American Sandwich Project: Love, Porktually, Part 1

I have this very strange dream of cooking all the American sandwiches.  Why?  Because sandwiches are delicious, not horribly complicated, and they’re a great way to learn about the history and geography of the United States.  Old and new, East and West, North and South, red states and blue.  It’s a project I’ve set out to do several times and then been too broke or busy to follow through with it, but in this time of bubbles and divisiveness it seems like a noble cause.  After all, who can hate a sandwich?   They’re both yummy and apolitical.   Maybe sandwiches are just the thing we need to heal the rifts in our country and bring us together again – at a picnic table, in the sunshine, passing the napkins, talking about the things we all agree on.

Big T is tablespoon, small t is teaspoon, c is cup.

Note: this turned into the world’s longest sandwich article.  Thus I have broken this behemoth into two articles, both equally romantic and historical, not to mention delicious.

Ok, ok, the truth is I meant to have this article done for last Valentine’s Day, but I got all distracted with chickens and Game of Thrones, and never finished writing it even though I had all the recipes tested and 10,000 words about them sitting in the back of my brain, pacing around and chain smoking nervously.  But I basically HAVE to get it done now because I have a couple of other sandwich articles I also tested out the recipes for anxiously waiting inside my head.  One of them is revving its engine and the other is pawing the ground like an angry bull, so I gotta throw some sandwiches into your face stat or explode, leaving nothing but a smoldering pile of bad cliches behind.

So you may have seen the title of this piece and wondered how on earth pork can be romantic.  Let’s start off by visiting the City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia, to find out more.  

What?  Are you suggesting that bromances are anything less than hopelessly bromantic?  I beg to differ.  Brotherly love definitely still falls under the Valentine’s Day umbrella!  That’s why they make GI Joe themed Valentine’s, y’all!

Warning: Includes Tattoos

Please note, this box has 35 tattoos and only 34 valentines.  This is so that the sender can have a tattoo left over for themselves.  God Bless America! 

Speaking of, Philadelphia is, of course, that most American of cities, so it stands to reason I can wrest some very patriotic sandwiches out of it.  Hometown of Ben Franklin and Thomas Paine, site of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, location of the Liberty Bell, Philadelphia is, if not the heart of America, some really important body part, like the pancreas, or maybe the thyroid gland.  Founded by Quaker William Penn to be a place where civil rights – even those of Native Americans and Africans – were respected, Philadelphia was the site of the first organized protest against slavery in the New World, all the way back in 1688. 

Philadelphia is so All-American even card-carrying Brits have been driven to sing about it.  Look, it was the Bicentennial.  A lot of people were Bi-curious at that time.

https://youtu.be/q1oNWdrlWGo

A little known chapter of Philadelphia’s history was the War on Pigs.  Around the turn of the 20th century, environmentalists and developers, working hand in hand towards a common goal of screwing up the lives of poor people, decided that Philadelphia needed to “modernize” a section of South Philadelphia known as The Neck.  The Neck was a still-rural area of South Philly, that had grown up alongside the juncture of the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers.  Its proximity to the water rendered the swampy area, affectionately called, “The Maa’sh” – aka “marsh”, said with an adorable accent – rendered it largely useless for urban development.  This quirk of geography led to The Neck being full of farmers raising pigs, because in history cities actually contained neighborhoods in which human beings did things, instead of endless identical strip malls full of Sbarro Pizza and Foot Locker stores.  Now, these farmers had a deep love of the land, despite raising pigs upon it.  They thought they were not only living their best life while providing the people of the City of Philadelphia a valuable service.  We may quibble about the former, but the latter was entirely true, because these farmers not only raised food for Philadelphia’s many inhabitants, but also eliminated much of their garbage, which these clever pig farmers’ industrious children collected from throughout the city to feed to the pigs.  

