A CUT ABOVE

STEVE CUMPER SHARES HIS CONTRIBUTION TO THE EVER-EVOLVING SANDWICH.

Steve Cumper, a sandwich experimenter from way back, shares his version of the Japanese katso sando.

WHEN I WAS a lad, one of my go-to, hunger-smashing meals was a fishfinger-and-kraft-singles sandwich with a slather of tartare sauce. Like most kids, I reasoned fish fingers, like a lot of food, were meant to be squished between two slices of white bread. Chips, snags, Spam, chocolate and even marshmallow were all fair game.

I bet most readers could point to the juncture on the sandwich time line when brown bread began sneaking into our pantries, closely followed by those multi-seeded loaves responsible for the spike in toothpick sales across the nation, and then sourdough piously arrived on the scene. It was about the same time the po’boy (poor boy) sandwich started to make inroads into trendy restaurants that dabbled in those little-understood cuisines known as Cajun and Creole. For the uninitiated, it was a baguette filled with crumbed and fried oysters and a mayonnaise-based sauce.

Soon, the croque monsieur began appearing and later — perhaps to address the imbalance of food gender roles — the croque madame. We also took the Cuban sandwich for a spin until we realised it was basically a grilled Latino version of a Reuben. Ahh, the Reuben. New York City’s pastrami-laden gift to the world made famous by Katz’s Delicatessen and Meg “I’ll have what she’s having” Ryan.

For a brief time, we were crunching through Vietnam’s colonial hybrid sandwich, the banh mi. And who can forget the steamed bao phenomenon that saw us gorging on pork belly, hoi sin and pickled cucumber a few years back? More recently, every restaurant in Australia appeared to have a lobster roll on its menu, an idea we pinched from those New England crab shacks that dot the east coast of America.

But the latest sandwich offering is the katsu sando. A favourite of the western-influenced Japanese food known as yōshoku, it’s basically a panko-crumbed pork cutlet served on milk bread. You can also use chicken — an Asian schnitty sambo.

My version, using marron, is my contribution to our ever-evolving love affair with the sanga. And while my younger self washed down my fishfinger sambo with cordial, I suggest you try this with a cold beer. Cheers or, as the Japanese say, kanpai! Steve Cumper is a chef and funnyman who lives in Tasmania and dreams of one day owning a fleet of holiday vans called Wicked Cumpers.

MARRON KATSO SANDO WITH WASABI MAYO

Serves 4 ¹/3 cup rice vinegar

1 tablespoon mirin

1 tablespoon caster sugar

1 tablespoon finely grated fresh ginger 1 teaspoon salt

1 telegraph cucumber, thinly sliced 400g cooked marron tails (or 400g

cooked prawn meat)

3 eggs

2½ cups panko breadcrumbs 1 tablespoon furikake*

¹/3 cup Kewpie mayonnaise**

2–3 teaspoons wasabi paste

1 cup cornflour vegetable oil for shallow frying

8 slices white bread extra 1 teaspoon furikake, to garnish

Combine vinegar, mirin, sugar, ginger and salt in a bowl. Add cucumber and stir to coat. Cover and set aside for 1 hour to macerate.

Place marron, 1 egg, ½ cup breadcrumbs and furikake into a food processor and pulse until well combined. Season. Divide mixture into four equal portions and form into patties, similar in size and thickness to bread. Place onto a baking-paperlined plate and place in freezer for 15 minutes or until firm. Whisk mayonnaise and wasasbi paste in a bowl until well combined.

Whisk remaining eggs in a bowl. Place cornflour and remaining breadcrumbs in separate bowls. Working with 1 patty at a time, coat in cornflour, dip in egg, then coat evenly with breadcrumbs. Place on a plate.

Pour oil into a frying pan until 2cm deep. Place over a medium heat. When oil is hot, cook patties for 2–3 minutes each side or until golden and crisp. Transfer to a wire rack drain and cool slightly. Drain cucumber and pat dry with paper towel.

Spread 1 side of each bread slice liberally with wasabi mayonnaise. Top 4 bread slices with a marron patty and a few slices of cucumber. Sandwich with remaining bread. Using a sharp knife, remove crusts and cut each sandwich into three equal fingers. Sprinkle with extra furikake and serve with remaining cucumber.

* A Japanese seasoning that means ‘to sprinkle’. Available from large supermarkets or Asian grocery stores. ** Available from large supermarkets or Asian grocery stores. Substitute whole-egg mayonnaise.