I waited in line in wobbly Los Angeles breast and tet and fries topped with mayonnaise, for chili rolls and hot cakes, for fried chicken and ice cream and round bread. But on a recent Saturday morning, I waited half an hour to buy a rainbow bagel.
It’s not the kind I remember from college, when I was a vegetarian — cold, dry breads with dense, crumbly, sprouted, slightly discolored breads packed so tightly that tomato seeds and brown avocados are pressed against cling film.
No, this rainbow bread is made to order, spread with a mixture of sunflower seeds and minced garlic, and packed with cucumbers, beets, carrots and a heap of alfalfa sprouts from the farmers market. produce, along with some turmeric-dyed fried tofu. It is contained in delicious fresh sourdough.
Overall, it’s pleasant, light, colorful, and reminiscent of something you can buy at your neighborhood health food store or grocery store. worship for example, a vegetarian cafe in 1975, 1985 or 1995 — but better. Now what is it doing here? Although Zach Jarrett developed it last September for the bakery’s new restaurant wing Bub and Grandmait’s like a sandwich not bound by time.
A delicious rainbow sandwich will always appear this way here, as will the closely related, overlapping hippie, avocado and California sandwiches, inspired by a series of obsessions about Classic food never really went away, but settled and evolved.
Sandwiches may or may not be vegan, but they will almost certainly contain a number of different vegetables and sprouts – a generous amount of sprouts, gently compressed to form a crunchy, juicy, flavorful filling. dark green of dental floss.
Sprouts are an ancient ingredient, but as Jonathan Kauffman wrote in his 2019 book, “hippie food,” until the 1970s, only Southern Californians ate raw alfalfa sprouts. Alfalfa sprout sandwiches were also a local phenomenon, and recipes appeared as early as 1953 in cookbooks advertised by El Molino, a former stone mill operating in Alhambra, Calif., publishing, sells grains and flours to health food stores.
Today’s best sprout sandwiches are intricate and idiosyncratic, the work of obsessed chefs with a real taste for the genre. Some people remember that their parents went through the process of shoving the sprouts among dense slices of toasted wheat, but they were far enough away from the 1970s American healthy food trends to think about the healthy foods. bread fondly and re-imagining them fondly.
But the original recipe in the El Molino cookbook is simple and straightforward. It consists of two pieces of rye bread spread with mayonnaise, topped with a 1/4 inch layer of fresh alfalfa sprouts and optional tomato slices. And even here, in the book’s enthusiastic tutorial, which guides readers on how to start providing their own sprouts at home, the authors offer a warning: “It may take a little while to get started. learn to fully appreciate unique flavors.”
That kind of hedging has haunted the sprouts for decades, as if they needed an apology, an excuse. But sprouts are not a novelty, and sprout sandwiches can be their own aromatic, green luxury — their own unlikely indulgence. As Mr. Kauffman writes in “hippie food,” alfalfa sprouts smell “as if a field of grass is copulating.”
Mr. Jarrett, of Bub and Grandma’s, says rainbow bread is his favorite bread on the menu. He said: “It feels really good when you eat it.
Daniel Mattern and Roxana Jullapat knew they wanted a great version of the hippie burger on the menu before they opened Friends and family, their Thai Town bakery. It’s not just for their diners, but for themselves and their chefs (among them the commuter’s favorite lunch).
“You can eat that sandwich, feel refreshed and energized, and keep moving,” Mr. Mattern said. “Not nap time.”
Mr. Mattern mixes a savory slice of feta between layers of mashed beans, sliced avocado, thick, succulent cucumber and sunflower sprouts, and seasoning cheese. Part of the sandwich’s texture and appeal also comes from the beautifully shaped, grainy bread, which Ms. Jullapat devised just for this bread. To make it, she adds a small mix of germinated grains to a very thick dough of red flour, along with sunflower, pumpkin, and flaxseeds.
The version you can find at Wax paper, a small bakery with two locations in Los Angeles, is particularly magnificent, filled with grated cheddar, pickled and raw onions, avocado, cucumbers, sprouts, and garlic-flavored aioli. (Peter Lemos, one owner, calls it “Ira Glass” on the menu; it’s a differentiator of the store, where all the sandwiches are named after popular radio personalities. public.)
“There’s a lot of sprouts here, it’s almost the main ingredient,” Mr. Lemos said. “But sprouts make sandwiches.”
The number of sprouts at Wax Paper cannot be overstated. And something happens when sprouts come out in such large numbers, far beyond the 1/4-inch suggestion in that 1953 recipe: There’s clearly nothing austerity, nothing superfluous or etched in sprouts. harsh or cruel.
En masse, the sprout that is quite the opposite, is not only a fun frill, but a luxury – succulent and thriving. Not just a symbol of a new beginning, but a real 1000 new beginnings, right there, juicy and alive, waiting for your bite.