A brief explanation for those who do not understand how pigs can live on garbage: in olden times, there was a lot less plastic garbage – as in, none, since plastic had not been invented – and everything that could be repurposed and reused, like old tin cans and glass bottles and wrapping paper, was.  This left mostly kitchen garbage.  To us, kitchen garbage generally entails some carrot peels and a couple eggshells, maybe some coffee grounds, which could never sustain a hungry pig.  But in the past, most families generated quite a lot of kitchen garbage since they had to cook, you know, like actual food instead of getting their meals delivered by Blue Apron and Door Dash.  Fortunately for all involved, pigs love to eat the castoff scraps of humanity, making this system a pretty neat way to get rid of an entire city’s waste products whilst turning it into something the city inhabitants could use.  Even better, the people who lived in The Neck also grew totally fantastic cabbages due to the effluvia the pigs produced, and people ate a lot more cabbage back in the day since Flamin Hot Cheetos had not been invented yet either.  

Generations of humble folk had lived in The Neck, collecting garbage and raising pigs/unusually large cabbages, and while perhaps it wasn’t as scenic a sight as Independence Hall, The Neck and those who inhabited that land were an important part of the Philly ecosystem.  And the system, while certainly imperfect by modern standards, was quite environmentally friendly in the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle kind of way that a lot of people purport to like until someone sets up a compost pile too close to their delicate nostrils.

Tensions rose, and then rose some more, as the city strongarmed and bullied various farmers into selling out to build the League Island Park, known today as Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park, as befits any ridiculously expensive government project which removes unwilling poor people from their homes and land without adequate compensation, in order to give rich people something slightly more attractive to rest their eyes upon.  As you may have predicted, if you are sane, the building of this park was riddled by cronyism, driving the costs of building League Island Park to exorbitant levels and forcing people to resort to lawsuits just to stop the money tsunami that was flowing into various shady developers’ pockets.

In 1911, the city fathers – with an eye to the reaping the tax lucre that development in The Neck would bring in – banned the keeping of pigs within city limits, wrapping it all up in an early-20th-century version of “this is unhealthy, defend precious Gaia” sentiment to win over the hearts of the wealthy, who fear both garbage and the poor.

This was not an easy battle, oh no.  There were enough pig farmers and people who supported pig farmers¹ both on general principle due to property rights, and also because they realized that these dudes and their offspring were totally taking care of a really huge problem for the City of Philadelphia.  No matter, they weren’t strong enough to stop the march of progress…ivism, and soon the situation devolved into an episode of Miami Vice: Philadelphia.  Only instead of drug busts, the cops were doing pig busts and instead of 3 day stubble they had muttonchop sideburns and handlebar moustaches.

Eventually the city fathers, backed up by a lot of police officers with guns and billy clubs, defeated these impoverished families successfully wresting a living from land no one else had wanted by providing a needed service for the people of Philadelphia, burning their pigpens, and in many cases, their homes themselves, to the ground.  Brotherly love was decidedly in short supply during those dark times.  While some of the farmers tried to continue farming, switching over to the slightly less messy rabbits or chickens instead, most of them gave up and went to work at various factories, coming to rely on the same developers who had successfully driven them out of business for their livelihoods.  So did their descendants, who were eventually driven out of their homes in The Neck all together in the 50’s and 60’s – for, as you may have guessed, more development.  

Can you believe those downtrodden jerks had the temerity to be annoyed when their employers decided that doing business in America was too expensive, so they’d move to Bangladesh where it was still ok to pollute?  I mean, the GALL of those people to be angry that first a bunch of rich fat cats had driven their ancestors out of sustainable agriculture in the name of “the environment” and then drove their ancestors from their homes entirely for MORE development, only to move their companies, with the paychecks upon those families relied, overseas to cut costs, putting everyone out of work so the companies could pollute more freely?  Why did these 45-year-old men simply not go to work at Sbarro Pizza and Foot Locker for minimum wage and no health insurance instead?  Whereever is this burbling hostility of the lower middle class COMING FROM??  It’s a mystery!!  And by the way, have you tried opioids, because I hear they are fanfreakingtastic?  

This joke was brought to you by Pfizer!

https://youtu.be/hlARrmWhHXo

The environmentalists totally succeeded in “draining the swamp”, that dirty yucky old gross place in which garbage was recycled into food for human beings, and o frabjous day, now, upon this pristine land that had been in such great need of environmental protection, stands a sporting facility, several oil refineries, and the Schuylkill Expressway, which is an eight lane freeway that contains at any given moment at least as many cars as The Neck once contained pigs, only the cars poop out stuff that is a lot less biodegradable than the pigs did.  The Earth rejoices! 

