Good eats, diner-style

Whatever happened to the hot sandwich?

You know the type: roast beef, turkey, or chicken piled in between two squares of squishy Texas bread, smothered with hot brown gravy that probably came from a can or started as a powder. Add a mound of mashed potato and peas on the side and you’ve got yourself good eats, diner-style.

I consume gravy maybe twice a year: at the Thanksgiving feast and again on Christmas day, where we gather around Craig’s mother’s table over turkey (which is fondly referred to as “the frozen fucker” because it’s a Butterball cooked from frozen), green bean casserole, turnip puff, my “diet potatoes” (they are anything but: potatoes, butter, cream, cream cheese, shredded cheddar), and a boat of gravy.

I missed out on the feast this year because I was sick. Now that I’m feeling better, I can’t get gravy out of my head.

So this is the day I make the hot chicken sandwich—something I’ve only eaten in a diner.

A hot chicken sandwich should be the easiest meal you ever make. Break down a rotisserie chicken, buy a can of St. Hubert gravy, pile onto bread.

That is a perfectly acceptable way to approach the hot chicken sandwich, but today I am trying to impress. So I’m going to make everything but the bread from scratch. Every step of the way, there are decisions to be made:

The bread base: A good Pullman loaf would be excellent but that feels a bit too high brow for the hot chicken sandwich. Here I decide to stay true to the diner treatment. I walk 12 minutes downhill to our market strip in search of bread we don’t allow in this household—a loaf of thick Texas bread. Why is Texas bread forbidden in our household? Because you might just decide to wake up in the morning and whip up a toasted Texas slathered with Cheez Whiz.

Oh, would you look at that:

So, because I was sick, we are making exceptions this week.

Now that the bread has been decided upon, what about the gravy? I never make the gravy, so why would I start now? Especially since I have a perfectly good can of St. Hubert gravy stashed away for “emergencies”.

But I’m writing a food blog now and, at least occasionally, I need to impress. So today, I present you with Hennessy’s Homemade Gravy: chicken drippings, a roux of flour, butter, and chicken stock, fresh sage leaves, and a hint of fresh apple cider. Crack some pepper and call it a success.

Craig’s on gravy duty, because that’s his jam, and he executes it perfectly, with the help of a strainer.

Now that the gravy decision is made, it presents another problem: what type of chicken treatment? The grocery store on the corner sells a good rotisserie chicken and if I wasn’t trying to impress, I’d go with that option. The BBQ joint two blocks up makes the most amazing smoked chicken that I have ever had. Now that would make a star of the hot chicken sandwich.

But with either choice, how do I make gravy without chicken drippings?

I decide to roast a couple of large chicken breasts, bone-in and skin on for flavour. Two of them fit into our Pyrex casserole dish, so game on.

A little olive oil, salt and pepper on those breasts and roast at 350 F for 40 minutes. At the 40-minute mark, I add a couple of ladles of chicken stock and tent with foil for the final round (10 minutes or more). This keeps the chicken moist and that stock will add depth to my drippings, since I’m not doing a whole chicken in a roasting pan.

It’s starting to smell really good in here, so it’s time to think about what goes with our hot chicken sandwich. At the diner, I distinctly recall a mound of basic mashed potatoes and green peas. So we are going full diner-style.

I boil red-skinned new potatoes because that’s what I have and I like to see the red skins in the mash. Once tender, they’re drained, mashed, and kissed with a tablespoon of butter, a splash of cream, salt and pepper. Using an ice cream scoop, I scoop a mound of the mash onto the plate.

I couldn’t find peas at the store; not even in the freezer section. But they had corn, and that felt diner-style, so that got boiled, drained, bathed in a teaspoon of butter, and sprinkled with kosher salt.

Now, to build the sandwich: bread down; generous chunks of chicken piled on the bread; capped with a bread lid; gravy pooled on top. And you know what’s the star of the show. Nothing can compete with gravy.

A sprinkle of chopped chives because you’re always supposed to have something green on the plate, even on a hot chicken sandwich.

And there you have it. The most diner-style meal I have ever made in my life. Yes, the bread and gravy are added calories and we’re just starting out in January, the detox month. But one of us is going to the gym this month, and by that I mean you.

Trish Hennessy