I did promise I’d be making simple recipes, and this is about as simple as it gets…
My love for this combination started during my pregnancy when, after the first 22 weeks passed and I could return to eating something that wasn’t pasta with peas and butter or plain pasta or ravioli (morning sickness was intense over here!), I was craving a baguette I’d had in the city a few times.
I couldn’t remember exactly what was in it beyond eggs, pickles and Swiss cheese - the Swiss cheese was firmest in my memory as before pregnancy I absolutely despised Swiss cheese in any form from anywhere. Suddenly, as pregnancy goes, I HAD to have as much Swiss cheese as possible. And I wanted it with mayonnaise.
Enter my new almost-daily pregnancy lunch, as still regularly enjoyed lunch to this day - my Egg, Pickle and Swiss Cheese Roll.
Egg, Pickle & Swiss Cheese Roll.
It’s a very simple combination but incredibly delicious (trust me). It doesn’t really warrant a true written recipe, but here are the key elements;
- Crusty but soft bread (I like a french stick or baguette best and find sourdough too strong for it).
- 1 tbsp of Kewpie Mayonnaise to every 1 hard boiled egg. I use one egg per person and season with salt.
- Sweet Sandwich Pickles (I use ‘Sandwich Stackers’ from the supermarket - it doesn’t taste the same with the lower-sugar pickles)
- Good quality Swiss Cheese (I use Jarlsberg and love to buy the slices, even through they’re infinitely more expensive, I find something strangely luxurious about pre-sliced cheese).
- Lashings of good quality, unsalted butter (I’ve been using Mainland Buttersoft spreadable butter for years, but any good butter will do the trick - just don’t be shy with it, it’s important here!).
How you layer it is really your business, but I go butter-egg-pickles-cheese. I’m always hesitant to recommend how to layer a sandwich/roll/burger as my hubby worked at McDonald’s as a first job and used to correct me on how I layered things when we first started living together over a decade ago. But I do find the butter stops the egg soaking into the bread if you do happen to be packing it up for a picnic, and the cheese stops the pickles on top. So it works for me.
I can’t offer a variation on this sandwich as I believe this is perfect as it is. But if egg, pickles or kewpie aren’t your thing, maybe it’s not the recipe for you.
However if Swiss Cheese isn’t your thing, I’d still encourage you to give it a go. Especially if you’re pregnant…
Nat x