As for the garbage, who knows where it ended up, but I suspect it wasn’t carefully composted and used to grow cabbages.

But this is not an article about Philadelphia, and you will tell this by the fact that I shall skip over the Philly sandwich all together (for now) in favor of talking about one of my fave romantic movies, and indeed, one of my fave movies ever, Rocky.

Now, Rocky, as you probably know, is a huge symbol of Philadelphia.  The famous montage culminating with Rocky’s run up the steps at the Philadelphia Museum of Art is iconic.

So iconic it was, that a statue of Rocky (which had been a prop used in Rocky 3, and then gifted to the city by Sylvester Stallone) stood in that position at the Philadelphia Museum of Art from 1980 through 2009, and was a beloved tourist stopping point.  This statue was not without controversy, because many people (myself among them, even tho I was but a weirdly precocious child at the time) thought it was kind of gross to have a rather narcissistic statue from a not-terribly-good movie at an art museum.  But most people didn’t agree with me, shocking absolutely no one, and loved the Rocky statue, making it one of the most visited sites in all of Philadelphia.  In 2009, after much debate and statue-shuffling, the snoots won, and had the statue moved permanently, which I also found just as gross as putting it there to begin with.  Sometimes it’s best just to not do the wrong thing in the first place instead of doing the wrong thing, waiting till people grow to love to that wrong thing, and then doing the wrong thing over again.

Being me is confusing sometimes.

Anyway, I think Rocky is really romantic because it involves a brutally shy girl, Adrienne, who works at a pet store and wears a lot of quirky hats².   IMO, Adrienne has had some pretty terrible things happen to her along the way (I mean seriously, do you think she goes so far out of her way to make herself look dowdy and unnoticeable because her home life was amazing and people told her she could do whatever she wants in this life, so go out there and get em, Tiger??)  Yet Rocky, who is strong and good looking and ok, maybe not the sharpest tool in the shed, but a heck of a lot better than Adrienne’s abusive, brutish brother Paulie, who she still has to live with even tho they’re both fully grown adults, is super into her. 

This handsome, desirable, and even kind of famous dude pursues pathologically shy and perennially depressed Adrienne, and wowsers, doesn’t even dump her for a bimbo when he starts to have success.  Rocky even CALLS HER NAME at the end of his fight with Apollo Creed because he wants to see her so bad.   In that moment, the moment of Rocky’s incredible victory (he didn’t win, but he went all 15 rounds, and it was a huge triumph for him to have met his goal) he wasn’t making a deal to peddle Sbarro Pizza or Foot Locker, he was all about Adrienne, and even expresses concern over the wellbeing of Adrienne’s hat.

I love it.  It is a quintessential example of how making a relatable, seemingly unspecial female character feel special resonates with actual female people out here in Audienceland.  You just like to think there’s some dude out there who can see past your weird eyeglasses and penchant for odd headwear, and fall in love with you anyway.

Some people have said that Rocky and Adrienne’s relationship, their first kiss scene in particular, is “rapey”, but some people are wrong.  I wrote about all the reasons why they’re wrong in my piece about Han Solo kissing Princess Leia (according to some, he used The Force, Luke).  To sum up: there are a lot of women still to this day, but especially back in time and in galaxies far, far away, who were told by the culture in which they were raised and by everyone around them, that “good girls don’t do that” and so IN THAT CULTURE a man making the first move, even somewhat aggressively making the first move, is kind of a relief.  These women truly believe that “good girls never make the first move” because good girls are not sexual aggressors, that wanting to get with someone makes you a bad person or that a man won’t like you if you were to initiate first contact.  And the ubiquitous jokes about “desperate” women chasing unwilling men prove that this is really still kind of true.

In Adrienne’s case, this state of affairs was further complicated by her believing, truly believing that she was gross and unlovable; she would never have dreamed of making the first move because she wouldn’t have believed that Rocky was actually interested in her.  Even right up till the last minute she was still dubious as to Rocky’s intent.  (There’s probably a whole piece in this – I’ll put it on the list next to the 10,000 others.)  Suffice to say that as is true of so very much, this criticism of Rocky is borne from a misunderstanding of the existence of varying complicated cultural norms and an assumption that everyone was raised the same as someone in 1990s upper middle class suburbia and therefore has the same mores.  This is very much not the case, and thus I hereby proclaim it’s ok to like the song “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” and classify Rocky as a romantic movie.

