What's for Lunch: Cubano Turkey Sandwich?

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook



A traditional "Cuban" sandwich is made with roast pork, ham, Swiss cheese, pickle and maybe some yellow mustard all squished together on a special griddle between two slices of Cuban bread.



Chartwells was advertising what you see here as a "turkey Cubano." I thought it looked--and tasted--more like pulled pork without the barbecue. For some reason, many of the kids rejected the cheese.


Here's a closeup of the sandwich. It's made from a pre-seasoned, roasted turkey breast that the kitchen manager chopped into small pieces, much as you would do with pulled pork.



The aroma was not so appetizing. But the flavor of the sandwich, built with two slices of "whole wheat" hamburger bun, was not so bad. I might have exchanged the cheese for some barbecue sauce.





This is what it looked like when you removed the top.

And here's the meat revealed after peeling back the cheese.

Kids seemed to like the beans, the spinach salad not so much.

What's for Lunch: Cuban Turkey Sandwich

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

Chartwells on its menu website described this as a "roasted Cuban turkey sandwich with Swiss on a whole wheat roll" with "fresh locally grown cucumber coins" and "locally grown sweet potato salad."

A Cuban sandwich traditionally is made with roast pork, Black Forest ham, Swiss cheese and pickles, all heated and crushed between two slices of Cuban bread in a panini press or something like it. This, is other words, was a very rough approximation. But who's complaining?

The local cucumber coins turned out to be steamed zucchini and yellow squash: no problem with that substitution. I don't know if I'd go so far as to call those sweet potatoes a salad. In fact, I do make a terrific salad with roasted sweet potatoes, pecans, raisins and other stuff tossed with a maple-flavored vinaigrette. These look more like cooked sweet potatoes.

The schools score big points for the local vegetables, and in fact receive a five-cent bonus from the District for any lunch meal that contains a locally grown component. The only trouble is that kids don't really like vegetable side dishes for the most part, and they really didn't eat much of this either.


Here's the standing Wednesday alternate: hummus with pita wedges, an apple and finally those locally grown cucumber coins.

The commercial hummus is quite good. It comes from Kronos Greek Specialties in Glendale Heights, Ill.