Not Just For Xmas: The Beauty Of A Muffuletta Leftover Sandwich
Photography Bella Howard
Words Josh Jones
Hair Ross Kristian
Make up Martha Sitwell
The beauty of a Muffuletta leftover sandwich, the trouble with mono crop culture and convincing brands to create environmental change with Gizzi Erskine.
A chef and food writer for 20 years, and appearing on our TV screens for almost as long, London’s Gizzi Erskine has been at the forefront of the campaign to reduce food waste, bringing sustainability into kitchens and examining how we need to rethink modern agriculture. Who better to have on the cover of the Leftovers Issue? Gizzi went above and beyond with the Christmas leftovers sandwich she made for us. Channeling the infamous Muffuletta sandwich - created by Sicilian immigrants in New Orleans – with a gravy dipping sauce she created something quite incredible. We sat wide-eyed at Gizzi’s kitchen table as she built this layered marvel together.
So I read that you don’t cook Christmas dinner, Gizzi?
I don’t, my mum cooks Christmas dinner. I daren’t do it I think is more the point, and half of me just wants to go to my mum’s and be cooked for. Her Christmas dinner is amazing and she has no regard for the fact that I’m a chef and that has been my profession for over 20 years. She very much treats me like her daughter. Even recently we had an argument about not seasoning the food enough... two hours before it was meant to be served. It’s a pretty contentious issue. But I do go to my sister’s on Christmas Eve and cook everyone a nice Christmas Eve dinner, which usually involves a ham and Dauphinoise potatoes so that’s great. Most people have their leftovers Christmas sandwich on Boxing Day. We always have our one at about midnight on Christmas Day, when we’re all getting hungry and don’t want to eat any more mince pies.
What is going on with this monster of a Christmas leftovers sandwich you’ve made for us?
I used to be obsessed with diners, drive-ins and dives and that TV show Man v. Food. I kept seeing in America that they had these French dip sandwiches and I was like, “What the fuck is this? It’s insane.” I’m obsessed with gravy so one Christmas I heated some up and dunked my Christmas sandwich in it – and that became a bit of a phenomenon online. Every Christmas I always post three recipes made with leftovers - it’s always a Christmas sandwich, a curry and a pie. They go viral every single year. For this feature, my boyfriend was saying that I should condense a sandwich like a beef Wellington. That got me thinking of a Muffuletta- style Italian deli sandwich, which is always made with ham and turkey, so it was perfect. I googled it and no one seems to have done it this way. Basically it’s all the bits that I’d put in a Christmas sandwich but the difference with this is rather than cutting all the meat when you’re carving at dinner or lunch, leave a hunk on the bone of the turkey and ham. Then when you’re ready for the sandwich, make sure it’s cold - fridge cold - and make sure to slice it really thin. That’s the secret to making this like a proper deli-style sandwich. Ultimately, I’ve got everything in there. I buttered the inside of the bloomer, which had been carved out to make it like a vessel rather than two slices of bread, then I smeared in the cranberry sauce. The first layer was the ham, then the turkey and I added stuffing and then thinly sliced pigs in blankets. I made a bread sauce mayonnaise and then because I love the Pret Christmas Sandwich, I put some crispy shallots in there, and added bacon. There are three vegetable elements in there - a layer of lettuce and then crunch with cucumber and radishes and the last thing was beef tomatoes. You could make this on Christmas night, put it in the fridge and then serve it the next day. It would make a really impressive table piece for Boxing Day. You do need to set it for a bit - I’d put it in the freezer for no more than 30 minutes and then the fridge overnight, which makes it much easier to carve. It also enables the wetness in the sandwich to set and hold everything together. By pure accident I found that putting the radish in there really added a kind of Russian dressing feel to it - I was quite impressed with that.
Have you ever been approached to write a ‘Leftovers’ book?
I think I’m done for a while with cookery books. I’ve done six books for myself and I ghostwrote probably another 10 on top of that. I did a series under the pseudonym of Christine Watson, which is such a shit pseudonym – I should have come up with something else! And then I’ve worked on books with a lot of chefs which I’m not allowed to talk about.
