Easy Tea Sandwich Torte

Hi everyone, I'm so glad you could join me here on All Yum! And over the years, I know you've become accustomed to my baking recipes, but guess what? I cook too! And I've read your comments, you are requesting some savory dishes. Well good news, today starts my cook-along series. I went to chef training before I specialized in baking, so just like baking recipes, I can give you the hows and whys behind cooking, sharing with you some of my favorite, most delicious dishes, and also listen to your requests. So, to kick things off today, you're probably looking at this saying, well what am I doing with a cake? Because this is a tea sandwich tort. It's a hot day out there, and I thought, well, let's make a cold savory dish. If you're having an afternoon tea or a gathering where you want a great savory make-ahead, and if you love the idea of tea, well then, this sandwich tort does the trick. I'm going to walk you through making a chicken salad, an egg salad, with a secret ingredient, thanks to my mom, and a pesto cream cheese layered between bread, so one tort feeds eight to ten people easily. Please stay with me, welcome to cook-along, and I'm making my tea sandwich tort. The sandwich fillings, the chicken salad first, because that's going to be at the base of the sandwich tort. So normally, I don't put cream cheese in a chicken salad, but because I want to make this a tort that's sliceable, I don't want the chicken salad oozing or squishing out of place. The cream cheese, now soft, once chilled, will hold the chicken salad in place. So I'm just softening this up, and I'll add a little bit of mayonnaise. If this does soften up a bit too much that you see lumps developing, you can switch to a whisk, and I think I'm going to do that. If you have a favorite chicken salad recipe you'd like to include to customize this tort to make it your own, of course do that, but consider adding that little bit of cream cheese to stabilize it. So for some flavor, I'm going to add just a touch of lemon juice, and I'm adding, for a bit of color and tomato flavor, some tomato paste, concentrated tomato, and finely chopped sun-dried tomato, so a little more highly seasoned. I might as well add my green onions now. Stir that together. So while very soft now, of course this will set up in the fridge. I have my cooked diced chicken. I've diced it smaller than I would if I was just making a single layer chicken salad sandwich. I want the dressing to envelop the chicken. Now you can use leftover chicken, you can grill some chicken up. This is chicken breast meat. I actually poached the chicken, so I made a stock, sort of stock. I just threw in some celery and onion, a little fresh thyme, dropped in the chicken breast, and they took about 20 minutes to reach 165 Fahrenheit. After the chicken cooled, then I diced it up for a nice bit of crunch, and it relates to the pesto layer in the sandwich tort, some toasted pine nuts. All right, if you're making this ahead of time, you can pop it in the fridge to chill it. I'm going to get to assembling soon enough, so moving right on to the egg salad layer. All right, I have already boiled eight eggs, so they're hard boiled, and when I boil my eggs, I immerse them in tepid water, bring them up to a full boil, and that's when I set the timer for 10 minutes. I let them boil for 10 minutes, and immediately off the heat, you have to cool down the eggs by running them under cold water or soaking them in ice-cold water. That will prevent any of that unappealing green skin to form on the egg yolk. That's the little trick. Now, normally, I would use a little chopper for my egg salad, but just like the chicken salad, I wanted to dice the chicken fine. With my egg salad, I want a fine texture to my egg salad, so I'm using a box grater, and you know, I have had this box grater for over 20 years, and I like it because the teeth on the box grater are actually a little bit dull. I find the new ones with the laser-cut blades, for lack of a better term, oh, you can shred a knuckle just too quickly, so I prefer my old one, even if it takes a little more pressure. Of course, with eggs, it doesn't, but I'll just grate up, and you can see that egg has not a hint of green in the yolk. The rinsing is key. Oh, and when it comes to tips for peeling hard-boiled eggs, well, I run a thin stream of cold water as I'm peeling it, if I can, and it sounds counterintuitive, but using an egg that is not fresh from the farm is key. If it's been in your fridge for, if the eggs have been in the fridge for a week or so, you'll find that there's a little drying, and so when the eggs are boiled, it's easier to separate the peel from the egg itself. I'm just going to take a second and wash my hands. All right, I keep the egg salad very simple. Mayonnaise, again, spatula, more chopped green onions, and some chopped green olives. I've just used the pimento stuffed olives. If you want to use fancier deli olives, I leave that up to you. I've always loved the addition of green olives to egg salad. I think it was my mom who started me on that, and it just makes the egg salad, it just brings the salt together, which is what I love about a good egg salad. And that reminds me, let me check the seasoning. This will definitely need a little bit of salt, and I'll add some pepper. And let me grab that chicken salad because I should check the seasoning on it too at the same time. So chicken salad, egg salad spot on. Chicken salad just needs a little, little left. Tasting as you go and tasting before you assemble things is so important and such an easy step to skip. Sometimes we get so caught up in a recipe, we forget to do that. And it's one of the privileges of cooking versus baking. When you're baking, you can't always taste when you go, but once cooked, you certainly can here. All right, now for the last layer, the pesto cream cheese. So I've got my cream cheese, a generous amount. This is really the body of the recipe. The pesto is so concentrated in flavor that a little goes a long way. So let me soften this up first, so it's ready to go. And I'll set this aside and grab my mini chopper. If you have a full size food processor, you could make the pesto in the food processor and simply add the cream cheese to it. I'm using the smaller mini chopper just because it's easier to clean and it takes up a lot less space. And I've got a combination of parsley leaves, mostly for the color. You know, parsley is underrated. It's got great use. It does add flavor, that sort of balanced green bitterness that can finish up rich dishes, adds that pop of color. And a pesto I find with just straight basil can be a little too intense sometimes. So I have my fresh basil leaves, those get added. Other key ingredients typical to pesto, some fresh garlic, two cloves. I just slice them up so they go into the chopper and blend a lot easier. A little bit of Parmesan cheese, just to bring up the cheese flavor a little bit and not relying on just cream cheese. And I'm going to start with a couple tablespoons of olive oil and see if I have to add any more from there. Might as well add some salt and pepper to this now. Give this a little whir. Yeah, it's looking a little dry. Let's give it a little more olive oil. Oh, I can really smell that basil. So I'm going to add this in two additions, just so I make sure, just like when you add sugar to cream cheese when you're making a cheesecake. I'm adding my pesto a little at a time at first, so I don't end up with lumpy cream cheese. Oh, and that color really does come through, doesn't it?