"This one tastes like a pickle had an accident."
That was Nico, age five, on version two of our pie iron Cuban sandwich, and it was not a compliment. Over three fires this winter we made four versions of a Cuban in our pie irons, and the kids rated every one. They're honest critics. They don't care that I'm the cook.
The setup
A pie iron is two small cast-iron pans on long handles that clamp together over a fire. Ours are two square Rome pie irons, $27 each. You butter the outside of two slices of bread, put the filling between them, close the iron, trim whatever sticks out and hold it over the coals. A few minutes later you have a hot, pressed sandwich, which is basically the whole idea of a Cuban.
A proper Cuban in Dana's family is ham, roast pork, Swiss cheese, pickles and yellow mustard on Cuban bread, pressed flat and hot. No salami. Salami is how they do it in Tampa, and at Dana's parents' house that's a sentence you only say once. Our roast pork usually comes from Marisol, who makes more than she needs on purpose, and when it doesn't, from the Publix deli.
The four versions
Version one: the classic, on Cuban bread. We made this at Long Pine Key in January. Cuban bread is long and thin and a pie iron is square, so I cut the loaf into chunks, split them and shaved off some of the crust so the iron would close. It didn't, quite. The crust was great and crackly, but the cheese never fully melted because the iron was propped open. Maya: "Good but chewy." Nico: "The bread fought me."
Version two: sandwich bread. Plain white sandwich bread, buttered outside, all the classic fillings. The iron closed perfectly and the cheese melted in four minutes. But soft bread gets soggy where it touches the pickles, and in a closed iron the pickle juice has nowhere to go. Hence the accident.
Version three: the medianoche. A medianoche is the same sandwich on a soft, slightly sweet egg bread. At Blue Spring in February, my first one was black on both sides in about 90 seconds, because I held it in the flames instead of over the coals and the sugar in the bread scorched. My fault entirely. The second one, cooked patiently over coals, came out golden, with the cheese melted right into the ham. Maya ate hers and half of mine.
Version four: "the Nico." Invented at our backyard fire pit on a Sunday night this month. Ham and Swiss only, on the sweet bread. No pork ("too much meat," he said, which no grown-up in Dana's family has ever said), no pickles, no mustard. It's a ham and cheese sandwich. He named it after himself and ate two.
The vote
We held the official ranking at the kitchen table with paper ballots, because Maya insisted on paper ballots. The results:
- The medianoche, cooked over coals. Both kids voted for it. Nico wrote "no pickls" on his ballot as an amendment.
- The Nico. One vote. Guess whose.
- The classic on Cuban bread. Dana's and my favorite, which counted for nothing.
- Sandwich bread. Retired.
How we make them now
Coals, never flames, and we turn the iron about every minute. Four to five minutes total, opening it once to peek. Mustard goes on both slices, cheese goes against both slices so it glues everything together, and the pickles go in the middle where they can't soak the bread. The kids build their own sandwiches at the table, and only grown-ups handle the irons, because the handles are long and the iron gets hot enough to brand a log. We open them over a plate with a fork and give them a minute to cool, which is the hardest minute of the evening for Nico.
Each sandwich comes out to about $2 in ingredients, and the smell of butter browning on cast iron over a fire might be my favorite smell at camp, right after Dana's coffee.
Curry Hammock is this week. The sweet bread is already in the food bin, along with an extra stick of butter, because I've learned that lesson too.
