the sandwich is created

Food Due to a string of incidents which included some broken headphones (don’t ask) and getting on the wrong bus (again, don’t), I ended up in Woolton yesterday at about lunchtime. There are a good few food choices in the village of the kind you tend to find in any village even if like Woolton it’s in the middle of suburbia (including a Sainsburys). For ages, I’ve walked straight past a small white shop near the bus stop, but for some reason yesterday I was tempted inside.

It’s quite small, about the size of an average sandwich shop, with terracotta floor and price lists on the wall. Except instead of tubs of salad and coleslaw, there is a display cabinet filled with cheese. There are dozens of varieties, most of which I’ve never heard of, at least in this style (is that the right word?). So there's Cheshire, but it's Smoked Cheshire. Cheddars combined with all kinds of flavours and French cheeses with a multi-coloured array of mold and fruit running through them.

This is the Liverpool Cheese Company.

I wander past, to the back of the shop. The lady behind the counter looks up expectantly. I ask her if they do sandwiches. They do. I ask how much, £2.50. Do they have a menu? They do not. I can have whichever cheese I’d like on a baguette. Any of them? Yes. My mouth waters. I drifted back up the shop and look again at the selection. As ever when faced with a hundred choices, I can’t select one. Some people in this situation probably go with what they know. I always try to go with something I don’t.

Cornish yarg then.

I watch the tall man whose joined us in the shop behind the counter slice some large pieces off the truckle to put on the sandwich. Next they want to know what kind of baguette I’d like. Granary. Chutney? I ask them for a recommendation and after a short conversation (which resembles the one about Ice Cream flavours in the film City Slickers) they decide that sweet onion would complement the taste of the yarg. They’ve their backs to me as the sandwich is created but before long I see the baguette.

It looks the way these things only ever seems to in photography or films with giant lettuce leaves, large slices of tomato and the cheese just too big to fit between the two pieces of bread. I pick something up from a sale basket -- ale cheddar sealed in wax. They ring it up and put the sandwich in a brown paper bag, the top of the sandwich peaking out, enticing me with what looks like a smile. I pay the money, amazed already at the value, and leave.

I find a bench somewhere to sit and eat the thing. After one bite, I’m in rapture. The yarg is rather like Lancashire except, before it matures, it’s wrapped in nettles to create a rind, and add flavour. The name comes from the reversal of the surname of the Grays, the couple that gave the recipe to the Pengreen dairy were the main production happens these days. None of which I’m aware of, or care about, as its sweet creaminess merges with the taste of the onion and the crispiness of the bread and lettuce in my mouth.

I’d brought a book to read just in case I did stop for lunch somewhere but that remained in my back as I concentrated on enjoying this experience instead, not needing something to keep my mind off the slight bit of disappointment that comes with shop bought sandwiches because you know that no love has gone into the manufacture. This sandwich feels like an act of love, so much so that when I’d finished I trotted back to the shop, put my head around the door and said: “Can I just say that was one of the nicest sandwiches I’ve ever tasted.” Because it was.