You’re big into sustainability and reducing food waste. What are we doing wrong?
Do you know what? For me it’s nothing that anyone’s doing at home, the problem is all industrial. I feel in a time of real deprivation for most people I don’t want to push the sustainability issue on the consumer so much. Although we all have a responsibility, for me it’s focusing on governmental issues and trying to get the manufacturers to understand their impact. Before, it was all about meat production and over consumption of the animal. For me now I think it’s more that we’re eating sentient beings. I believe that we’re omnivores; I think we have the option to choose where the meat comes from and how often you eat it. I really like the plant-based ideology being pushed because it does mean that we’re all eating more plants. We need to be eating a lot more of them but I don’t believe plant-based eating is the best thing for the environment. Mono crop culture is a fucking disaster, and just because you’re eating a plant doesn’t mean that the soil it’s grown in isn’t dying fast. And that’s the problem. The dream scenario is bringing natural, holistic farming methods back and that will regenerate the soil. It will restore agriculture and restore rewilding – all of those things come naturally alongside it. That means healthier food and more balanced eating. When I wrote my book Restore, my whole idea with that was to explain regenerative agriculture but all of it has so many complexities. Even just knowing how farms are run, before you start looking at the food, is so complex.
You go full into researching a subject, don’t you?
I’m an intrinsic geek when it comes to this stuff. I go really deep into the science behind things. My privilege has been that I was a columnist for the Sunday Times for many years and during that I got the opportunity to work with some of the best environ- mental scientists. I’ve been working as a chef for over 20 years so I’ve worked with some of the best producers and, as they’ve evolved, I’ve evolved. The holistic side of regenerative agriculture has been my geek-out subject for years.
We featured the Wild Farm folk in our last issue who are big propo- nents in regenerative agriculture.
They’re great – really inspiring. I think what they’re doing is single-handedly highlighting and bringing to the table all the delicacies of what I’ve been talking about. For instance, flour is one of the most critical things, and we don’t think about it. Everyone blames things like dairy or beef production as one of the biggest problems. The reality is that grain is just as big a problem.
Your plant-based burger pop up Filth started about a decade ago, right? That was quite a pioneering thing to do at the time.
Filth started seven or eight years ago and ran until just before lockdown. It was quite forward-thinking but I think the most forward-thinking thing about it wasn’t just that it was a plant-based burger, it was a plant- based burger where everything was sourced within a regenerative system. So before anyone else knew about regenerative farming we were buying everything from within the re-gen system. Whether it was getting the most perfect organic soya from France, which was not a problem as it was organic well grown so it had nutrition and form and actually contributed back to the earth and environment, all the way through to sorting where we got our black pepper from. There were all these little details that people don’t know. And that’s why we never made a fucking penny!
You launched the digital space, Future Food Movement Ally Community in late 2021, what’s that all about?
It launched last winter but we’ve been working on it for the past two years. Basically it’s asking our producers to want to be educated – that is simply what it is, asking a producer, ‘what’s your responsibility?’ We let them know that that they don’t have to be freaked out by that question. They come in and we’ll show them how, depending on the size of their business, they can work with us to get within the regenerative programme. We’re talking to the likes of Yeo Valley and Farmison, big brands that really want to make a big impact in environmental change. It’s a brilliant scheme.
You described your younger self at school as the “girl with the smelly lunchbox” because you always took leftovers with you. So it’s been in your psyche to reuse food from an early age.
I was definitely that person. We were really poor growing up, and my mum had three jobs. She was seriously hustling – instead of going home after school we’d have to go to a café next door where we’d get a milkshake and wait for her to finish work and then we’d run home. My mum’s an extra-ordinary cook and she’d always cook fresh food but instead of having time to make a sandwich in the morning she’d say that the leftovers was perfectly good food and I’d take it to school. That was always her philosophy. I loved eating it but I was really jealous of those people who had a sandwich and a chocolate biscuit.
What was the first meal you cooked with your mum?
