Lunch: The Best Of Starch-On-Starch
Hopefully you've perused our super-easy guide to not screwing up Valentine's Day. But if you're going to make it through tomorrow, no matter what your relationship status, you're going to need your strength. I'm not talking about stuffing a few potato chips in your sandwich and calling it a carbo load. I'm talking about putting starch on, or in, another form of starch and calling it lunch.
Eating a few potato tacos is one of my favorite ways to force myself to include some physical activity into my day (hand me that bucket over there so I can store all this romance). Plus they're vegetarian, cheap, easy to make and are a near-perfect vehicle for your favorite hot sauce. Along those lines, but slightly less delicious, is the chip butty. England's answer to the constant shortage of carbohydrates in their traditional food is fries piled high between two slices of buttered white bread and annointed with ketchup or sweet and tangy HP Sauce.
The Japanese have a proprietary mix of starches that beats the hell out of spaghetti tacos. It's called the yakisoba sandwich — chewy noodles fried in soy sauce stuffed into a hot dog bun. I credit this sandwich entirely to why Japanese people are so good at Ninja Warrior. Egyptians love their koshary, too — a mix of spiced rice, macaroni and lentils. We are clearly not alone in this world when it comes to an unabashed love of carbs.
Grilled macaroni and cheese sandwiches have been popping up all over the place. I have to shout out LA's Grilled Cheese Truck for distributing grilled mac and short rib sandwiches all over Southern California since 2009, but the more places serving this hot mess the better. Plus, although cavatappi with fontina and veggies on herbed foccacia sounds awesome, if all you have in the house is a box of Kraft and a loaf of sandwich bread, you're solid.
If pasta with potatoes sounds weird (and it shouldn't, it's delicious), you might not appreciate the ultimate sandwich that is a corned beef hash sub. Many delis will make this for you if they can see you're clearly hungover. And If you really want to add insult to injury by indulging your sweet tooth at the same time, we'll leave this recipe for sweet potato pancakes right here — that would be pancakes with mashed sweet potato cooked in — and you can do with it what you will. If you're on a low-carb diet, I apologize fairly insincerely for today's column. You may also want to skip over tomorrow's, in which we discuss leftover champagne and deli sandwich pairings.