Duck liver and what?

While sitting in the dentist’s waiting room recently, I picked up a food magazine. One of those gourmet publications where the food is unpronounceable, unrecognizable, and most likely inedible — but expensive.

I glanced at one article about a noted chef — famous in New York anyway, I never heard of him. The writer described some dishes the chef was known for. If I had to live on stuff that he served in his oh, so expensive eatery I’d probably starve. There was one that was made up of duck liver, kidney and tripe, or some such thing.

It sounded like cat food to me. I’m not sure my feline-Americans would eat it. They like fried chicken; I got smart cats.

Such pretentious offerings, and prices, make me think how funny it would be to find out that this glamorous chef, when his shift ended and he hung up his tocque, would slip home and make sure no one was following him. He’d ease inside his own kitchen, hungry from a hard day’s labor of serving people with too much money and too little sense inedible food, and make himself a fried bologna sandwich.

I think all snooty chefs and other foodies should develop a taste for a fried bologna sandwich. It’s so simple in its elegance. Or so elegant in its simplicity. It would keep them humble and grounded.

A slice or two of bologna — you can use the turkey bologna or low fat bologna if you want to, but why? — laid in a skillet and heated until it chars just a little on one side. Then flip it over and repeat the process. A swipe of mustard on a slice of white bread, the hot fried bologna another slice of bread — it doesn’t get much better than that.

Except for maybe a tomato sandwich: sliced fresh tomato from the garden (forget the hothouse plastic tomatoes with no taste; wait for the real thing), and a glob of mayo on white bread sturdy enough to handle the tomato juice and the mayo without falling apart in your hand. Sheer bliss.

Two simple sandwiches, two large slices of heaven. Pity no one offers them up in upscale restaurants or writes about them in food magazines.

Maybe if they were called “Bolognese fricassee en croute” or “tomato en pane” no one would figure out that they’re eating real food for a change.

Gotta be better than the cat food that chef makes with duck liver and kidney.