Making A Sandwich

Hello everyone and welcome to EnglishPod.

My name is Marco.

My name is Kathryn and today we've got a monologue.

We've got one person talking, telling you how to make the perfect sandwich.

That's right.

She's a chef and she's going to teach us.

She's going to talk about all the ingredients and some tips on how to make a sandwich.

So be prepared.

This is going to be a really good lesson.

And I'm already hungry thinking about it.

So let's listen to the dialogue.

We'll be back in a moment.

Welcome to our show.

Today I'm going to show you how to make the perfect mouthwatering sandwich.

Are you ready?

Let's get started.

Let's start with the basics.

Bread.

Bread is an important ingredient here.

You need to remember one thing.

Use the bread according to the following criteria, freshness, crumb and color.

If you want a closed sandwich, I recommend you first toast your bread in a toaster or

oven or grill it slightly until it gets a light brown color.

Now that our bread is ready, let's talk about the ingredients.

Of course, each person's palate is different, but I'm going to give you a few tips that

you'll be able to use when turning any sandwich into the perfect sandwich.

I would strongly recommend you put fresh vegetables in your sandwich.

Do not undervalue them as they play a big role in forming the taste and will make the

sandwich more refreshing and light.

The best choices here are evident.

Cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, sweet pepper or chili, lettuce, and of course herbs.

You can't go wrong with them.

As for aubergines, mushrooms and asparagus, I would recommend you first grill them slightly

with a little touch of olive oil.

Last but not least, we have a wide variety of condiments that we can add to our perfect

sandwich.

We can be subtle and add just a touch of salt and pepper, or we can combine mustard sauce,

mayonnaise, ketchup, or even caviar to achieve a stronger flavor.

It's always a good idea to cut your sandwich in triangles or manageable pieces to avoid

all your ingredients falling out and staining your shirt.

That's all the time we have for today, but join us next time where we'll be going over

how to make the perfect lasagna.

Till next time!

Alright, we're back.

So, obviously, I think she knows what she's talking about.

This is going to be a great sandwich.

Alright, so she mentioned a lot of ingredients, a couple of different words that we might

not understand.

So, let's take a look at them now in Language Takeaway.

Language takeaway.

Okay, so let's go.

There's a lot of ingredients in this sandwich.

You can see the ingredients.

You can see the ingredients.

So, let's go ahead and take a look at the ingredients.

Alright, so we have the ingredients here.

We have the bread, we have the butter, we have the onions.

We have the tomatoes.

We have the lettuce.

We have the tomatoes.

We have the onions.

We have the lettuce.

We have the tomatoes.

We have the onions.

We have some different synonyms that we might not know.

So, we need to go through the synorms that we might not know.

And she mentioned the word crumb.

Okay, yeah. She said freshness, crumb and color.

So what does she mean by crumb of the bread?

Okay, so crumb, a crumb is a very, very, very, very, very small piece of bread.

Like when you put bread in a toaster, maybe it's what falls down actually.

We call them bread crumbs sometimes.

You can cook with them.

But they're basically little pieces of bread that fall off, little grains.

Okay, yeah. So, yeah, usually it happens all the time.

You're having cookies or you're having some bread, you bite into it and little pieces of bread or cookie fall down.

Those are called crumbs.

That's right. And this is a very...

And I want to remind everyone that the word crumb has a B on the end.

C-R-U-M-B. But we don't pronounce the B. We just say crumb.

Yeah, you don't say crumb.

No.

Okay, so just crumb.

Yeah, be careful with that one.

All right. So we have to keep a look out for the crumb of the bread.

I guess how fresh and how... Sometimes when you squeeze bread, it makes a nice little sound.

Crunch, crunch.

Exactly.

But she's also recommending a couple of different ingredients.

And she said, well, it depends on each person's palate.

So after we've chosen our bread, she talks about a closed sandwich and maybe toasting it.

Okay, so there are two options for sandwiches.

You might see these on menus as well as when you're cooking yourself.

A closed sandwich means you have two pieces of bread, one on the bottom and one on top.

It's closed.

Okay.

But the opposite is an open sandwich.

That means you only have one piece of bread and then maybe you have some meat on top.

Oh, okay. Actually, I always thought that for it to be a sandwich, you had to have two pieces of bread.

Well, now when you... I would challenge you to look on Google for open-faced sandwich or open sandwich.

You'll find some very interesting things.

Yeah, I've had them.

Actually, you can put some meat and some cheese just on top of a piece of bread and you're done.

I'm a huge fan of those.

Yeah.

So that's a closed sandwich, though, when you have two pieces of bread and the meat in the middle.

And after that, she talks a little bit about people's tastes and what people want.

But she used a very special word.

That's right.

She said each person's palate is different.

Okay, a palate in the context of food and taste means the way that food flavors affect a person individually.

That's right.

So sometimes you say that some people have very good palate so they can maybe tell the difference between a wine from 1978 and a wine from 1980 or something like that.

That's right.

So you can have a palate, a good palate for wine, but also in this case, we're talking about food.

I could say I have a very sensitive palate so I don't like to use very, very strong flavors.

Okay.

