The American brewpub scene is a somewhat monotonous grind. Nearly every kitchen I walk into has some variation of a buttermilk brined chicken sandwich on their menu. This isn’t to say that this sandwich isn’t damn good. It just certainly needs new life. I was lucky enough to meet a pizza cook on staff at one of these brewpubs that had a limitless creative spirit when it came to making the most of his ingredients on hand. He also must have felt the fried chicken sandwich needed new life. Each afternoon as the lunch rush tampered off he would make some kind of culinary creation for everyone. I was always slightly apprehensive when he began grabbing into some part of my ‘mise en place’ to make his creation, but I had patience and faith in his process.
One day he came in and took out two small mixing bowls and filled one with panko and the other with an egg dredge. He went over to my station and grabbed some buttermilk chicken from a drawer and got to dredging. I was impressed that he went to the great length of making his own dredge for this sandwich, but he was committed to getting the ultimate crispy exterior to the chicken. Once he got the fried chicken covered with cheese he made the clever choice to melt it quickly in the piping hot pizza oven. While I thought this was going to be a really good Chicken Milanese sandwich at first, I suddenly realized it was beyond my wildest dreams. He finally pulled out our sesame burger buns and smashed them onto the flattop. I then discovered that this was going to be my first cemita experience. The cemita is a very particular sandwich from Puebla, Mexico. It was one of the sandwiches that I was determined to taste at one point in my life. I first discovered it through Daniel Gritzer’s ode to the sandwich on Serious Eats.
The amazing thing about this sandwich was that the cook didn’t even know where to find the sandwich around him at restaurants in Chicago. This added to the elusive nature of the sandwich and explains why I’ve never even seen it on menus. He himself was from Puebla and he let me know that this quick and easy version was missing two components. The Oaxacan Cheese and the bitter herb known as papalo. He rubbed his belly and said the papalo just made you feel good inside. While I didn’t know where to find papalo, I did know that you could find Oaxacan cheese at Salsa’s Family Market. You can view my write up of the market here and I highly recommend you head here to get the cheese if you do feel inspired to make this sandwich in its full-fledged glory.
The rest of the sandwich followed pretty closely to the original. He cut up some avocado, layered red onion and spread the in-house Chipotle and Jalapeno sauce on each side of the sesame bun. He finally finished it off with some mixed greens as a sub for the papolo. I chose to add some pickled jalapenos to mine to add some extra kick.
I had a first bite and I was in my happy place. The hefty chicken was balanced well with the acidity of the spicy peppers and all the fatty sauces. The texture of his panko dredge was exquisite even if it wasn’t traditionally what he used at home. Perhaps it evoked more of a memory of eating a Japanese tonkatsu sandwich, but I was happy regardless. This culinary experience reaffirmed my belief that sometimes you make the best of what you have at your disposal and that’s a good enough starting point when you’re cooking something like a cemita. As I learned from Gritzer’s Serious Eats article on the sandwich, the Pueblan and American versions are much different than one another. This is yet another example of the sandwich that adds to the culinary heritage of the sandwich. As people move from kitchen to kitchen and share recipes, we adapt to make the best of our situation. I hope to continue the legacy of the sandwich and I certainly feel more confident to make my own adaptation of it now.
