Admit it, cooking is complicated. There are ingredients to be gathered and combined, items to be sifted and grated, meats to be seared and poached. It can get so involved that, by the time you’ve gathered, grated, and poached, you’re too tired to enjoy what you have created.
It’s during those times that you think back to the simpler days of the prehistoric cooking. There was no seasoning, no tenderizing, no staring to see when your meat turns two shades lighter than pink. You hit your food with a club (while it was coming towards you, fangs bared), brought it back your cave, threw it onto that new-fangled invention called fire, and ate it all up. It was the picture of simplicity.
This is what this column is all about … basking in the simplicity of some very basic, but very tasty, foods. To introduce you to this concept, let’s talk about one of the simplest sandwiches known to man: peanut butter and jelly.
There are only two ingredients to this staple of lunchbox meals: peanut butter and jelly. Well, three ingredients if you add the bread, which is probably the most important part of a great PB&J sandwich. But, more on that later. For now, let’s talk about what goes on the bread.
Now, while only peanut butter and jelly are involved, the variety of these two products is numerous. On the peanut butter side you have creamy, crunchy, chunky, super-chunky, and products featuring whole un-shelled peanuts. Then there are the healthier versions of the product such as natural, soynut, or sunflower butter; decent substitutes for people with allergies or those who just don’t like the taste of peanut butter but like PB&J sandwiches.
On the jelly side there is even more to choose from. Pick any fruit (or vegetable) and it has probably been jammed, jellied, and preserved. Whether it was done at home or in a factory, there are plenty of flavors to choose from. Most of them work well with peanut butter (except, maybe marmalade. Blecch!). The only exception could probably be whole-fruit preserves. Sometimes the fruit pieces are so big that they block the taste of the peanut butter (or get jammed amongst the super-chunky pieces).
So, here’s all you need to make a simple peanut butter and jelly sandwich:
You may be questioning why I’m being so specific with the type of bread to use for this sandwich. I don’t know why, but white bread really brings out the flavors and the textures of the peanut butter and jelly. Whole wheat and other heavier breads and rolls (PB&J on a roll? Sacrilege!) tend to dull the flavors in-between. Toasting the bread? Don’t be insane, man!
So you have your ingredients in front of you. What to do next? Well, you can spread the peanut butter and jelly in one of two ways. One would be to spread the ingredients on separate pieces of bread, which gives the sandwich a layered texture. The other way is to add the peanut butter first, coating the entire side of bread, then add the jelly right on top. Some people leave the jelly as is and smush the two pieces of bread together to combine the flavors. Others spread it around the peanut butter to get more of a mixed flavor.
Whatever way you make your PB&J sandwich you don’t want to add too much of either ingredient. Adding too much jelly makes the sandwich messy to handle and clean up (not to mention that your mom gets awfully angry when you spill jelly on the carpet). Too much peanut butter and you’ll spend countless minutes trying to pull the darn thing off of the roof of your mouth. Then again, you may be one of those people who loves to savor their food, which would make the previous situation a good thing.
See how simple that was? Where once you previously had nothing to eat, there is now something that is sweet, salty and takes only a short amount of time to prepare. Give it a try and let me know if you have any variations that would make the PB&J simple, yet even more delicious.
Clacked by Richard Keller 
on Mar 12, 2009 @ 10:00 EST5EDT