But this is a sandwich article, dammit, not a sociology textbook!

You may wonder how any of this involves a pork sandwich, because while Rocky certainly eats a lot of raw eggs, and punches some beef, badda boom badda bing, I dunno nothing about him and no pork, capisce?  In case you missed my subtle hints, the connection here is that Rocky is not only from Philadelphia, but he is also Italian, in fact he’s so Italian he has been awarded the moniker “Italian Stallion”.  And the sandwich I am about to discuss is also equally Italian. 

You see, while most people are well aware of the Philly Cheesesteak, there is another quintessential, if lesser known, Philadelphia sandwich, which a lot of people (like, a real whole lot) think is even better.  This is the Italian Roast Pork.

Philly Italian Roast Pork

Sandwich components:

 – Roast pork, either plain or Porchetta (you can prepare this yourself, but some delis do sell roast pork lunch meat, which is absolutely fantastic if you can track some down, or even better, get yerself some true porchetta with Italian seasoning if possible) either sliced or shredded.  I’m not going to give you an amount on the meat.  If you end up with meat left over after sandwich construction, add more meat.  Or save it for one of the other sandwiches we’ll be making with our pork.

 – Optional, IF you do want to roast your own pork – most recipes suggest a rub with fresh rosemary, garlic, olive oil, salt/pepper, and fresh parsley – amounts will vary based on the size of your roast, use your best judgment as to quantity.  I would consider adding some fennel seed to give it a more Italian flavor profile, but since I wanted to use it for a couple different recipes I didn’t go that route.  I skipped the rub in favor of a sprinkling of salt, pepper, and garlic powder.  My roast was also nicely marbled, so I had no trouble browning it without the olive oil before cooking in the Instant Pot.  You do you!

 – Provolone cheese (accept no substitutes, and smoked is best if you can find it).  You’ll want enough to be-provolone every one of your sandwiches.

 – Crusty Italian Rolls (you want your rolls to be as crusty as Rocky’s trainer, Mick).  Get as many as sandwiches you want to make.

 – Broccoli raab, if you can find it, or a combo of spinach and/or kale and broccoli if you can’t.  (Sadly, I had to go with the latter.)  Remember, you’ll be eating this on a sandwich so you want the chewier greens cut into bite size pieces.  If using spinach, no need to cut, it will be cooked, and cooked spinach shrinks more than George Costanza in a cold swimming pool.

How much of these delicious greens, you ask?  Well, as with everything in sandwiches, it all depends on how many sandwiches you plan to make, and how well you like greens, but most recipes I saw called for a pound, so that seems like a reasonable jumping off point.

 – A little fresh rosemary if you like it, if you have any left over from making your own pork rub

 – All the usual suspects: olive oil, salt and pepper, red pepper flakes, and a butt ton of garlic.

 – Optional – I saw a couple recipes where arugula, roasted red peppers, peperoncini, and aioli or some combination of them was added to this sandwich.  I don’t think any of them are necessary, but I can see how they’d work if you were so inclined (not so sure about the flavor profile of the arugula and peperoncini, TBH, but at your discretion)

Sandwich Construction:  The first thing you want to do is precook your broccoli, broccoli raab, and/or kale if using them, in some boiling water.  You’ll be recooking it, so don’t let it turn completely to mush, but you need it sandwich-consistency, not crunchy raw.  

While this your greens are cooking I suggest chopping your garlic and reheating your pork roast in some leftover homemade pork or some other lightly flavored broth.  (If you’d like to know how homemade broth is made, I wrote an article on it, which I have recently updated.) If you have no leftover pork broth, or lightly flavored broth to sub in, you can use bouillon or au jus or Swanson’s if you must, but you’re going to change the flavor some.  In fact, if you are worried your broth has too much oomph, just cover the meat and reheat it in the oven instead.

A lot of recipes called for the rolls to be toasted, but if you have crusty rolls you won’t need to do this.  I toasted a crusty roll as a test case and My Harshest Critic said it “hurt his throat” poor baby, so I left the rest untoasted.  If you have slightly less crusty rolls, you may still want to toast them.  At any rate, split your rolls if you need to, and get them ready on the plate as the rest of this process goes fast.

