Christmas day Tradition: Cuban Sandwiches

Dad slicing the pork and our white German shepherd
longing for some scraps

I love cooking at home in Texas, both the fact that the kitchen is large, well stocked and I get to cook with my mother. I've posted about Noche Buena in the past (and also a short post about Cuban sandwiches in 2010), but this year's Christmas was a little different. Usually we celebrate Noche Buena on Christmas Eve, but making a pork leg, yucca, black beans, plantains, watercress salad, and flan.  A true Caribbean feast. However, this year we decided to take it easy and ordered a honey baked ham and made all American sides like macaroni and cheese and Brussels sprouts.

My Dad on Christmas Eve, discussing the
intricacies of Spanish brandy

No matter happens on Noche Buena, we make Cuban sandwiches on Christmas day. This year we roasted a pork loin and used our special order ham to make our Cuban sandwiches. There are two camps for Cuban sandwiches: Either you can use mayonnaise OR mustard. Never both. If you order a Cuban sandwich and it has mustard and mayonnaise--It's a FAKE! (Albeit a delicious fake)

My family is in the yellow mustard camp. Seriously, none of this fancy whole grain or dijon mustard--yellow mustard only. So this post is a review of the Posada family Cuban sandwiches. These sandwiches are a Cuban tradition that have thankfully spread all over the United States to every swank deli, yet probably one of those specialties that is not easily found in Cuban--for now anyway.

Lay out the ingredients

Ingredients:
Bolios (small loaves of bread) or Hoagies
Ham
Roasted pork
Swiss cheese
Dill pickles, sliced
Mustard
A panini pan or a sandwich iron or a frying pan with a press
toothpicks

1. Thinly slice the meats: in this case the honey baked ham and the pork loin
--For the pork loin, I marinated a medium pork loin overnight in a dressing of olive oil, lime juice, garlic and red onions. Then I seared it for five minutes on each side in a cast iron dutch oven, and roasted it in the oven for 45 minutes at 350.
2. Slice the bread open and lay out as many loaves as you want to assemble into sandwiches.
3. On both sides of the bread, spread or squirt a thin layer of yellow mustard.

Progression of the sandwiches

 4. Start to layer the ingredients: I put pickle on one side of the bread (pat the pickles dry first), Swiss  cheese on the other, then layer the ham and pork in the middle.
5. Close the sandwich, pierce it with toothpick to keep in the bread together so it stays closed with pressing

6. Smear a nice thick layer of butter on both sides of the bread.

Butter the bread

Press

7. Heat the pan over low heat, place the sandwiches on the grill and press for about 3-5 minutes, until you see grill marks on one side and then flip and press until you have grill marks on the other side.
8. Once you have nice grill marks and the cheese is soft, slice the sandwiches in half on a diagonal. Serve with potato chips or even better, fried banana chips, aka mariquitas.

Grill Marks

Serve