Italian Chopped Salad Sandwich -- Something Bright for the Long Days of Harvest and Tending

Week 481, and the tomatoes ripening, the corn arriving, the garden in full production, the heat in the kitchen. I am 68 years old and the days have a rhythm now — the morning writing, the afternoon visits to Cedarhurst, the evening cooking, the weekly blog post — and the rhythm is the structure, and the structure is the sanity, and the sanity is required because the rest of it, the losing and the loving and the carrying, requires a sane woman at the helm, and I am sane, mostly, except when I cry in the car in the Cedarhurst parking lot, which is not insanity but its opposite: the specific, targeted release of emotion in a contained space, which is the most rational thing I do all week.

Tomato harvest; twelve jars of sauce; blog post about preservation. These are the facts of the week, the data points, the things I would put in a report if I were writing a report, which I am not — I am writing a life, and the life includes the facts but is not limited to them, because the life also includes the way the kitchen smells at six in the morning when the coffee is brewing and the challah is rising and the house is quiet and the quiet is both the grief and the peace, simultaneously, and the simultaneous is the condition, the permanent condition of a woman who is 68 and alone and not alone, who is a grandmother and a wife and a writer and a cook and a caregiver and all of these things at once, always at once, braided together like the challah.

I made tomato sauce this week — because it was what the week needed, because the week always needs something and the something is always food, and the food is always the answer, and the answer is always the kitchen, and the kitchen is always mine, and the mine-ness of the kitchen is the one thing that has not changed in sixty-seven years of living, from Sylvia's kitchen on the Grand Concourse to this kitchen in Oceanside where I stand every morning and every evening and many of the hours in between, making the food that is the chain, that is the love, that is the thing I do when I don't know what else to do, which is always, and especially now.

I brought food to Marvin at the usual time. The visit was what visits are now — quiet, steady, the feeding by hand when necessary, the reading aloud always, the holding of the hand that may or may not know it is being held but that is warm and alive and present, which is the definition of love in this particular year: warm and alive and present. He ate what I brought. He received what I gave. The receiving is the relationship. The receiving is the vow. In sickness and in health, in recognition and in forgetting, in the recliner and in the kitchen, the receiving is the marriage, and the marriage continues, one container at a time, one visit at a time, one day at a time, at two o'clock, every day, because the chain does not break.

After a week of standing over a hot stove reducing twelve jars of tomato sauce — all that abundance, all that heat, all that purpose — I wanted something that required no cooking at all, something cool and sharp and alive, a meal that felt like the opposite of the long simmer. The Italian Chopped Salad Sandwich was exactly that: bright, layered, put together quickly before the two o’clock drive to Cedarhurst, something I could eat at the counter in four minutes and still feel like I had fed myself properly, which matters, because the woman at the helm must also be fed. It is the kind of lunch that asks nothing of the kitchen and gives everything back.

Italian Chopped Salad Sandwich

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 0 min | Total Time: 15 min | Servings: 2

Ingredients

• 2 hoagie rolls or ciabatta rolls, split
• 1/2 small head romaine lettuce, finely chopped
• 1/2 cup cherry tomatoes, quartered
• 1/3 cup canned chickpeas, drained and rinsed
• 1/4 cup thinly sliced red onion
• 1/3 cup sliced pepperoncini peppers
• 1/3 cup pitted Kalamata olives, roughly chopped
• 2 oz salami, cut into thin strips
• 2 oz provolone cheese, diced or sliced
• 3 tablespoons Italian dressing (store-bought or homemade)
• 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
• Salt and black pepper to taste
• Dried oregano, pinch

Instructions

1. Chop the salad. In a large bowl, combine the romaine, cherry tomatoes, chickpeas, red onion, pepperoncini, olives, salami, and provolone. Toss everything together so the ingredients are evenly distributed.
2. Dress it. Drizzle the Italian dressing and red wine vinegar over the chopped salad mixture. Season with salt, black pepper, and a pinch of dried oregano. Toss well to coat.
3. Rest briefly. Let the dressed salad sit for 3—5 minutes so the flavors come together and the lettuce softens just slightly without wilting.
4. Build the sandwich. Pile the chopped salad generously onto the bottom half of each roll, pressing it down lightly so it holds. Cap with the top half of the roll and press firmly.
5. Serve immediately. Cut each sandwich in half on the diagonal and serve right away, while the bread is still holding its structure against the dressing.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 480 | Protein: 22g | Fat: 24g | Carbs: 44g | Fiber: 5g | Sodium: 1120mg