In an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry gets a sandwich named after him at a delicatessen. To his dismay, it’s not a sandwich he would order. You have…two fish? What else in it? No condiments? Cream cheese….capers. Onions. To be fair, when veganized, it’s pretty pretty pretty pretty…..pretty good.

As always, if you dig this recipe, tag me at @draggedthroughthegarden on instagram and we can see if Ted Danson will switch with us.

The Vegan Larry David Sandwich. It’s not herring, okay? It’s not whitefish and sable either to be fair. You don’t like capers? Just brush em off.

THE VEGAN LARRY DAVID

prep time: 40 minutes
cook time: 15 minutes

Instead of ordering a Ted Danson, people go and order a Larry David! Whats the difference?

So on the show, the sandwich is made up of smoked sable, whitefish, cream cheese, onion and capers. All of which on a toasted bagel. Fortunately a couple of those items are vegan right off the shelf. For this recipe, you will use ribboned carrots in place of sable and your whitefish salad will be a much more palatable jackfruit salad.

To start, let’s get those red onions pickled. This will let your onions bask in the flavor until they are ready to use. Same goes for the jackfruit salad part. That will come after the onions.

What you’ll need:

red onion
apple cider vinegar
salt
sugar
coriander seed (optional)
pepper (also optional)

First, cut up your onions into rings like so. Then in a saucepan, add two cups of apple cider vinegar and a half cup of water. Throw a little less than a cup of sugar in there and then a bunch of salt. Bring it up to a boil and stir it up so your sugar and salt dissolve. Once it’s up to a boil, turn the flame off and let it cool. Put your onions in a mason jar and then add your coriander and pepper to your concoction. Add your concoction right into the jar and leave it on the counter for like 20 minutes. It’ll go in the fridge after that.

Here is that dirty water you ordered! Don’t mind the char on the side there, that’s some a previous project.

Next order of business is putting together your jackfruit salad. This can be used in place of tuna and it works pretty well for chicken salad too. The biggest difference the addition of liquid smoke to the salad.

What you’ll need:

jackfruit (canned)
red onion
celery
mayo
mustard
salt
pepper
old bay
smoked paprika
garlic powder
liquid smoke
dill
lemon (half)

Open the can of jackfruit and drain the liquid out. Put it in a strainer and rinse them thangs off. Put them in a towel and squeeze all the liquid out of them. Shred them up in the towel and then transfer to a bowl. Add salt.

Your situation should be somewhat similar to this.

Next you are going to spice the ever loving shit out of your jackfruit. The goal is to make it into a fishy fishy like salad. Add a few tablespoons of smoked paprika and old bay. Those two are the star of the show here. Then add garlic powder, salt, pepper and then a little more old bay. Next add a couple teaspoons of dill. Zest half a lemon in there and then add half of the juice of that same lemon.

THEN, add a generous squirt of mustard. I used stone ground, as long as you don’t use yellow, you’ll be fine. Next add a heaping amount of mayo to the bowl. Half a cup or so. If it needs more, add more.

Give all of that a good stir. Next you’re going to add finely diced red onion and celery. So finely dice some red onion and celery and add that in there. Here comes another picture!

Once your jackfruit salad looks like jackfruit salad, cover it and put it in the fridge. Now you have pickled red onion and a jackfruit salad in the fridge. The next part of the recipe is the “smoked sable.” For this, you are going to ribbon some carrots, add a bunch of seasoning and bake them at a low temperature.

What you’ll need:

carrots
olive oil
salt
pepper
old bay
dill
liquid smoke
lemon (the other half)

Peel a bunch of carrots. I used four. Instead of chopping them once they’re peeled, you’re just going to keep peeling them and those edible peelings will function as your sable. Works as a lox too. Get out a baking sheet and preheat your oven to a mere 200°.

Add some oil to the baking sheet and wipe it around the sheet with a paper towel. Lay all the carrots down on there and add salt, pepper, dill, old bay, liquid smoke and the juice of the half lemon you have left. Move everything around so everything is equally distributed.

They look just like fish! Throw them back!

Pop your baking sheet in the oven for 15 minutes. Once those 15 minutes go by, you can transfer them to a container to put in the freezer. Not to freeze, but to get colder quicker. Everything on this sandwich is cold except for the bagel itself.

Now you can get out your capers, bagels and (vegan) cream cheese. Toast the bagels and then spread cream cheese on them. Add capers right onto the cream cheese. Get the pickled onion and jackfruit salad out of the fridge. Grab the carrots too.

Add your pickled onion to the bagel as well as your jackfruit and carrot.

Here’s what you are working with. I know.

Now your sandwich is complete. I hope you also think it is pretty pretty pretty good. There’s no way to make that cross section look nice, forgive me.

I added a few more capers and now it looks like a face!