I mentioned a little over a week ago, that there was going to be another “Is My Blog Burning?” event whose theme was to be the Tartine. “A tartine is a popular Parisian dish, in which different ingredients are arranged and served on a slice of bread — a sort of open-faced sandwich if you will — usually on a bed of greens,” according to Clotilde. Well, today is the day.
This particular event has seemed to me to be much like the battles on Iron Chef: talented cooks thrown a curve ball and trying to make a hit. I had no idea what a Tartine was. Even given an explanation with photographs I was still at a total loss. Ultimately I decided to employ the philosophy put forward by George Polya in his work How to Solve It.
If you can’t solve a problem, then there is an easier problem you can solve: find it. — George Polya
On Iron Chef, when confronted with an unfamiliar theme, the chefs look to their own culture for inspiration. So I started by looking at the problem and trying to put it into the context of my culture. Here is the problem:
Originally, “tartine” means a slice of bread, toasted or not, with something spread on it, usually eaten for breakfast : butter (tartine beurrée), jam (tartine de confiture), cheese (tartine de fromage)…
For a few years now, the concept of tartine has been recycled into an easy but delicious main dish : one or two slices of bread on which ingredients are laid, creating a sort of open-faced sandwich. [Clotilde]
So the problem is actually quite simple: Create a main dish that consists of ingredients laid on bread.
I looked at the etymology of tartine as beginning as a breakfast food and thought about what my experience was with breakfasts of ingredients laid on bread. I first thought about Eggs Benedict. I thought about a favorite variation of them called Eggs Maryland which substitutes crab meat for the Canadian bacon. I thought about Welsh Rarebit. Finally I thought about recipe number 210 from the 1910 Manual for Army Cooks, Creamed Chipped Beef on Toast (alias Shit on a Shingle). However, none of those seemed appropriate, but they did get me thinking.
I realized that I did have experience with ingredients laid on bread — regardless of whether they be tartines. I needed to somehow tie my entry in to my culture. My mother always said that the most American dish is Thanksgiving dinner — roast turkey, dressing, mashed potatoes, gravy, all kinds of good stuff — but the best part is the leftovers. I had found my inspiration.
My entry would be this: tartine à la dinde chaud avec sauce (somebody check my French) — an open faced hot turkey sandwich with gravy on a slice of home made bread — an old family favorite — with roasted winter root vegetables on the side — a fringe benefit of our visit to Tait Farm the other day.
There are only two of us in our household and a good sized turkey will easily feed many more but Gretchen and I do not let that stop us from enjoying roast turkey. Whenever we roast one, we carve the whole bird at once and make up freezer bags containing about two cups of mixed turkey chunks. That way, whenever we want to make a dish like this, we can just thaw out a bag and we have instant roast turkey. To go with our instant roast turkey, we make instant gravy. In a sauce pan, take a little “better than bullion” chicken base, water, stock if you have it, sherry, corn starch, and poof… instant gravy. Take the now-thawed turkey pieces and add them to the saucepan and let them warm up in the gravy. Make up your favorite hearty bread, toasted if you prefer, and lay out a slice or two as a base and then spoon the hot turkey and gravy over it.
The roasted vegetables are based on Delia’s Oven-roasted Winter Vegetables using parsnip, butternut squash, rutabaga, potato, carrot, onion, and celeriac.