South African Gatsby Hoagie

This hoagie dates to the mid 1970s in Cape Town, South Africa and "supposedly" was named for the then hit movie "The Great Gatsby," starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow. I used 8 inch hoagie rolls, but you can use any size, or you can use any oblong bread roll and cut it to the size you prefer. In South Africa the finished hoagies are typically cut into pieces to be shared by several people.  

 

Ingredients (per 8 inch hoagie):

1 eight inch hoagie roll, baguette or other oblong white bread roll

4 slices bologna (aka "baloney")

1 tablespoon olive oil or vegetable oil

1 cup (approximately) cooked french fries 

1 to 3 tablespoons Portuguese style piri piri, also known as peri peri sauce (or Tabasco sauce or other hot pepper sauce)*

1/4 cup ketchup

1/3 cup lettuce, chopped or shredded

If not already split, split the roll lengthwise, open it and let the open side toast for about a minute in a preheated skillet (medium heat). Remove the roll, set it aside briefly, and now heat the oil in the skillet over medium heat. Add the bologna and fry until lightly browned on both sides (about 3 minutes total). Put the meat slices on the roll, top with french fries, then the hot sauce, ketchup and finally the lettuce. Close the sandwich and go for it!

 

* I have a recipe for a type of piri piri at this link:  https://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2020/09/african-hot-pepper-sauce-pili-pili-piri.html

 

WORD HISTORY:

Bologna-This is the name of an Italian city in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy, and in fact, the city is the capital of that region. "Bologna" is distantly related to "be" and to "bower," words from the Germanic roots of English. The origin of the name is from Indo European "bhu/bu," which meant, "to exist, to be, to live," with various extended meanings. This gave Celtic "bonu," which meant, "base, foundation;" that is, that which provides support for something else to exist;^ thus also, "a settlement." The Celts moved into the area of the future Bologna in the 4th Century B.C.E., calling their settlement "Bona." The Romans later took control of the area and rendered the city as "Bononia," which later became "Bologna" in Italian. While not everyone agrees as to the history of the sausage that bears the city's name, mortadella, a sausage with visible pieces of pork fat, was popular in Bologna and it became the basis for a variation that would come to be called "Bologna sausage" (circa 1600?), and English borrowed the term and simply shortened it to "bologna" in the mid 1800s, but the sausage is almost always pronounced as the variant form "baloney." The sausage has often held a lowly status with some, probably because it is usually made from leftover meat parts, and this likely led to the use of the term "baloney" being used for "nonsense, untrue statements, malarkey," with added emphasis by calling someone's story or statement "a bunch of baloney."    

 

^ See "Etymological Dictionary of Proto Celtic" by Ranko Matasović, Brill Publishing, Leiden (Netherlands) and Boston, 2009