High Tea with Cucumber Sandwiches

This is as English as it gets. High Tea is typically served between 4pm and 6pm, and it's a nice way to snack before dinner and also get a light caffeine kick. Usually it's served with cake or pastries, but I like my high tea with another English staple; the cucumber sandwich. It might sound simple, which it is, but it's very delicate, filling, and the perfect accompaniment to tea. Yesterday I stopped by my favorite patisserie in Palo Alto, called La Baguette (I think they recently opened one in Glendale) and got a loaf of white sandwich bread. It's unbelievably fresh, baked with delicate hands minutes before its sold, it's absolutely perfect for the sandwich. 

The sandwich: 

It's probably the easiest thing you'll ever make. Really the most important component is the bread. If you're all about gluten free, flax seed nonsense, you're never EVER going to make a proper cucumber sandwich. It has to be country-style white bread. Period. Not even sourdough will suffice. Crusts on, and stick it in the toaster. IMPORTANT: Do not toast all the way, it should still be soft with just a touch of crunch around the edges. You are not making morning toast. Next, butter each piece until fully coated, again, if watching the calories you don't have to slather it on there, a light layer will do. Slice the cucumbers not into perfectly round slices but into diagonal slices so they are easier to eat in between the bread. Lightly salt with coast sea salt and put on about two layers, then again take a few leaves of parsley, not too many and cover with the other piece of bread. Cut diagonally (although the traditional English way would be to cut straight down the middle but that's how I prefer it) and enjoy! 

The English Tea:

I don't know why people are so scared by making a proper cup of English tea, they are very intimidated about it, because it has to be served and prepared a certain way but the truth being it's actually a very simple process. I lived in the UK for a year, and there's only one way to serve tea. They do not have an array of different teas to choose from at the store like we do over here, there's only one kind of tea and that's what they sell. To them, it's called 'tea' to us, it typically goes by the label 'English Breakfast'. It's basically light black tea. It's not bold, it's very mellow, but very good tasting. I brewed some Yorkshire Harrogate which I picked up while in the UK but honestly some Tazo 'Awake' or any brand of 'English Breakfast' will suffice. Let it sit, do not at sugar. 

The proper way to drink tea is how you take it once it's brewed. It's important to take tea with milk, not half and half, not heavy cream, and not skim...Milk and only milk. So have that at the ready, then a couple of sugar cubes, depending how much you prefer, you can always decline the sugar, but never the milk. Usually you would drink the tea out of a very small and delicate tea cup so watch it with how much sugar you put in so that it's not Southern Style Sweet Tea. Mix gently and enjoy. If you really want to get into character, pinky's out, tea spoon resting on the tea coaster, and nibble on, don't chew your sandwich. 

Bon Appetite!

Summer Potato Salad with Parsley

A perfect accompaniment to sweet tea is a light starch-based salad. People always think of potato salad as being grainy, heavy, and too dressed. And that doesn't have to be the case. The key to a good potato salad is cooking the potatoes correctly. They should be almost undercooked. Right when the begin to soften, stick either the sharp part of a thin knife or a wooden stick to see if you can stick it all the way through if you can, immediately take the boiled potatoes off the heat and shock them into cold water. Try to cook them without the skin as that will release all of that grainy mess and make them less starchy. To accent the heaviness of the potatoes you want to use fresh spring ingredients like onion and parsley. Parsley is such a godsend, it tends to perk up any dish. It's up there with my three favorite herbs next to thyme and dill, and has a quality of freshness that can clean up even the densest and heaviest of dishes. Also, it's good for breath and garnish. 

So basically break off about 20 stems of parsley off a bushel and slice up half of a yellow onion (yellow is better for eating raw than a white onion, it tends to be not as acidic). Mix the two together and once you've chopped up your perfectly boiled potatoes (3-4) add them all together. 

The other ingredient I like to put in just for silky texture is about 2-3 hard boiled eggs, but you don't have to. The flavors go really well, and when dressing something with mayonaisse, like this salad it is always good to have some kind of egg component. Boil the eggs for roughly 15 minutes until hard but not overboiled to where they are green. Chop finely and add to the mixture. 

Now my favorite part, the dressing. Most people dress potato salad with mayonnaise perhaps a dash of paprika, and in most cases yellow mustard which I find beyond disgusting. My secret ingredient is Lowensenf Mustard that you can buy at any European market. It's imported Bavarian mustard that I first tried at Schmidt's perhaps the most authentic German restaurant in California on Folsom street in San Francisco. It is to die for. It is sweet, a little bit tangy, and full-flavored with just the right amount of crunch from the mustard seeds. A heavy dollop of that with two tablespoon fulls of mayonnaise, as well as a generous amount of seasoning with kosher salt (or preferably pink Himalayan salt) and fresh ground pepper and you're ready to mix until the salad is evenly coated. Serve on a piece of rye or pumpernickel toasted bread and a glass of sweet tea. It's the perfect light lunch for the hot weather.