So the palate is basically your taste.

It's actually a physical part of your mouth.

It's the top of your mouth where your tongue can touch the top of your mouth.

The roof of your mouth, exactly.

It's not just your ability to taste sweet.

It's sweet and salty and sour and all these different flavors.

Okay.

So a person's palate.

Now, herbs, right?

Now, moving on to the main ingredients.

You mentioned a lot of easy ones like tomatoes, onions, lettuce, but then we got into a little bit more specific things like, for example, this word that's always mispronounced, herbs.

Actually, you can say herbs.

It's a very British thing to do though.

Americans and Canadians say herbs.

It has an H in the front.

That's why it's confusing.

Okay.

So we can accept basically if somebody says herbs, but I guess in American English, it's more commonly pronounced as a silent H.

That's right, herbs.

Herbs.

And what are herbs, you might be asking.

Well, herbs can come in many different shapes and sizes.

They're usually green.

They're usually grown.

They're ways of giving food different flavors.

And so basil, for example, is an herb.

It's a big green leaf, something that we use in pesto, for example.

You can also have rosemary or mint.

These are all kinds of herbs.

Okay.

Some people even have an herb garden.

That's right.

They grow their own herbs.

Okay.

So now moving on to these weird-looking vegetables, for example, aubergines.

Okay.

Aubergines are the same as eggplants.

So you might hear this word sometimes.

It's basically a big purple vegetable.

Okay.

So for those of you who haven't seen an aubergine or an eggplant, yeah, it's a big purple vegetable.

It kind of looks like a cucumber but a little bit fatter.

Very fat.

And if you hold them, they're not very hard.

They're kind of soft.

Yeah.

And a lot of people like to grill these or to cook with them in, for example, Chinese

where there's a lot of eggplant or aubergines.

All right.

So we've had those.

We have mushrooms.

And what about asparagus?

Asparagus is actually one of my favorite foods but it's very strange-looking.

It's kind of green and it kind of has this little head, right?

That's right.

It's long.

It's green.

It's kind of like a pencil.

But at the very top, it's kind of like a plant almost.

Yeah.

They have a very strong taste and many people don't like asparagus.

That's right.

And the Germans, I think, actually, Germans and the Dutch have special asparagus that's white.

Oh, really?

It's called Spargel.

Oh, wow.

But if any of you know what that is, it's basically a white asparagus.

But asparagus is very popular in a lot of parts of the world.

Okay.

So now we have our vegetables.

We have our bread.

But now we need to add a little bit of extra flavor to the sandwich.

So this is where we add some condiments.

Okay.

So condiments are a category.

You can have many different kinds of condiments.

The most common are salt and pepper.

Okay.

So a condiment is a category of the things that you would add flavor to, as you said, salt, pepper.

But here they mention, for example, mayonnaise or ketchup.

Oh, and mustard as well.

These are all condiments.

So in different parts of the world, they have different kinds of condiments.

I've seen, for example, a lot of vinegar in Asia.

You can also have hot pepper flakes like in Europe.

Yeah.

The condiments that you add to your sandwich are varied.

I've seen people put all types of condiments in their sandwich.

And, for example, one that may be a little bit strange or maybe a little bit more expensive condiment is caviar.

Okay.

So caviar is not always considered a condiment.

It can be, but it can also be eaten alone.

But it's basically just fish eggs.

They're little fish eggs.

Very small.

It always usually, in people's mind, it's kind of like a fancy food, very luxurious, very expensive.

Well, it can be very expensive if you get like beluga caviar.

A lot of caviar comes from the Caucasus and Russia and Ukraine, these places.

And it's very, very salty in flavor.

That's right.

So that is also considered a condiment in our case because we're using it for a sandwich, right?

Okay.

So a lot of words there, a lot of interesting things going on in our sandwich.

Why don't we move on now to Fluency Builder where we're going to take a look at some phrases.

Fluency Builder

All right.

So let's go back to the very beginning of the dialogue when she said, all right, let's start with the basics.

Okay.

The basics is a set phrase in this context.

We can say this about many different things, but the basics basically refers to the most simple ingredients or the most simple elements.

In this case, bread or meat.

But you can also talk about the basics in other contexts like clothes shopping.

Like when school started when I was a kid, my mom always used to buy me the basics.

So T-shirts and socks.

Exactly.

So I guess the basics are the absolute necessary things.

Yes.

Right?

And also very simple.

So for example, if you talk about dancing, the basics would be maybe a certain sequence of steps that important, essential.

That's right.

And would caviar be a part of the basics, for example?

No, no, no.

No, that's an extra.

Okay.

So this is what we refer to when we say the basics.

Now our chef, when she continued talking about her sandwich, she said, I would strongly recommend you use fresh vegetables in your sandwich.

Okay, so you can say I would recommend this, but to strongly recommend is to have a very, very strong feeling about something.

That's right.

You're saying to the person basically do it.

You must.

Yeah.

So if maybe your friend is sick, you can say something like, I would strongly recommend you go to the doctor today.

That means you really, really should go to the doctor.

I would be upset if you didn't.

It's kind of formal though.

