A simple sandwich, but so good I had to share. Actually, I had intended to make ham-and-cheese sandwiches, but the woman at the deli counter was so slow I gave up in frustration. Arne, casting about for a way to salvage the situation, picked up a package of sliced hard salami. “You love salami sandwiches!” Indeed I do.
The rest of the sandwich came together from my two favorite salami sandwiches. The Grove Cafe and Market in East Downtown Albuquerque makes a wonderful salami sandwich with olive tapenade; and my favorite comfort-food book, Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin, suggests a sandwich of Lebanon bologna (a sandwich meat much more like salami than bologna) on an English muffin with cream cheese.
So I bought a few pitted Kalamata olives and whirred them with 
a tiny clove of garlic and a drizzle of olive oil in my mini-chopper. (Of course one olive still had a pit in it, which I had to fish out, and which cannot have been good for my little chopper.) Used my trusty grill pan (though a regular skillet would be fine too) to grill a few slices of salami with a schmear of cream cheese and plenty of olive spread on good Sage Bakehouse sourdough. Served with crunchy potato chips, a few bread-and-butter pickles, and a dollop of grainy French mustard… well, let’s just say I didn’t miss the ham and cheese at all.
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