The foods available to us in the dining halls can become more than the sum of their parts, if combined wisely. Here is a recipe for preparing a high-quality breakfast sandwich in John Jay (the same ingredients are unfortunately not available in Ferris or JJ’s, so you’ll have to go to John Jay before 2:00 PM). It is not vegan or gluten-free or kosher, but it is extremely delicious.

This recipe requires waiting in several lines, so ideally you’ll go at a low-traffic time to minimize the amount of prep time (between 10:10 and 11:25 is an excellent time).

First, go to the omelette station, and order three eggs scrambled with ham, bacon, and cheese (and scallions if they have them). Onions are optional depending on your mood. If they don’t have shelled eggs, get an omelette (scrambled liquid eggs are gross). While your omelette is cooking, you can either go to the bagel station and ask for some smoked salmon (if the line seems reasonable), or you can set about getting the bread and other items for your sandwich.

Important note: you will want two plates (one for the eggs, one for other stuff).

Get the French bread (the baguette-looking ones), and cut a length slightly longer than the width of those little stabby fork things that you use to hold it down. Cut it in half along its side, and go put it in the toaster (which should be set to full power, a 5 or 6 speed, and maximum heat on both sides). Also, get 4 pats of butter- this will be important later. If you haven’t gotten the salmon, go do that, or the ingredients listed below, while your bread is toasting and your eggs are cooking.

Also, get some lettuce, and be sure to collect your eggs. DO NOT LET ANYONE STEAL THEM. If bacon strips are available at the eggs/pancakes/hashbrowns station, get some bacon as well. If they don’t have bacon (which they usually don’t), it’s unfortunate but not a crisis. DO NOT under ANY circumstances try any of the other ridiculous and scary mystery meats that show up at that station on non-bacon days.

Go set down your plates of ingredients at your seat. Now, go fill one paper coffee cup with hot water, and get another spare, as well as a lid. Take this back to your seat, and put your 4 pats of butter into the spare cup, before placing the spare cup into the cup of hot water and putting the lid on it. This should quickly melt the butter. This is important, because you’ll want your bread to be buttered, but having the butter not soak into the bread is obviously no good, and since you’re busy gathering ingredients, you won’t have time to quickly unwrap and spread the butter onto the bread when it comes out hot from the toaster so it melts. Thus, hot water. (Also, it can be useful to stab the bread with a butter knife to break up the surface and help the butter soak in better instead of just leaking onto your plate.)

Your bread appropriately buttered, take it back to put spicy mayo (found at the sushi station) and sriracha (found with the salad dressings, or sometimes wandering out in the seating areas) on it. If they don’t have spicy mayo out yet, that will be bad, but it’s a survivable problem. Brown mustard should be available near your seat- put that on as well.

Your ingredients acquired, your bread buttered, and your sauces applied, you can now move on to sandwich assembly. There is a specific order that you have to do this to make sure your sandwich is structurally sound.

On the TOP half of the bread (which has a rounder base and is thus more unstable), first put down the lettuce (and bacon, if you have it- I recommend breaking up the bacon strips into smaller pieces). Then lay down the salmon on top of this to compact the loose lettuce and bacon down into a single layer (this is important).

On the BOTTOM half, put your eggs from the omelette station. If you ended up having to get a liquid egg omelette, instead of scrambled shelled eggs, the best way to do this is to cut the omelette into short strips along its width, and then to lay them down next to/on top of each other.

Now, holding down the salmon with your fingers to keep everything together, flip the top half of the bread onto the bottom. Your John Jay breakfast sandwich is complete! Make sure to apply a firm grip when lifting it, as even when assembled correctly, it is quite thick and can be vulnerable to disintegration.

what the dining hall looks like between 10:10 and 11:25 via Bwog Archives