The Best Thing I Ate This Week: Basil Sausage and Barbari Bread

As a food editor, eating all kinds of things — both delicious and disastrous — is part of the job description. Not everything that goes into my mouth ends up in a review or article, but some things are just too good not to share.

This week, my most memorable meal did not come from a fancy restaurant or even from a local takeout shop. It came during one of those unglamorous moments we find ourselves in, standing over the kitchen counter, shoveling whatever we can find into our faces after a particularly long day.

One evening, I came home to find a fresh, meterlong loaf of barbari bread from The Caspian Food Market in Scottsdale waiting for me. The thick, pillowy bread studded with sesame and nigela seeds has a dense, chewy texture, and a pleasantly crisp exterior. I pulled out a forlorn avocado from the fridge, and just as I was about to unceremoniously tear off a hunk of bread and slather it with avocado and salt, my mother walked in from the patio, a plate of grilled basil chicken sausages in hand.

I smeared a square of the fresh bread with a hearty scoop of avocado, sprinkled it with a little salt, and added a few slices of what turned out to be Sprouts' basil chicken sausage.

I took a bite. The little, open-faced sandwich was greater than the sum of its parts.

The chewy, seeded bread provided the perfect platform for creamy, rich avocado. And the subtle, herbaceous sausage slices added just enough heft to make it deeply satisfying.

Consumed while leaning on the counter and watching the television flash from across the room, it wasn't a pretty sight, but this simple combination of fresh-baked Iranian bread and grocery store chicken sausage ended up being the best thing I ate all week.