Posted on 05/25/2017 3:33:48 PM PDT by Jamestown1630
While roaming on Youtube last week, I found a video from the Southern Foodways Alliance about ‘Sally Bell’s’, a little Richmond, Virginia bakery which is famous for it’s boxed lunches. This is a very interesting short video about a family business that has become beloved for its made-from-scratch-everyday menu:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVm0CaOxEQY
I searched to see if some of their recipes might be available, with no luck; but I did find a recipe for Cheese Wafers with Pecans, which looks similar to those that are always included in Sally Bell’s lunch boxes:
http://www.sweetpaulmag.com/food/my-happy-dish-cheese-wafers-with-pecans-1
Apparently the Chicken Salad is the favorite sandwich at Sally Bell’s; and since they aren’t giving their recipe away, I’ll share mine again. The lemon-basil butter is what really makes this, and for parties I do this on little flower-shaped tea breads made from a special mold. I believe I first found this recipe in the booklet that came with my ‘Pampered Chef’ molds:
Almond Chicken Salad Sandwiches with Lemon-Basil Butter
To make butter spread:
Combine ¾ Cup softened butter with 2 tsps. Lemon juice, a pinch of salt, and ½ cup fresh basil leaves finely chopped, or 2 T. dried basil.
To make filling:
Combine 1 C. finely chopped cooked chicken with ½ Cup mayonnaise, ½ cup slivered almonds, and salt and pepper to taste. (I shred the chicken in the food processor, to get a very smooth, consistent texture.)
To make sandwiches:
Carefully spread each slice of bread on one side with thin layer of butter spread. Then place filling on one bread slice, and top with second buttered slice.
If you take these to a party, they can be made the evening before, and stored in a container with a double layer of paper towels between each layer of sandwiches. The butter spread will help keep the bread from going soggy.
(If you DO want to make fancy bread: I usually use the Bridgford frozen bread dough, cutting dough in half and baking each half in a canapé bread mold sprayed with PAM. To slice the bread for sandwiches, it helps to partially freeze it. Slice thinly.)
Here’s a link to Sally Bell’s website, in case you make it to Richmond this summer:
http://www.sallybellskitchen.com
I know that some of our cooking thread members are familiar with ‘La Tienda’, the online purveyor of gourmet Spanish food items; but I didn’t realize that they have a retail store and a tapas bar at Williamsburg, VA:
https://www.tienda.com/aboutus/retailstore.html
La Tienda has lots of recipes on their website; I’ve never made Paella, and want to try theirs.
-JT
I think the Brits refer to the green plant as ‘Coriander’, while we call the greens ‘Cilantro’ and use Coriander when referring to the seeds.
This is the kind of mold I use for the bread:
But you can just cut shapes out of your bread with a big cookie or biscuit cutter, if you want to make fancy ‘tea’ type sandwiches.
Wow, that looks too fancy for me :-) but they are amazingly inexpensive! Do the instructions say how much bread dough to use in each one?
I have prime… :-)
That sounds pretty. Our Safeway has been offering bags of the multi-colored baby potatoes recently.
Those are not the ones I use - mine are from Pampered Chef, and I got them at the thrift store; but they are probably almost the same thing. Here’s another link (I wasn’t sure PC still made them, so initially I just looked up ‘tea bread molds’):
I use the frozen Bridgford bread dough, which comes with three frozen loaves of dough, which will fill six of these tubes - probably more than you need, so you need to figure how many loaves of regular bread would feed your party, and calculate how that transfers to these little breads - maybe three little sandwiches per person would equal a regular sandwich?
When the dough has defrosted enough to be cut, I put 1/2 of each loaf into each tube, and let it continue to defrost and rise a little, upright, with the end caps on. You don’t want it to rise too much; let it go until it’s soft and when poking it a little will cause it to depress. Then bake them upright in your oven.
The mold will probably come with instructions, and if your party isn’t too soon, you could do a trial run.
Resist cutting the slices too thickly; you want them quite thin, and slightly freezing the bread after it’s been baked and cooled will help with precise slicing.
If you make the bread ahead of time, wrap it well in cling wrap and store it in an airtight container, or freeze for longer-term storage.
(Again, you can do something just as pretty by slicing a good loaf of unsliced bread a little more thickly than usual, and then cutting with a cookie cutter into little tea-bread shapes. You won’t have crusts, then; but it will be a dainty and pretty little tea sandwich.)
Another idea, which might be easier, is the old Pyrex ‘Bake-A-Round’ bread tube. You can find these on Etsy, Ebay, etc:
http://www.thekitchn.com/check-this-out-vintage-pyrex-b-119529
I would still use the Bridgford frozen dough in this.
You just can’t find little loaves of square white bread or ‘pullman’ loaves in the stores; they always have the little square Pumpernickel party loaves, but that wouldn’t go well with the chicken salad.
How interesting, I never thought that you would bake them up right.
The Bridgeford loves are a pound right? So that be a half a pound for mold. I would make my own bread so I would figure it that way, the number of pounds or ounces or whatever it is per mold.
Oh my gosh, I think I’ll go with the first one you sent :-) the pampered chef one is quite expensive. Although I’m sure it’s great quality.
I think PC stuff was always overpriced.
I got a bunch of them for 99 cents each at the thrift store :-)
When I was scarfing these up, I worked with a little Ethiopian woman who had a very picky-eater son whose nutrition she was worried about. When she had these sandwiches at a party, she wanted some of these molds, thinking they would entice the little boy to eat. I gave her some, and I think it worked ;-)
CRUMBLE Hand mix salted butter, 200 g ea br/sugar, flour into sand-like texture; hold in fridge. Fill buttered cake pan w/ 3-4 diced Belle de Boskoop apples; drizzle w/ juiced lemon; cover w/ Crumble. Bake 350 deg 10-15 min.
SERVE scoop vanilla ice cream on the side.
NOTED Belle de Boskoop is apple variety which originated in Boskoop, the Netherlands, where it began as a chance seedling in 1856. There are many variants: Boskoop red, yellow or green. This rustic apple is firm, tart and fragrant. Greenish-gray tinged with red, the apple stands up well to cooking. The Belle de Boskoop contains more than twice the vitamin C than Golden Delicious.
I’ve never seen those Pyrex dishes before. Pretty interesting. Maybe they weren’t big sellers because if you use a French mold your bread pretty much comes out round anyway :-)
All this talk about taking off crust and pretty slices of bread for sandwiches makes me think of cucumber sandwiches. I think I would have to make some of those also.
I’m trying a new batch of sourdough starter. It’s one that the website swears turns sour. And it sure smells it! If it works out I will post the recipe to your thread next week.
Looks yummy Liz!
An easy dessert that looks like you been slaving in the kitchen.
They were big sellers, ‘back in the day’ - that’s why there are so many of them for resale now! I bought one at the thrift store recently, to replace one I’d bought decades ago and which broke.
Sorry, I may have made a mistake in responding to you. Each mold would be 1/2 pound of dough - cut them in half.
That’s what I understood - you said it just right!
You’re gonna make me
Cry, boy (or girl?). My dad loved Fawlty Towers!!!
PS-I'm a 59-year-old guy. :)
The Japanese do something similar preparing bento boxes for children's lunches.....shaping bread and fillings.
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