It seems like you would maybe use it with your boss or maybe with a person you don't really know that well, but with your friend you would say, I really think you should go to the doctor.

Yeah.

But you can say it in both contexts, but yeah, definitely more of a formal thing.

Okay.

So we strongly recommend that you, yeah, okay.

All right, so now for our last phrase, right?

Where are we?

Last but not least.

Last but not least.

So now moving on to our next phrase, when she started talking about the condiment, she said, last but not least, we have a wide variety of condiments.

Okay, this is a very, very common phrase.

It's a set phrase.

You will hear these words together very often.

Last but not least.

What could this possibly mean?

So obviously last means the last step here.

The last point.

But why not least?

Well, it's not least important.

Just because it's last, it doesn't mean that it's not important.

Okay, so maybe there are many people who have to give presentations in school and I'm the very, very last person to go.

The teacher will say, last but not least, Catherine.

That's right.

Makes me feel better.

Because you're saying you're last, but it doesn't mean you're not important.

Exactly.

So when you want to make sure that the last point of your presentation or what you're talking about is not ignored or you just want to make sure that everyone knows that it's also very important,

you say, last but not least.

Great.

All right, and now last but not least, the end of Fluency Builder.

We're going to close off with this little phrase.

When she was talking about salt and pepper, she said, a touch of salt and pepper.

Okay, a touch of salt and pepper is basically a measure.

It's not a lot.

It's very little amount of salt and pepper.

So we can say a touch.

So it's not really a specific quantity though, right?

We're not saying like a spoon of salt and pepper.

Not at all.

It basically means a little bit.

A little bit.

So you're just saying, maybe you'll hear this in maybe a cooking show or you'll read it in books when they'll say a pinch of salt or a touch of salt or a dash of salt.

That's right.

You could even say it about other things.

For example, if my friend just wrote this article and he wanted me to read it, I say, it's a really good article, but it could use a touch of humor.

I think maybe if you made it a little bit funny, it would be better.

Or maybe if you're painting your house, you can say, oh, I think a touch of red paint would look really nice on this wall.

That's right. A little bit of red paint would be good.

Okay. So a touch of, a really, really good phrase.

It makes you sound very natural.

Okay, so that's all the time we have for today.

But before we go, let's listen to the dialogue again.

Welcome to our show.

Today, I'm going to show you how to make the perfect mouthwatering sandwich.

Are you ready?

Let's get started.

Let's start with the basics.

Bread.

Bread is an important ingredient here.

You need to remember one thing.

Choose the bread according to the following criteria.

Freshness, crumb, and color.

If you want a closed sandwich, I recommend you first toast your bread in a toaster or oven or grill it slightly until it gets a light brown color.

Now that our bread is ready, let's talk about the ingredients.

Of course, each person's palate is different, but I'm going to give you a few tips that you'll be able to use when turning any sandwich into the perfect sandwich.

I would strongly recommend you put fresh vegetables in your sandwich.

Do not undervalue them as they play a big role in forming the taste and will make the sandwich more refreshing and light.

The best choices here are evident.

Cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, sweet pepper or chili, lettuce, and of course, herbs.

You can't go wrong with them.

As for aubergines, mushrooms, and asparagus, I would recommend you first grill them slightly with a little touch of olive oil.

Last but not least, we have a wide variety of condiments that we can add to our perfect sandwich.

We can be subtle and add just a touch of salt and pepper, or we can combine mustard sauce, mayonnaise, ketchup, or even caviar to achieve a stronger flavor.

It's always a good idea to cut your sandwich in triangles or manageable pieces to avoid all your ingredients falling out and staining your shirt.

That's all the time we have for today, but join us next time where we'll be going over how to make the perfect lasagna.

Till next time!

Alright, so talking about sandwich, this really reminds me of making sandwiches at home.

Grilled cheese sandwich. We didn't really talk about it here, but I think it's my favorite sandwich.

The grilled cheese sandwich.

It's very easy to make. Just two pieces of bread and cheese inside.

Do you use butter, though?

Yes.

So you have to butter the bread, and so when you grill it, it gets really nice and brown.

Actually, I'm not a very big sandwich fan when I'm having, for example, a meal like lunch.

I don't know. I think I need something more solid than just a sandwich at times.

Interesting. I had a sandwich for dinner last night.

Yeah?

I had an egg salad sandwich.

So you had egg salad inside two pieces of bread.

That's right, but the bread I had was French bread, so that long, thin bread was very crunchy, very delicious.

But actually, I like sandwiches for dinner.

They are a little bit lighter.

When you're having a big meal, it just seems like, although maybe sometimes places give you very big, heavy sandwiches

that have ham and salami and just a lot of things in there, so they're very, very filling.

That's very true. Like a meatball sub, for example, is a very heavy sandwich.

That's right.

But sandwiches come in all shapes and sizes. You can make basically any sandwich that your brain can think of.

And so we hope that you've learned some words for talking about sandwiches today.

Of course, if you have any questions or comments or you want to share with us your very favorite sandwich,

you should do so on EnglishPod.com.

All right. We'll see you guys there.

Bye.

Bye.