There were a dozen stories at the Souperdouper Soup Kitchen Sandwich Special, and this is four of them. First: the cookoff – the latest in the rash of edible dogfights that’ve swept through Brooklyn this year. Who planned this event? Who was there? Who were the winners? Who were the losers, and what, exactly, did they lose? Second: the sandwich, my artichoke-ricotta spread with arugula-pesto on sourdough (it never did have a proper name), my vision of culinary inspiration that lured me to Greenpoint that hot August afternoon. The third story: an unexpected find – a ricotta, very fresh, a brand previously unknown to me, discovered under the counter of a neighborhood deli.  And forth: a cautionary tale of the toll these cook offs sometimes take, the payment demanded, if not in life and limb, then in digits, in fingertips lost, never to grow back. A dire tale of blood spent and scars gained in… the Naked Kitchen.

The cookoff was a charity affair, its proceeds sent off in support of the Greenpoint Soup Kitchen. Cathy Erway and Noah Berland, a winner in last month’s Hot Dog Cookoff, hosted it in the back courtyard of the TBD Bar, on Greenpoint’s burgeoning Franklin Avenue.  My fellow contestants and I all brought a soup or a sandwich or both – enough to feed small servings to a hundred or so guests. I don’t think the crowd ever numbered quite that many, but those who came tasted entries that ranged from the homey and familiar, like Mike O’Neil’s tomato soup with grilled cheese croutons (one of my favorites of the day); to the thematic “Naughty Jew,” stuffed with Bacon; to a spicy Tex-Mex gazpacho; to a pesto and tomato canapé made entirely from produce raised at the Greenpoint rooftop farm; to the indomitable Nick Suarez’ grilled-on-the-spot grilled cheese garnished with mustard and sliced cornichons. The prizes were tempting and they were many: a Le Creuset dutch oven and griddle; a bag filled with chocolates; a copy of the venerable Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Sadly, none of these prizes came my way.  But whatever the judges and voting public may have thought, I knew in my heart that mine was a tasty sandwich — a sandwich I believed in. And that, more than prizes,more than glory, fame, the envy of other cooks, is what really matters, right?

To make it, I cleaned and steamed a dozen or so large artichokes and mixed their chopped hearts with ricotta, freshly-grated parmesan, lots of fresh basil, 5 or 6 cloves of roasted garlic, and plenty of salt and pepper. That was step one. Step two was cleaning two bunches of arugula & toasting a cup or two of walnuts, grinding them together with salt and grated parmesan, then adding a thin stream of olive oil until the mixture turned into a creamy paste: arugula pesto. Step three: thinly slice a multicolored array of heirloom tomatoes; and step four — the dangerous step four: very thinly slice a multicolored array of sweet bell peppers with a mandoline. More about that later. For the sandwich I layered ricotta spread, pesto, tomato and pepper rings on slices of sourdough bread from nearby Napoli bakery on Metropolitan Avenue. (As for some reason has been my custom lately I neglected to take photos of the finished creation, so you’ll have to check it out at Not Eating Out in New York, where Cathy has kindly featured it.

The sandwich was inspired by the locally-grown artichokes at the Osczepinski Farms booth in the Greenpoint greenmarket, but I couldn‘t track these down when game day came, and so I had to use commercial ‘chokes from a nearby grocer. Everything else though – the basil, the peppers, the tomatoes & arugula, even the garlic, all came from local farms. Even the ricotta came from a nearby cheesemaker, and in keeping with the Dave’s Kitchen Ricotta Quest I’ll mention it here.  The counterman at Lorimer Meats, where I’d previously discovered the delicious Lioni Latticini Ricotta, handed me a 3-lb ricotta tin of a brand I hadn’t seen: Calabro, from East Haven, CT.  He assured me it was as good as the Lioni Latticini, and he was right. Like the Lioni, it was packed in a perforated tin to allow extra liquid to drain out, and it had a delicious, rich flavor. It had a firmer, more solid texture, and broke apart in the bowl into something almost like chunks, but when stirred it became smooth and creamy. It balanced the subtle flavor of the artichokes very nicely and lent a slightly sweet, slightly buttery flavor to the spread. I’ll definitely pick up this brand again when I see it.

And this brings me to the last, sad story of the day. It’s a story of bandages, of great quantities of Neosporin, of doctors wielding sinister, cauterizing wands of silver nitrate. But I’ll leave out all of that, and just say this: when using a mandoline, pay attention! Stay alert and use whatever finger guard or safety device is provided. I was doing none of those and I’ll likely have a misshapen finger to show for it once the bandages come off. Those things are dangerous — but oh man do they make thin slices.

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