can be. Again, I had the help of Kristine roasting the red peppers on the grill out back. I then had to look up how to trim the broccoli rabe online and found this video, which I find charming for some reason. Ultimately the recipe, while time consuming, resulted in an amazing sandwich. We hadn’t exactly been snowed in, but it was such a dreary day that we needed something this good at the end of it just to remind us of the finer things in life. It’s funny that this wasn’t a recipe I’d found in any book or searched out online, but one I had caught my aunt “liking” on Facebook. The description sounded delicious and the picture looked even better. This is 100% something I’ll be making again. As long as I have the time to make the rolls fresh beforehand. Once you’ve had one of these on a roll that’s only been out of the oven for an hour, there’s no way you’d want to do them anyway else. As Kristine even said when she finished, “Thank you. That was a real treat,” which I’ll take as some of the highest praise my cooking can garner.