August, the Boss Battle

August stinks.

I don’t mean this in a slangy, pejorative, Jay Shermanesque manner; I mean, it literally stinks. I stepped out onto our back patio earlier this week, and the combination of recent heavy rains, already-simmering heat and stifling humidity had brought forth a rotten smell in the air—nowhere comparable to the hot-garbage smells of my New York City summers past, but by no means pleasant either. I immediately clocked the stench for what it is: a harbinger of the season’s final evolution. The playful warmth of June and the festive frizzle of July have fallen away, and we find ourselves face to face with August, the boss battle of months. Summer journey’s culminates here, and if we’re going to make it fall, we’re going to have to fight our way through. Temperatures in the mid-90s barely tell half the story, as dew points nearing 80 conspire with them to make the whole world feel like a car that had a sandwich left in it on a hot day.

(We are the sandwich in this analogy.)

To dwell on these negatives is to miss out on the genuine pleasures of the month, though.

Yes, August is a sweltering, stinky mess, one where the only form of relief is the occasional severe storm—but it’s also a time of still-warm tomatoes fresh from the vine, juicy sweet corn, plump berries and melons so ripe they’re dripping. It’s the season for the state fair and the boardwalk, baseball that starts to mean something and afternoons that mean nothing. It may not be the best month (that’s October, prove me wrong), but it’s arguably the Most Month, a bold-italic-underline season lacking in subtetly but loaded with swagger.

At the end of it, there will be a new year of sorts: school starting fresh, marching bands heralding the return of football, schedules re-forming after three months of slow dissolution.

In the meantime, let’s hold our nose and enjoy the ride.

Friends, it’s Friday once again at The Action Cookbook Newsletter.

August might not be great for taking a walk around the block your on lunch break, but it’s a spectacular season for food and drink. Today, I’ve got an elaborate sandwich (or salad) straight from the farmer’s market, a bright, bold and beguiling cocktail, some great new music, a weird old book, and much more!

Let’s hit it.

A true hometown hero

I have, on numerous prior occasions during the course of this newsletter, expressed my deep fondness for making a Big Dumb Sandwich. It’s a category of cooking all its own, a culinary art form predicated on the challenge of fitting as many good things as possible into a single, hand-held package.

A few weeks ago, a friend took on an effort (thoroughly documented in her Instagram story) to recreate the Scuttlebutt, a sandwich made famous by the now-shuttered Brooklyn restaurant Saltie. I was enraptured by the process, and inspired to make my own similarly-elaborate-but-entirely-different sandwich—something that would capture both the flavors of the season but also the terroir of home. I’d just returned from my European vacation, and I wanted a sandwich that would belong right here in Kentucky.

I call it The Big To-Do.

First? Foccacia, just like the original. Hard to go wrong there. I debated making my own, as it’s one of the few breads I’m passably good at baking. I’d stopped by Louisville’s excellent Haymarket for ingredients, though, and they had lovely-looking focaccia. (There’s no shame in starting on second base, as long as you admit it.)

Next, I whipped ricotta cheese with fresh herbs—rosemary, basil, and thyme—and a dollop of honey1. On top of that, a few slices of country ham from Morris’ Deli, a Louisville mainstay and home to the best sandwiches you can buy in a liquor store. (Prosciutto would work well here too, if you’re not in place with easy access to good country ham.)

The real seasonal kicker, though, would be melon—cantaloupe straight from the farmer’s market, quick-pickled using a method from Abra Berens’ excellent fruit-focused cookbook Pulp that I’ll spell out in a footnote for readability’s sake2.

I’ve used fresh melon on sandwiches before—in fact, I realized halfway through making this that I’d done an Italian-inspired sandwich with many of the same notes a few years back—but the pickling added a wonderful sharp note to offset the richness of the cheese and meat, and I highly recommend it.

On top of the melon, a drizzle of chili oil—Lao Gan Ma, accept no substitutes—and a handful of microgreens, also straight from the Douglass Loop Farmer’s Market.

Here’s the finished product:

I don’t usually like when sandwiches get too tall, but the beauty of focaccia (and of these fillings) is that this one responds very well to being squooshed down and shoved in your mouth. Also? It was absolutely delicious. It hit every note—creamy, crunchy, chewy, salty, sweet, sour, spicy—and I found myself walking around the kitchen in between bites like Steve Harvey reacting to an especially-saucy answer on Family Feud.

I loved this sandwich.

Of course, you can’t eat a sandwich like this every day, so the next day I repurposed all of the ingredients into a salad (I swapped the ricotta out for feta there, though):

Any way you slice it, it’s a winner, and a real shot across August’s bow. I’m ready for what you’ve got, pal. Bring it.

That’s a tough opening act to follow, but today’s cocktail is a Certified Banger all its own…