I hope last night’s sandwich will be the least exciting of the sandwiches I enjoy during Sandwich Week. Straight up, I had some ingredients left over from Monday night’s Cuban, and I’m not one to throw out good Portuguese rolls and ham.

The sandwich: Ham and cheese, TedQuarters.

The construction: One of those aforementioned Portuguese rolls with deli ham and provolone from our grocery store. Somehow our local supermarket doesn’t stock Boar’s Head products, which is total bulls***. So this was some knock-off brand ham that the supermarket claims is better than Boar’s Head. It’s not. It’s not terrible, and it’s better than Hormel ham or any of the disgusting pre-sliced, packaged varieties the supermarket sells for some stupid reason, but it’s not quite Boar’s Head quality and far from Schaller & Weber or the stuff they sell at Whole Foods.

It’s very important when making sandwiches at home to pile on the slices one at a time, making sure there’s lots of folding and creasing in the process. Never just pull out a stack of five slices of ham from the package and place them right on the bread. That’s terrible. I would hope you know better, but I’ve actually purchased sandwiches from delis that came like this. It’s all about surface area. Surface area is where the flavor comes from.

I did use one Boar’s Head product: Pepperhouse Gourmaise dressing. I’ll get to that in a bit.

Important background information: Ham and cheese feels like the most generic type of sandwich. When I was a kid I really liked bologna and cheese, but now bologna disgusts me (though I like hot dogs, which are basically the same thing, just smaller and grilled). My bologna has a second name, it’s g-r-o-s-s.

What it looks like:

How it tastes: Meh. Mostly like a ham and cheese. The bread was a day old and I neglected to warm or toast it, so it was a bit stale. And Portuguese rolls are particularly bready, so there was a lot of stale bread to get through.

The saving grace of the sandwich is the Pepperhouse Gourmaise. This condiment deserves more thorough appreciation. I never had much time for Dijonnaise back in the day and I very much appreciated Mr. Show’s parody commercials for similar products, but Boar’s Head has improved upon the straight mustard-mayo hybrid.

It’s about the pepper, stupid. Delicious peppercorns of various colors dot the dressing and make it inimitably awesome. I’ve had Pepperhouse Gourmaise in my house for about five straight months and I’ve yet to try it on anything and not have that thing become more delicious. I might start putting it in my coffee and spreading it on my toast with breakfast.

What it’s worth: Patrick Flood and I had an entertaining email discussion a couple months back about the concept of “replacement-level” as it pertains to things outside of baseball. The thing that’s important to remember is that replacement level does not mean flat-out terrible. A replacement-level baseball player is just one that could be easily replaced by a player of equal worth.

This was, by my standards, a replacement-level sandwich. It was good because most sandwiches are good, but it would not take much effort or searching to make or buy a similarly tasty sandwich.

I should note that I have exceptionally high standards for sandwiches, so replacement level for me is probably higher than the replacement level for someone who eats Oscar Mayer bologna all the time. Like a replacement-level Major Leaguer versus a replacement-level Double-A player.

The rating: 30 out of 100. I would say that’s a reasonable grade for the replacement-level sandwich on this arbitrary scale. Anything lower than 30 could be replaced by a ham and cheese on day-old bread with some good dressing. Basically the Mike Jacobs of sandwiches.

I am victimized by rainstorms more thoroughly than anyone else I know. I have no idea why. And I don’t mean I’m out in the rain any more often or anything like that, I mean that for no apparent reason I seem to get wetter than most people when rainstorms hit. It’s weird. I am, 100% of the time, the guy that makes people all like, “whoa, hey!” during a storm, looking like I just jumped fully clothed into a swimming pool.

Am I too girthy for umbrellas? So heavy that I draw raindrops with gravitational pull? Lord, I hope not. I mean, I’ve certainly come across plenty of fatter, drier people. Maybe I don’t use umbrellas right or my attempts at common umbrella courtesy leave me uncovered too often. Who knows? All I’m sure of is that no matter how hard I try to stay dry, I get soaked. I could wear a poncho and end up dripping.

But even knowing my proneness to drenching, and knowing that I had three avenues to walk, did I stop, turn around and get right back on the subway when I stepped out at 23rd and 6th today into a torrential downpour? Hell no, bro. It’s Sandwich Week. I decided so yesterday.

The sandwich: Sloppy Bao from Baoguette, 61 Lexington Ave. in Manhattan.

The construction: The Sloppy Bao is the Vietnamese answer to the sloppy joe, but the traditional ground-beef sloppy joe and not the New Jersey variety discussed in the comments section yesterday. It’s french bread piled with curry-seasoned sweet and spicy ground beef, thin strips of green mango and fresh cilantro.

Important background information: The woman at the counter asked if I wanted it spicy. I find that in certain Southeast Asian eateries — especially Thai and Vietnamese places — if you specify that you want your order spicy or, heaven forbid, extra spicy, you probably won’t be tasting anything else for the rest of the week. I’m pretty sure it’s some sort of culture-spanning practical joke intended to punk whiteboys who have eaten a couple of Buffalo wings and think they can handle real heat. Even a strong affirmative nod when you’re asked if you want your food spicy will land you in tears, quivering in the restaurant, chugging milk and begging for forgiveness.

