Good old sandwich

 Decades later granny’s egg sandwiches are essential to any journey and give early anticipation to holiday promise. Sandwiches are surely the ultimate convenience finger food and appear in many guises all over the world.
Many of us have heard the story of the Earl of Sandwich who reportedly on an all night gambling binge, too busy or preoccupied to get up and eat, asked his valet to bring him meat tucked into two pieces of bread. Fellow gamblers following suit called for the ‘same as Sandwich’. So mid 18th Century the name entered our lexicon.
Bread has been used to mop up food and sauce for centuries. From the trenchers of the middle ages where the slice of bread was both plate and utensil, to the flatbreads of the East used as wraps for meats, grains and vegetables comes the modern sandwich with all its forms and fillings.
Sandwiches were introduced to the USA in 1840 and by the 1900s, with the introduction of pre- sliced bread, were becoming an American institution. For years descriptions of American sandwiches intrigued me – food like pastrami on rye or toasted bagels with cream cheese – consumed by East Coast cops on stakeouts seemed very exotic to someone who had never encountered bagels nor breads like rye or pumpernickel never mind pastrami and pickles!  
Closer to home sandwiches are a coffee shop standby. In the run up to HIFA I enjoyed possibly the best toasted sandwich at the Gallery Café. A melting mixture of soft mozzarella cheese, fresh chillie and marjoram leaves on homemade wholewheat bread it was amazing value at US$3. The Butcher’s Kitchen offering (US$5) was a different story.  Soft sliced bread was doughy and barely browned, cheese was processed sliced and accompanying chips were soggy and not quite cooked inside. Open for a few months now in Borrowdale, TBK looks impressive and the menu possibilities promising but that first visit was disappointing in spite of a good cappuccino.
Trying out the HIFA opera gala for the first time we resorted to homemade and took with us a picnic of smoked salmon sandwiches on thinly cut rye bread accompanied by a soft goat’s cheese (direct from France – courtesy of visitors!)
Many years ago Moscow introduced me to opera – when I explored that completely foreign city through her music offerings and experienced opera in stark huge halls as well as baroque theatres dripping with gilt and velvet. At the end of each performance vast quantities of flowers would be thrown onto the stage as offerings to the performers – so many that performers and piano seemed to be drowning in flowers. I understood very little about the music then and mostly opera was sung in languages I didn’t understand, but the drama and emotion were irresistible.
Opera evening at HIFA is a much lighter affair with neither dead bodies nor banks of flowers     littering the stage. Opera – combining theatre, story and music – has been around for centuries and like the circus has the ability to touch a primal nerve in most of us whatever our culture. For an hour we were guided through romantic excerpts from an array of popular operas by five wonderful American singers.
Glorious clear weather blessed HIFA – and the main stage enjoys a lovely setting against a backdrop of city buildings framed by tall palm trees with not enough electric light to obscure bright stars and a half moon.
Wine and smoked salmon sandwiches complementing the opera made for an enjoyable window into another world.
– g.jeke@yahoo.com