
Sandwiches stand out for different reasons, and it often has nothing to do with gourmet ingredients or fancy sandwich shops. Sometimes, a sandwich tastes good because of the memories it evokes — hence, the proverbial PB&J like mom used to make. Other times, it's more about the sandwich experience than the sammie itself, as is the case with this week's 'wich.I recently organized a goodbye get-together for some friends who are moving cross country.

With all this talk about
Chinese barbecue and
dim-sum Olympics parties, I've had Chinese food on the brain. So on my last trip to the farmers market, I picked up some Chinese broccoli, a yummy in-season green that tastes like a cross between asparagus, broccoli, and bok choy. After making a tofu stir-fry, I refocused the remaining ingredients into an elegant vegetarian sandwich.

I've let
Nancy Silverton's Sandwich Book languish on my desk for too long, so this weekend I finally decided to make a recipe from this famously excessive sandwich collection. (Stay tuned for a full cookbook review.) Since I was having friends over for a casual dinner, I avoided the more labor-intensive recipes in favor of a simple but delicious sandwich that would showcase the fresh tomatoes I bought that morning at the farmers market.
This PLT — pancetta, lettuce, and tomato — is a variation on the classic BLT (from New York's
'Ino) using Italian
pancetta and arugula. Silverton's book is designed so that, if you choose, you can prepare each ingredient without shortcuts — for instance, braising artichokes rather than buying jarred ones or even making bread from scratch.

Food often tastes better on camping trips; it takes so much effort to make that I'm usually starving by the time I eat. Because I first tried
Trader Joe's carnitas while roughing it, I had to revisit this tasty pork at home. Dare I say, it was better than I remembered.

Not only is the
Reuben one of my favorite sandwiches, but it's also sort of magical, since it takes three ingredients I'm not wild about (corned beef, rye bread, and thousand island dressing) and turns them into deliciousness. But since I rarely eat thousand island dressing, it ends up spoiling every time I buy it to make Reubens. So to meet my latest craving for this classic sandwich, I altered the recipe slightly, replacing the dressing with spicy mustard and the corned beef with pastrami.Pastrami is actually a variation on corned beef that involves smoking the meat.