Though I appreciate the challenge, I prefer to keep my taste buds. I always go with “medium spicy,” to let them know that, while I enjoy spicy food, I am not in any way daring them to humiliate me with their awesome powers of spice. As such, I ordered my Sloppy Bao medium spicy.

What it looks like:

How it tastes: Oh hell yeah; now we’re talking. The Sloppy Bao is what Sandwich Week is all about.

The bread was warm, crusty and flaky on the outside and soft and tasty on the inside like all good French bread should be. The beef was straight up delicious. Like I said, it was sweet and spicy — but not too spicy, at all, just a nice hint of a kick. And the curry and whatever else is in there (I’d guess garlic, chili and maybe some basil, but I’m hardly a super-taster) made it awesome.

The most interesting part, I guess, was the mango and cilantro working in tandem. I never considered how those things might go together before, but since cilantro has that sharp, almost minty flavor to it and the mango was just a little tart. I don’t like to bandy about terms like “party in my mouth” unless I really mean it, but this sandwich was an explosion of excellence. All sorts of awesome flavors.

What it’s worth: At least $7 and a three-avenue trek through a monsoon. They have monsoons in Vietnam, right? Restaurants there must have to make sandwiches this good to get people to brave the elements to come eat them. I got back to the office 90 minutes ago. My pants are still soaked and my shoes are sopping, but I am satisfied. The Sloppy Bao is a destination sandwich.

The rating: 92 out of 100. I have had better sandwiches, but not many. I will definitely go back to Baoguette.

Yes, Cuban B! Sandwich Week continues.

The Sandwich: A Cuban sandwich, from the kitchen of the analog TedQuarters in Westchester.

I understand there’s some debate as to what constitutes an “authentic” Cuban sandwich, just like some people will tell you there should never be lettuce in a burrito because burritos were originally intended to be brought out to fields by farm workers and lettuce would have wilted or rotted in the heat.

It’s all nonsense. Trace any food item back to its roots and you’ll find it developed out of some sort of cultural exchange. There’s no need to stop the timeline of sandwich evolution at one specific point. Whether or not this is the exact sandwich made in Cuba is immaterial. This is my interpretation of the popular Cuban sandwich.

The construction: We used smaller Portuguese rolls instead of Cuban or French bread because, well, I plan to eat a lot of sandwiches this week and I’d prefer not to die. On one side I put yellow mustard, on the other I put an aioli I made (that’s right, I make aioli) with roasted garlic and hot peppers from our garden.

I sliced leftover pork from the tenderloin I hickory-smoked on Sunday afternoon and put it on the roll with deli ham, provolone and sandwich-stacker pickles. Then I lightly buttered the top and bottom of the roll and pressed the whole thing in a Foreman grill until the cheese melted and the bread was slightly browned.

Important background information: I am not Cuban. My friend Charlie, who inadvertently turned TedQuarters into SandwichQuarters with a text message last week, is Cuban, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen him enjoying a Cuban sandwich. He’s obviously a man of distinguishing sandwich taste, though, so I have no doubt he would.

What it looks like:

How it tastes: Damn good, if I do say so myself. The smoky flavor of the pork was honestly a bit overwhelming when we ate the pork on its own Sunday night, but in context of the sandwich it was just a nice extra kick. And it was really tender, too — no need to worry about big pieces of pork sliding out of the sandwich when you bit into it. Even consistency is an important factor in sandwich goodness.

The garlic and hot pepper aioli was real, real good, too. I’ve never gardened before in my life, but it turns out there’s something amazingly satisfying about growing your own vegetables, especially when you’re going to smash them and mix them with mayonnaise. Holy crap, look at all these cucumbers and peppers. And they’re all free now thanks to all that work we did a few months ago! Screw you, ShopRite, we don’t need your string beans anymore.

The bread was good too. And the pickles were predictably delicious. The cheese tasted like cheese. Awesome, awesome cheese.

The only problem was that, between the mayo, the ham and the butter on the roll, it was a bit greasy. Sat kinda heavy in the stomach.

What it’s worth: Well like I said, we planted the peppers months ago so that didn’t take much work. Roasting the garlic and putting it all in the Chopster then mixing it with mayonnaise wasn’t hard either. I smoked the pork Sunday and this was just leftover, so that was gravy, so to speak. Plus my wife picked up the ham, pickles and rolls at the grocery store so that didn’t require any work on my part. Basically, the only thing I had to do was construct the sandwich and throw it on the Foreman grill, which took all of five minutes.

So since the cost was minimal and the benefit in deliciousness was high, this was sandwich was a huge net win. Actually I thought it was better than the Chilean number that rated as one of NY Magazine’s Top 101 sandwiches in New York, so I’m patting myself on the back for that. It was good enough I feel the need to come up with some sort of completely arbitrary numerical rating system for the series.

The rating: 78 out of 100. I have very high standards, and a sandwich needs to be worth traveling great distances for to crack 90 and life-changing to hit 100. A 78 is a very good sandwich. And I’m going to go back and give the Chacarero Completo a 56.