I am big on bagels with odd fillings, Macca tells the world
A BREAKFAST staple, bagels are often enjoyed with cream cheese and smoked salmon. But for Sir Paul Mccartney, nothing tops much more unconventional ingredients.
Speaking to comedian Romesh Ranganathan and his daughters Mary and Stella to promote a new collection of his late wife Linda’s recipes, Sir Paul said he makes a “very good sandwich” consisting of a bagel split and stuffed with an unusual medley of ingredients.
Describing his cooking style as “experimental”, he said his favourite way to enjoy a sandwich – Stella berated him for not using the Scouse word ‘sarnie’ – is by slicing a bagel into three sections before filling it with Marmite, lettuce, hummus, cheese, tomato and pickles, then honey and mustard dressing.
He said the lettuce is the key to the sandwich’s success as it creates a barrier that stops the hummus escaping through hole in the bagel. Sir Paul said: “I do a very good sandwich. I take a bagel, cut it in three, ’cause it’s too big in two. Often you have two bagels, so now you cut it into six. So you’ve got a top and a bottom, a top and a bottom, and two middles. You can get three sandwiches out of that.
“So the bottom layer I put Marmite on, and then I would put a little bit of lettuce, because I’m going to put hummus on but it’s going to go through the hole if I don’t put the lettuce on.
“You might get a little sliced cheese on there, you might have one slice of tomato, then you might have a pickle or two. Then you go back to your lettuce barrier, because there’s another hole on the top, so you’ve got to protect it from that. Then I put on honey mustard.”
His daughter Mary, a photographer, added: “In a Mccartney sandwich we are not afraid of a condiment.”
Having inherited a love of cooking from their mother, Sir Paul said he regularly visits his daughters for homecooked meals – while embracing his own “big routine” of providing the sandwiches for family trips.
The cookbook, titled Linda Mccartney’s Family Kitchen, gives many of Linda’s beloved vegetarian recipes giving them a modern, healthier twist.
What makes the perfect sandwich? No prizes for guessing Paddington’s answer. For Scooby-doo, big was always beautiful. Trade union leaders – especially if No 10 was paying – were said to like theirs with beer. Her Majesty’s afternoon tea is reported to include the smoked salmon variety. Nobody other than Paul Mccartney expects Marmite, hummus, cheese and mustard (and that’s without the salad). Yet perhaps more controversial than the filling is Sir Paul’s choice of bread. Bagels are delicious, but are they not distinct from sandwiches? A sausage in a bun is a hot dog, after all, and we eat hamburgers, not ground beef rolls (with apologies to readers who prefer a barm, bap, batch or cob). The Earl of Sandwich didn’t know the half of what he was starting.