I don't know if Mae West ever ate a Cobb Salad, but I bet she would have loved it. After all, she was the one who said "too much of a good thing is wonderful". A Cobb Salad begins with a bed of Romaine lettuce, think of it as your basic crunchy blank canvas. Resting on the greens are strips of toppings – luscious chunks of avocado, juicy fresh tomato, crumbles of rich blue cheese, hard boiled eggs and chunks of chicken breast. Frankly I've always found the chicken to be superfluous, but maybe that's just me.

Forget about the hot dog or the hamburger, for my money, the Cobb Salad is one of the best examples of "American cuisine". It was invented in America, it combines American ingredients with American excessiveness and good old American seat-of-the-pants ingenuity. It also has a little bit of Hollywood flair. The story goes that after the chef had gone home, Bob Cobb, the owner of The Brown Derby restaurant in Los Angeles created a late night snack for Chinese Theater owner Sid Grauman by pulling out a bit of this and that from the refrigerator and the popular salad was born. Or so the legend goes.

Faced with many of the ingredients I love in the Cobb, I decided to make myself a sandwich. It's really just a version of a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich, but since I've swapped out peppery arugula for the Romaine and added smears of avocado and gorgonzola on the bread, I'm calling it the Cobb Sandwich. Don't make this sandwich with anything less than fabulously ripe and flavorful tomatoes.

Cobb Sandwich

2 slices sourdough bread
1 Tablespoon gorgonzola dolce
1 Tablespoon avocado
2 strips of bacon cooked to your liking
2 slices tomato (the best tastiest one you can get your hands on)
1 handful arugula

Spread one slice of bread with gorgonzola. Top the bread with bacon, tomato and arugula. Top the sandwich with a second slice of bread spread with avocado. Press together gently and slice in half.

Amy Sherman is a San Francisco–based writer, recipe developer, restaurant reviewer and all around culinary enthusiast. She blogs for Epicurious , Bay Area Bites and Cooking with Amy .   

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