Once your greens are mostly cooked, drain – reserving at least some of the cooking liquid if possible – and saute your greens in olive oil with garlic, salt, pepper, red pepper flakes, and a little (A LITTLE) fresh rosemary if you like it.  If you’re using spinach or arugula, you’ll add them here, RAW.  Do not precook tender greens!  If your greens dry out, add more cooking liquid or water if you have none.  Saute till the garlic is cooked but not burnt, and the greens are thoroughly wilted and/or cooked through.  Time will vary based on how many greens you’re cooking and how well-cooked you like them.  I let mine get good and done, because what am I, a rabbit here?  Once you’re satisfied, add a little more cooking liquid – you want your greens a wee bit soupy, but not swimming in juice – and then adjust seasonings accordingly.

Cheese your roll first, so the cheese can melt when you put your hot stuff on top.  It also acts as a protective layer for your crusty roll so it doesn’t get too soggy.  Then, depending on your preference, a layer of greens or a layer of pork, and then reverse the process, adding either pork or greens.  Most recipes put the greens on top, I guess to show them off, but I preferred them in the middle with the pork on top.  I felt like I got a better greens/pork/cheese ratio that way.  

Sandwich analysis: My God, this was SO GOOD.  I expected not to like this at all as it’s not really my style of sandwich – I don’t like crusty rolls, there was no sauce really and I didn’t even have broccoli raab to jazz things up – but holy heck, it was worth the prep work that went into it.  It was neither dry nor bland, and I had expected it would be both.  Neither was it soggy; we didn’t need to use a fork and knife to eat it.  Everyone liked the Italian Roast Pork, even the small ones who do not like slimy green foods.  People were mad at me because I only bought six crusty rolls.  Highly recommend, if you have some spare pork burning a hole in your pocket.

Suggested sides: For a drink, how about a Manhattan Special Espresso Soda?  Our Products | (manhattanspecial.com)? While it’s not strictly Philadelphian, Gastro Obscura tells me that since its inception in 1895 Manhattan Special has been insanely popular amongst Italian immigrants along the Eastern Seaboard, like the forebears of one Mr. Rockstrom Q. Balboa, Esquire.  I suggest a few bags of Rap Snacks, Buy Bags – OFFICIAL RAP SNACKS, a snack company formed by Philadelphia native and CEO James “Fly” Lindsay, and if you’re not into coffee flavored soda, pick up some of their Oowee Lemonade.  

The packaging on all Rap Snacks products feature different rappers and are awesomely cool.  I’m partial to this Cardi B assortment:

If you’re very lucky, and are actually in Philadelphia, you may be able to locate Chumpies or Homegirls chips instead.  These hometown faves were super popular in the 90’s to early 2000’s, but have become harder to find over the past ten years – probably pushed out of the market by the more successful Rap Snacks, but ain’t that always the way?  Just as pig farmers made way for oil refineries, Chumpies and Homegirls lost their market share to Rap Snacks.  I blame social media, the breakdown of the family, and Dungeons and Dragons.

But just look at how fabulous their packages were.  I absolutely love them.  And don’t miss the spectacular “It’s All That…” (and a bag of potato chips) tagline on the Homegirls package. 

History doesn’t stop in 1946, people, no matter where your grade school textbook ended.  We’re in it.  Gather ye rosebuds, and Homegirls Potato Chips while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying.

But no time for nostalgia!  We still have pork to use up!  So in Part Two of this porkstravaganza we’ll be heading south towards more pork and another super romantic movie!

** I know I am misspelling “Adrienne”, that everyone spells it “Adrian”, but that is NOT how the female version of the name Adrienne is spelled, and it bugs the crap out of me every time I see it written down.  Simmer down, Frances, or possibly Francis.

1. Interestingly, this tale breaks exactly along the party lines you’d expect, with the Democrats siding with Big Government, rich corporations, and environmentalists, and the Republicans on the side of the pig farmers.
2. I know I am misspelling “Adrienne”, that everyone spells it “Adrian”, but that is NOT how the female version of the name Adrienne is spelled, and it bugs the crap out of me every time I see it written down.  Simmer down, Frances, or possibly Francis.