Australian Salad Sanga
The night of the big sandstorm in mid-July, I was at Rippers. Real Young & Lazy Horse was playing (@realyounglazyhorse). The wind suddenly picked up in fury! Within minutes, the sand was swirling, and the sky had turned to sand. It poured.
Someone suggested taking cover on my porch, the closest refuge, so we all made a run for it. It turned into one of those impromptu porch hangs that always seem to be better than planned parties. As the night went on, the conversation got weird, as late-night conversations so often do, and somehow we found ourselves talking about beets. The root vegetable. My friend Paige, an Aussie, mentioned that beet sandwiches are a classic Australian thing. Oh, I remember now. It came up because we were talking about Vegemite (there’s a column).
Sometimes the best recipes come from late-night weird conversations, sandstorms, and friends who come from the land down under.
Paige told us the ingredients of the traditional Australian Salad Sanga (as it’s called). We all listened intently with curiosity and excitement. The sandwich is: cheddar cheese, sliced canned beets, tomato, iceberg lettuce, and mayonnaise. What about the bread, someone shouted! It’s true, the bread is so important. Paige radically said, “It varies a lot! The very classic version that you would get from a deli – aka “milk bar” would often be on a white bread roll. But any type of bread is also normal. It’s very nice on a seeded white bread.”
According to sandwichtribunal.com (which has an amazing web design), some Salad Sanga Sandwiches also include carrots, cucumbers and alfalfa sprouts. The origins seem to date back to Gen-Xers’ childhood years, and the sandwich is now considered retro. The New York Times deemed the Salad Sanga almost extinct five years ago. But alas! It has had a resurgence, thanks to fancy vegetarian people in big cities across the globe. People in smaller, cuter cities with food trucks, one converted car repair shop in Sydney that The Guardian wrote about. And one middle-aged woman from Rockaway with a weekly column in The Wave. The rainbow veg-packed delight comeback comes with some ingredient variations such as fancy dill spreads, microgreens and pickled onion stuff. Fair.
A few weeks after the sandstorm, I was hungry. The porch / Paige / sandwich convo popped in my head like a happy kangaroo. I couldn’t quite remember every ingredient, so my friend Tom and I made our own version with sliced beets, Swiss cheese, arugula, cucumber, a drizzle of oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper, all piled onto hearty whole wheat Italian bread.
The takeaway? Beets belong on sandwiches. Their earthy sweetness pairs with salty cheese in the best way. The beets add just the right amount of moisture to a thick slice of bread too. This is a must-make, crunchy, sweet, and fresh vegetarian sandwich for all to try. Thank Paige and the summer sandstorm for this one!
Instagram: @theglorifiedtomato
