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Denver Sandwich
14 POUND HAM OR BACON, DICED I GREEN PIMIENTO, CHOPPED I ONION, CHOPPED 4 EGGS SALT AND PEPPER BUTTERED BREAD Fry ham or bacon, lightly brown onion with pimiento, then stir in eggs and season. Brown lightly, flop everything over, and when other side is done stuff between buttered bread slices.
This is also called a Western Sandwich, anyway in such eastern spots as New York, where it's badly imitated by Greek lunch wagoners, with boiled ham, or spoiled ham, and garnished with lettuce and one olive; usually the pimiento is left out, and sometimes the onion, though that's the main thing, and has been ever since this solid snack was born in covered wagon days, when eggs had to be hauled in over long, hot trails. They got so high in flavor the kindest thing to do was smother them in onions to kill that chickeny taste. And now, with plenty of fresh eggs around, the custom of mixing in onions remains from old habit-just as lemon juice, which originally was squirted on unfresh fish, not for flavor but only for antiseptic purposes, still remains as an acquired accompanying smack. Early cowboys called the great-granddaddy of the Denver Sandwich "Ham Toast," and it makes a fine round-up munch. A swell aliment for almost any ailment.
A one-pan skillet omelet folded into bread, meant for a campfire or a griddle. The quantities are loose by design; the only real technique is getting the egg set without drying it out.
- QuantitiesThe meat is a quarter pound of ham or bacon, diced, and the vegetables are one green pimiento and one onion. Four eggs feeds two generously, or three at a pinch.
- "Green pimiento"Pimiento is normally a sweet red pepper, sold canned and roasted; a green one here simply means a fresh green sweet pepper. Half a medium bell pepper, diced small, is the right amount.
- Order of the panRender the bacon or ham first so its fat cooks the onion and pepper. Get the onion properly soft and just golden before the eggs go in \five minute or two of raw crunch will dominate the finished sandwich.
- Egg temperatureMedium heat, not high. "Brown lightly" means a pale gold underside; pushed further the egg turns leathery and squeezes water into the bread.
- The flopSlide the set omelet onto a plate and invert it back into the pan rather than trying to turn it with a spatula. In a well-greased skillet the whole disc comes over intact.
- BreadButter the bread on the cut side and, if you are at a fire, lay it face down on the griddle for a moment. Cut the omelet into squares roughly the size of the slices so it does not hang out the sides.
- SeasoningSalt the eggs, not the pan mixture \flu cured ham and bacon are already salty and will carry most of it. Pepper generously; this is a sandwich that takes it.
The Denver, or Western, sandwich is a chopped-ham-and-egg skillet omelet between bread, and its origin is genuinely contested: the story told here, that trail cooks masked the flavor of eggs long past their prime with onion, is the traditional account and is repeated in many places, but it is folklore rather than documented fact. Another explanation sometimes offered points to Chinese cooks on the western railroads adapting egg foo young to American bread, but this too is a suggestion rather than an established chain of transmission. By the time this book was written the sandwich was familiar short-order counter food well beyond the West, which is what the author is complaining about: the griddle version made with boiled ham, lettuce and an olive is a lunch-counter version of a dish built around whatever meat, onion and eggs were on hand. "Ham toast" appears in nineteenth-century American cookery as a name for chopped or minced ham with eggs, seemingly before the dish acquired a city name, though the attribution of the term to early cowboys is the author's own.