Entry tags:
Unpopular opinion time!
Chicken cordon bleu is a sammich.
For a long time, a sandwich was defined as two slices of bread with some sort of filling in between. Maybe these were layers of meat and cheese, maybe smears of peanut butter and/or jelly, but the fact that there were two slices of bread to enclose the filling characterized this food. This made for a more portable, easy-to-handle meal, and I'm sure the cost of the ingredients was often cheaper in terms of leaving the consumer feeling full when compared to a meal with fewer carbohydrates.
Historically, open-faced sandwiches had been a thing for quite a long time. Bread had been used in the Western world as a sort of plate, usually when it was more stale. (The bead, not the Western world. Though one might argue that it's been stale for a long time.) Other cultures had their own type of bread, such as the tortilla, pita, and naan, and would get their own name as a completed meal item. As a Taco Bell connoisseur, I will say that the Breakfast Crunchwrap is incredibly fantastic for so many reasons. I can drive to work on Saturday morning and eat with one hand and have the other hand on the wheel.
Carbs aren't the only options for wrapping the fillings. Lettuce has been popular in Asian countries for a long time and this trend has become international. People with celiac disease often prefer to avoid the strain gluten puts on their systems (for good reason), and using a healthy vegetable substitute for bread may be preferable to many other offerings. A common complaint is that the bread-like substitutes are often poor imitations and don't deliver a comparable taste or feel, while often being more expensive. There's also a huge concern over contamination: Airborne gluten from other dishes made on nearby equipment can negate the benefit of getting specially made food. At one camp, I enjoyed being the Butter Guard, so that anyone who used a knife in the butter tub, then touched that knife to a piece of bread, would be stopped from dipping back into the butter tub with that same knife. Other breadless options began to be explored, as entire businesses were started that avoided the use of gluten. Some of this was in response to the plight of those dealing with the disease, while others cashed in on the imagination of the hypochondriacs. In 2010, KFC launched the Double Down in the United States. This was a sandwich with fried chicken instead of bread. This changed the landscape of sandwiches for ever.
This brings us neatly back to the cordon bleu. One interesting feature of the sandwich is that the number of sandwiches created can only ever be integers. A single slice of bread can either make an open-faced sandwich, or be folded in half to create a smaller sandwich. A cordon bleu wraps a piece of meat around a cheesy filling, then cooks the entire assembly. Thus, a chicken cordon bleu is basically a grilled cheese sammich, using the KFC Double Down Postulate.
This thought brought to you by Stan Lee and Kat Rosenfield's A Trick of Light, in which some side characters argue about whether a hotdog is a sandwich or not, and my attempt at taking a nap before work. Offering a penny for my thoughts? Buyer beware! You might end up with something like this!
For a long time, a sandwich was defined as two slices of bread with some sort of filling in between. Maybe these were layers of meat and cheese, maybe smears of peanut butter and/or jelly, but the fact that there were two slices of bread to enclose the filling characterized this food. This made for a more portable, easy-to-handle meal, and I'm sure the cost of the ingredients was often cheaper in terms of leaving the consumer feeling full when compared to a meal with fewer carbohydrates.
Historically, open-faced sandwiches had been a thing for quite a long time. Bread had been used in the Western world as a sort of plate, usually when it was more stale. (The bead, not the Western world. Though one might argue that it's been stale for a long time.) Other cultures had their own type of bread, such as the tortilla, pita, and naan, and would get their own name as a completed meal item. As a Taco Bell connoisseur, I will say that the Breakfast Crunchwrap is incredibly fantastic for so many reasons. I can drive to work on Saturday morning and eat with one hand and have the other hand on the wheel.
Carbs aren't the only options for wrapping the fillings. Lettuce has been popular in Asian countries for a long time and this trend has become international. People with celiac disease often prefer to avoid the strain gluten puts on their systems (for good reason), and using a healthy vegetable substitute for bread may be preferable to many other offerings. A common complaint is that the bread-like substitutes are often poor imitations and don't deliver a comparable taste or feel, while often being more expensive. There's also a huge concern over contamination: Airborne gluten from other dishes made on nearby equipment can negate the benefit of getting specially made food. At one camp, I enjoyed being the Butter Guard, so that anyone who used a knife in the butter tub, then touched that knife to a piece of bread, would be stopped from dipping back into the butter tub with that same knife. Other breadless options began to be explored, as entire businesses were started that avoided the use of gluten. Some of this was in response to the plight of those dealing with the disease, while others cashed in on the imagination of the hypochondriacs. In 2010, KFC launched the Double Down in the United States. This was a sandwich with fried chicken instead of bread. This changed the landscape of sandwiches for ever.
This brings us neatly back to the cordon bleu. One interesting feature of the sandwich is that the number of sandwiches created can only ever be integers. A single slice of bread can either make an open-faced sandwich, or be folded in half to create a smaller sandwich. A cordon bleu wraps a piece of meat around a cheesy filling, then cooks the entire assembly. Thus, a chicken cordon bleu is basically a grilled cheese sammich, using the KFC Double Down Postulate.
This thought brought to you by Stan Lee and Kat Rosenfield's A Trick of Light, in which some side characters argue about whether a hotdog is a sandwich or not, and my attempt at taking a nap before work. Offering a penny for my thoughts? Buyer beware! You might end up with something like this!