THE NORTH BY pulled pork + grilled pineapple + corn relish + cheddar

It's basically like my favourite week of the year here in Toronto. No, it's not Christmas/NYE, or my birthday. It's NXNE (North by North East). It's like a prolonged Wednesday-Sunday weekend of running around the city (read west end), going to an obscene amount of shows, as if for sport. There are awesome shows going on in all the dozen of usual venues, and like 30 others I don't go to, free concerts at Yonge + Dundas square, so many bands, free in-stores at record shops, and lots of official/unofficial events like the Toronto Island Vice takeover, or the many years running Great Heart Festival, which is pretty much a big park concert where bands do semi-acoustic arrangements of their songs, and it gets filmed and put online for everyone to relive the greatest time of year all year round. 

North 'By', as it's generally called is always an amazing time, some unforgettable sets, but a general blur of a weekend, what with the constantly jetting off to see another band somewhere, and continually evaluating whether you're too day-drunk to bike. It's something my friends and I highly anticipate, some of us months in advance, but come festival Sunday, no one wants to do anything but shovel BBQ and tacos into our mouths. The crowds at Sunday shows can be pretty sparse.

Anyway, this year I was pretty lazy and only went to like 2 shows a night, and none of the daytime parties or house shows. And I had a blast. Here's my NX Sunday sandwich special. If you're in Toronto and you've been "festive", you know this is what will keep you going, just one more night folks!

Side note, I was biking around last night with my buddy Joe, going to an after show rave, pointed a right turn, which he obviously did not catch, and I totally clipped him taking the turn, and he fucking broke is arm. I fucking broke his arm!!!! It's cool. It's not like he was in any pain, or depends on his arm to make a living as a classical guitar musician or anything. So I don't feel really, really, really bad. I think I owe him a sandwich. Yikes!

Ok, let's taco bout what's in this.
bread (Queen St Gluten Free Bakery romano bean bread)
pulled pork (thank you Hogtown Cure!!)
grilled pineapple
2 year aged raw cheddar
corn relish
romaine
parsley
butter

Ok so assuming you either already made your pulled pork, or bought it from an awesome local deli, 'cause I'm obviously too hungover still drunk to get into that, pan toast your bread in butter, or any awesome animal fat you have lying around, then grill your pineapple. I did mine in a pan, cut thick rounds, and then just blasted them on high heat for a few minutes until they charred a bit around the edges. This brings the acidity down, and will make the pork sing when paired together.

Assemble your sandwich like so. I went really light on the condiments this time, unlike I sometimes can, because the pulled pork has it's own flavour to it, and with the corn relish going on, you really don't need to ad any nonsense.

Check out that stringy, succulent, flavourful, tangy pork.

Delicious corn relish from an amazing local canning company.

Once assembled, marvel. Then cut. Then marvel some more.

Devouring this so hard in my mind right now (as I actually did not photograph this today). Ok, one more night guys. If you're in Toronto, how much fun is NX? What did you see?

xxxx
Emily