Inside the authentic gangster: Secrets of the ultimate beef sandwich

Our menu always features a beef sandwich. It was once called "What's the Deal with Your Beef?", but it disappeared for two years and came back; so now it's called the Authentic Gangster.

The meat is an aromatic stew with a deep flavour, cooked overnight, and it has several excellent companions:

• The sharp taste of onions. Raw, pickled, crunchy, roasted – it doesn't matter, onion, onion, onion.
• Parsley leaves. They are the most refreshing of all herbs.
• The delicious acidity of everything fermented. Often sauerkraut or kimchi. Fermented food is perfectly normal, not an element of some dreary, healthy diet. Coffee and vinegar, chocolate and cheese, beer and bread are fermentation products.
• Manioc, from which we make chips. Why not potatoes? Manioc contains twice as much starch, making it super crunchy with a much richer, sweeter, more robust flavour.
• Mayonnaise with sauce. The day before the opening of The Sandwich Shop, we cooked the beef for the big day and were DEVASTATED that we didn’t know how to soak the wonderful sauce produced during cooking into the sandwich. A moist filler like in "Friends"?

That didn't work. THEN IT HIT ME! We evaporated the liquid until we got a thick beef paste, poured it into the mayonnaise, and that's how we've been doing it ever since. Every kitchen newbie is always told: "Do this until it starts to resemble chocolate sauce."

To make the Authentic Gangster sandwich, you will need:

• Max's original and best focaccia,
• braised beef,
• sauerkraut,
• caraway seeds (sprinkle on the cabbage in the sandwich),
• parsley leaves,
• lightly pickled onions,
• manioc chips,
• mayonnaise with sauce.

The recipe comes from the book "the great book of sandwiches"