It turns out that Young’s son Dean not only continued the comic strip when his father died, naming it "Blondie©," but he also opened a franchise chain of sandwich shops named Dagwood’s Sandwich Shoppes® with the first one in place in 2006.
Well, this recipe is about my Super Sandwich not the ones sold anywhere else.
I started making them around 1972 from my favorite sandwich ingredients that I had used for years to make regular sandwiches. Then I embellished my creation in content and gave it the name Super Sandwich, and my young children Ray, Jr. and Patty were visually quite impressed. I was pleased and amused.
When I built one of these sandwiches it was about three inches thick and packed with stuff I really like in a particular order that accentuated flavor, moisture and texture.
Here is my recipe for the Super Sandwich:
Ingredients:
3 slices of fresh soft plain white bread
1/8th pound of dried beef (In the old days I didn’t know about the superb dried beef available at Fisher’s Country Store® in Cessna, PA. Google® them on the Internet ... They used to ship the dried beef to me but now you have to go there to get it. Instead, I now buy the dried beef from their supplier, John F. Martin Meats, through their Martin's Country Market store, which you can access via a simple Google® search. Of course, they sell me an uncut dried beef roast and I shave cut it using my commercial meat slicer, and keep the main supply vacuum sealed and refrigerated. Nice!)
4 slices of sweet lebanon bologna (I buy Seltzer's Double Smoked Sweet Lebanon Bologna in a 4.5 lb deli size roll online at their store and treat it similarly to the dried beef roast. Cut what you want and then vacuum seal and refrigerate the rest.)
2, ½" thick slices of a medium large very ripe tomato
8 green olives stuffed with pimentos
4 sweet gherkin pickles
Potato chips
2 slices of white American cheese
Miracle Whip®
1 or 2 small pats of soft butter (to butter both sides of one piece of bread)
Black pepper
Directions:
Slather Miracle Whip® on one slice of bread. Slice the olives in half lengthwise and place them evenly on the Miracle Whip® covered bread slice. Put the sweet lebanon bologna slices on top of the olives. Put a handful of salty potato chips on top of the sweet lebanon bologna and crush them gently so they are somewhat flat.
Butter both sides of one slice of bread and put it on top of the potato chips. Put half of the dried beef on top of the buttered slice of bread. Put the tomato slices, one of them cut in half, on top of the dried beef. Sprinkle pepper on the tomato slices. Put the other half of the dried beef on top of the tomatoes. Put the cheese on top of the dried beef. Slice the pickles lengthwise into three pieces each and put them evenly across the top of the cheese. Slather Miracle Whip® on the remaining slice of bread and put it face down on the cheese to complete the Super Sandwich. Cut the sandwich diagonally and carefully with a sharp knife. Serve.
Looking back:
I was in my 20’s when I started making this sandwich and my appetite was huge. I truly enjoyed plowing through one of those delightful taste treats. As is so typical, the combination of sweet, salty, moist and multiple textures, soft through crunchy, really worked.
Do note that I did not confuse flavors by using any product like mustard, which would detract noticeably from the other flavor combinations. Every product has its place, and that sandwich is not the place to use mustard of any type. If you like mustard on a sandwich see my recipe for the Grilled Pastrami with Swiss cheese sandwich. Or read below.
I put only a few sandwich recipes in this book for common sandwiches as I figure most folks can make a good sandwich with no help from me whatsoever. But I will suggest that mustard aficionados grill the interior sides of a buttered bun, grill some thin slices of Virginia ham, melt American cheese over the ham, form the sandwich and then slather on the mustard of your choice. That is the perfect use for mustard in a sandwich.