Silly Sandwich

On Friday's All Things Considered, there was a piece announcing the results of a listener recipe contest. The winner was an odd sandwich called Diane's Dad's Summer Sandwich. I couldn't get it out of my head all weekend, so I bought all the ingredients for it while I was at the grocery store this afternoon.

The sandwich contains crunchy peanut butter, sweet onion, cucumber, tomato and sharp cheddar cheese, in that order, bottom to top, on whole grain bread.

The order, according to the recipe submitter and the NPR hosts, is paramount — the sandwich supposedly isn't as good with the ingredients in a different order.

I made one for dinner (along with an arugula salad).

Was it magical? No. But it was very, very good.

While I was eating it, I remembered that White Trash Cooking (actually an amazing tome, scholarly and warm) has a recipe for peanut butter and Vidalia onion sandwiches. Apparently the peanut butter-onion sandwich was a favorite of Ernest Hemingway, too. So that's an established flavor combo.

Then I remembered a piece I wrote about strange Southern sandwiches several years ago -- and how good many of them were. Banana-mayonnaise, peanut butter-pickle, canned pineapple-American cheese.

The crunch of the cucumbers, peanut butter and onion in the NPR sandwich was very satisfying. And the cheese does bring a nice salty roundness to the whole thing. Cheese and peanut butter together make for a very filling sandwich, though — almost too much.

Were I to make it again, I'd put a super-thin layer of mayonnaise on the top slice of bread, and I'd salt the tomato. Sriracha would also go well in there.

But I think rather than duplicating it, I might experiment with some other peanut butter-vegetable sandwiches. Maybe add a hardboiled egg for a different kind of protein.