I was always around helping when I was younger. I don’t remember the first time I actually cooked with her. But I do remember the first time I cooked when she was in Thailand and she called and talked me through making a dish. And that’s really one of the main reasons I cook. I’ve said it before but it’s a narcissistic need for feeding people. I fed my sister because she was sick and didn’t like the food being fed to her, so I made this dish and she was beyond grateful. Seeing that and seeing the whole process, that feeling gave me chills – it still does just thinking about it.
You worked at London’s infamous St. JOHN Bread and Wine. It’s famed for ‘nose to tail eating’ so there’s really little food waste there. There’s a theme from school, to places you’ve worked, to what you do now, that is all about not wasting stuff.
I was there on and off for two years. The food waste thing only really came into play in a really obvious way when you’re eating a whole animal and understanding that you’re working with ‘the glut’, which I think is about enough. Whether it’s crops or animals, things are grown in gluts, because that’s what seasonal food is. There’s loads of it all of a sudden. I liked that side of it and when I left I came up with my first concept, which was a food waste concept. It must have been inspired by them. I don’t really remember the idea but I know I was reading a lot about food wastage at the time. This was about 20 years ago and the depressing thing is it’s still the same – I remember back then reading that for every three bags of shopping you buy, two of them go in the bin. That started my interest but it was also because I was speaking to the producers we worked with. I’m still friends with several of them, and they inspire me because that’s how they changed their businesses. They were the first early adaptors and adopters of this movement.
You mentioned during the photo- shoot that TV came calling for you early on in your career. Do you have any regrets in the direction that took your career?
I was doing pop-up restaurants when I was training as a chef. That’s how it all started. I was really fucking broke, training at Leith’s School Of Cookery and working with my friend Abby who was a pastry chef. We were working on loads of bits and bobs and set up a catering company called Saucy Tarts, and it was fucking amazing. We cooked for some major people and took over some art galleries in the short time we were doing it, and I did what I guess was the early pop-up restaurants. It was at that point that
I made the decision that I didn’t want to chef in restaurants any more. Straight-up cheffing was not for me. I also decided when I went to Good Food that recipe development and food consultancy was maybe the way I wanted to go. But then I just kept getting opportunities and I went with them. Sometimes they were restaurant-led, sometimes they were writing-led and sometimes TV. It all went kind of mad, but I went with it because I feel privileged to have had it. Sometimes I wish I could have had more focus on one thing, I feel I might have ruined certain business oppor- tunities for myself because although I’m very focused on what I do I have wondered if I’d given something 100% of my focus instead of spinning a lot of plates at the same time, maybe I’d have one prized thing. But I’m really proud of everything I’ve done. I sort of think just because I’ve either got bored or something hasn’t worked out or was only meant to last a certain time, doesn’t mean that it’s not been a great success. Everything I’ve done has been successful so I do think I’ve achieved it.
Do you hear the call of the pass at any point when you’ve not been working in a restaurant for a while?
I’m sure it will come! [laughing] I promised to myself in spring 2022 to take an entire year off. I’m still working with food and getting to do what I love, which is write recipes every day and work with brands and do behind-the- scenes stuff but I definitely don’t really aspire to have another business any time soon. Although annoyingly I’ve still got that chef thing of having a dream situation of a small, family- run business with a small holding at the back. I have an ambition there somewhere but I must say it’s been dampened down and I’ve really enjoyed writing again.
Setting up a restaurant is so expensive - I can’t think of one chef who hasn't lost loads of money on at least one restaurant.
You’re absolutely right. Chefs have two problems. One of them is always financial and the other is the creative/ business relationship they have with their partners and investors. There are some people who have a sort of smooth relationship, but I’ve never heard of one that has run beautifully together.
And finally, which chef would you want to make you a Christmas leftovers sandwich?
That’s a really good question. At the moment I’m obsessed with Jackson Boxer. We kind of grew up together in food. What I love about his food – and I hate the word – is that it’s unctuous. He really cares about technique, produce and detail but he makes it delicious and mucky, and I don’t think he’d give a shit if you ate it with your hands. I think we share the same philosophies. Sometimes I’ll look at his dishes and I’m pissed off because I think I’d have done the same as him. I’m also really proud of him for everything he’s achieved.
