Home › Some Swell Sandwiches › Some Swell Sandwiches

Some Swell Sandwiches

DURING ONE OF the revolutions in Mexico, we lived for weeks on raw cactus sandwiches and liked it. The spines were hacked off a broad cactus leaf with a rusty machette, the tough leaf was then pared and thinly sliced, covered with coarse salt and even coarser red pepper, slapped into a folded tortilla and, it was yours for diez centavos, without butter, naturally. But this was in the wilds of Chihuahua. In Mexico City we encountered a daintier, more sophisticated type, made with Burbanked cactus from which all spines had been painlessly removed before birth. It wasn't nearly so bad as the roasted worms of maguey sandwich in the same town. We never did get over thinking that one was a bit too raw. It was green, too, green in taste and green in color. Yet there's nothing more to be said against a vegetarian maguey sandwich worm that never leaves the inside of the pulque-making century plant, than there is against a succulent snail sandwich tossed up with Burgundy crawlers that never get off their grape vine leaf diet.

They say a Mexican hot dog is just a limp tortilla wrapped around a roasted Mexican hairless, but that's libel: from personal observation we know the dog part is barbecued kid, with most of the hair left on. And when it comes to hot tamales and hotter enchilladas, they're swell, and regular sandwiches, too, only the tamales are wrapped in juicy corn husks, and the enchilladas enveloped in crisp tortillas in place of bread or rolls.

Along the Mex-Tex corridor, there's nothing gamier than a chili con carne sandwich or a hot dog dressed in border style, by splitting it full length and pouring molten chili in.

You can pick up a flock of smoked Pekin duck sandwiches in almost any Chinatown to take along on any sort of outing; or put bean sprouts on your bread, fresh or canned, and douse 'em with soy sauce. You can easily go Japanese by making a live fish sandwich out of a fresh quivering carp or bass just as soon as you land him, right on the river bank. All you have to do is slice and season it. Or go a little farther and try a juicy: