turkey avocado sando

a.k.a. the mount auburn (IYKYK)

I spent a considerable amount of time in Boston in my early 20s. I bounced around between summer internships, restaurant hostessing gigs and fulfilling credits that I should have completed in college. I never ate out at restaurants while I lived there, particularly not the one I worked at. If I wasn’t cooking my meals or snacking on Trader Joe’s trail mix, I was frequenting sandwich and pizza joints. Ask me for Boston area food recs and I’ll point you to Ernesto's in the North End for a slice of the Bianco or to Mike and Patty’s for their Fancy breakfast sandwich. Or, if we could travel back in time, to the now-closed Darwin’s.

Darwin’s, a Cambridge cafe with two locations in the outskirts of Harvard Square, was the kind of place where you could rely on your favourite item never leaving the menu; the sandwich board never changed, the same salads reliably greeted you from the display case. I still dream, more than a decade later, of their sandwiches. They had a good prosciutto and mozzarella number, a solid pastrami. But the reason I kept returning, time and again, was for the turkey sandwich of my dreams: turkey, avocado, swiss, tomato, mayo and some kind of balsamic dressing or glaze on whole wheat. The bread was fresh, the avocado perfectly ripe. The tang of balsamic played opposite the richness of avocado and mayonnaise.

You see, deli sandwiches are important to me. My mom in particular approached sandwiches with a seriousness usually reserved for French cuisine; from the quality of the deli meat, to the technique for sandwich construction. She wasn’t an incredible cook but boy, did she know how to sling a mean sandwich. She knew to apply mayo liberally, when to reach for the dijon versus squeezing out some French’s and that you should always add more cheese. She knew that in a bind, salad dressing makes a great flavour enhancer. We had choose-you-own-adventure sandwiches at home, with a variety of deli meats and cheeses; sometimes we had a batch of tuna or egg salad in the mix. Every now and then, when she was especially craving good deli, we would make a pilgrimage over to Pete’s in Eastlake. A sandwich counter at the back of a small neighbourhood market, it was the only place that scratched her itch for the New Haven delis she frequented as a child.

Ordering a sandwich at a deli counter is a luxury; yes, of course you could make the same thing yourself at home. But in practice? It rarely happens. Most of my favourite deli classics (hot pastrami, reuben, Italian) are tricky to recreate at home unless you have access to high-quality pastrami, or an inventory of different types of salami and other pig-derived deli meats to hand. This sandwich is a pleasant exception; the ingredients are easy to source and many of them may well be in your fridge/pantry already. The construction is straightforward and you can have a reasonable deli-style sandwich on your plate for lunch in the space of 5 minutes. 

For fellow Darwin's devotees, this sandwich may have an extra dose of flavour from the nostalgia factor. But to the uninitiated, this is still a darn tasty sandwich and I reckon you’ll make it again. 

Note: Please do not omit the balsamic dressing - not balsamic vinegar, balsamic dressing - the sweet acidity is essential to the overall flavour of the sandwich, but creating an oil and vinegar emulsion coats the bread in a much more appealing way than vinegar alone, which will just run straight through the bread to the opposite side. Any store-bought balsamic dressing will do, but if you don’t have any to hand you can easily whip up a small batch of it at home (recipe for dressing included below).

serves one very hungry adult, or two for a light lunch

Ingredients

• 2 slices whole wheat bread

• 4 slices turkey  (~80 grams or 3 ounces)

• ½ avocado, thinly sliced lengthwise

• 1 vine tomato, thinly sliced

• 2 slices swiss/emmental cheese

• ½ tablespoon mayonnaise

• ½ tablespoon balsamic dressing (store-bought or homemade*; if you want to make it yourself, see below for a simple version)

*for the balsamic dressing (this will make more than you need for the sandwich, but you can save to use for a salad later on, or for future sandwiches):

• 2 tablespoons olive oil

• 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

• ½ teaspoon salt

• ¼ teaspoon oregano

Method

1. If making balsamic dressing: place vinegar, oil, salt and oregano in a small cup or bowl. Whisk vigorously with a whisk or fork until uniform. 

2. Spread one slice of bread with mayonnaise. 

3. Spread a second slice of bread with ½ tablespoon of balsamic dressing. 

4. Place turkey sliced on top of balsamic slice; add a layer of cheese; spread avocado slices over the cheese.

5. Just before ready to serve, place 3-4 tomato slices over avocado and close with mayonnaise slice (mayo side down). 

6. Slice sandwich in half widthwise. 

7. Serve immediately.