Breath of the Wild #7: Copious Meat Skewers

Ingredients: Any four different Meats

Description: "Just shove a bunch of meat onto a skewer, and you're good to go."

Four different meats it says, so four different meats it is! I've got chicken thigh, lamb leg, pork belly, and that tough beef cut again (why am i like this)

Anything thats not already in chunks can get sliced up. I'm not sure how much of this to do... I guess if i dont prepare it now, when will I? I will make a few skewers and then fry the rest in a big pan for leftovers.

That's a lot of meat! It just says shove a bunch of meat on a skewer, no need to make it complicated... but im going to make it complicated.

First ill make a zesty marinade with vinegar, soy sauce, salt, worcestershire sauce, and lots of ginger.

Mix that all up. I also had some leftover ginger paste to finish up so its extra gingery.

Oops! I almost forgot one other thing, olive oil so that it browns nicely.

4 kebabs seems like plenty, oh but we're not done yet!

With all this meat I didnt want a repeat of that boring chewy beef skewer, so I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to make a satay sauce. I think that goes with all kinds of meat.

Half a tin of coconut milk, 2 big tablespoons of peanut butter, a tbsp of sugar, soy sauce, lime juice and gochujang paste should work for an improvised sauce. Heating it up helps all the fatty ingredients mix.

Doesn't that look nice? Now our copious meat doesn't have to be naked.

****

Finally! A good skewer! Even the beef seems less tough this time around. The peanut sauce is fun and flavourful. Despite that, the flavour of each meat is very distinctive. I think the pork belly goes best with the ginger and satay. 2 skewers of meat and the thick sauce though, its a bit rich and sickly. I should start making side salads.

30 Gourmet Sandwiches #29: Black Forest Ham and Caramelised Onion Grilled cheese

Black forest ham? Cambozola? Are these trendy new dog breeds?

I'll see what lidl can do for us... couldn't find cambozola, but apparantly its like a softer gorgonzola so i guess thatll do its getting grilled anyway. I couldn't find black forest ham, but i got some sort of smoked german offering. We've got a white onion, and wholemeal bread fresh from the freezer.

I'll slice the onions as thinly as I can.

I forgot to take the butter out of the fridge in advance... is this a perfectly reasonable way to butter the outside of the bread? No?

Ok enough nonsense, i'll caramelise the onions and then assemble it on the grill.

a smattering of this fluffy looking cheese. It'll all melt in there anyway.

I tried to cook the onions as low and slow as i could, but i foolishly used the beast hob so they might be a little bit burned here and there.

and a couple slices of nice looking hams, slap the top on, und auf geht's!

***

It's not as great as it looks, but its alright. Kinda smoky, hopefully not just from the burnt onion. Not quite as good as the croque monseiur, but not bad. I wish i'd made it more buttery, maybe even a bit more cheese? Mostly just tastes like cooked onion.

30 Gourmet Sandwiches #21: PB, B&B

PB, B&B stands for "Peanut butter, banana & bacon." A bold combination of sweet and savoury.

Grilled up some bacon. Smells good.

Sliced up one banana, its a fairly long one so thats plenty of banana.

It says to toast some white bread, ill give it a nice light toast.

Gotta stir up this big tub of natural peanut butter like its a can of paint! I think it is generously slathered.

And now it says to "build layers until the sandwich is a hunk a burnin' peanut-butter love" ok dude. So like 2 layers?

Yeah i'd say its hunky. Then it says "hit the gym youll need to work this one off" yeah ill just get on the treadmind your own business machine how about that.

**

Honestly? Not that great. I feel like I'm eating MASCULINE CULTURE: THE SANDWICH. It's the ladbible of sandwiches. Its sugary, but not sweet. It's salty, but not savoury. It's dense, sticky, cloying and unrewarding. It's got that forced baconification fetish applied to the beigest of foods. Like chicken & waffles with neither syrup not hot sauce.
Also I got curious and measured the calories on a website, it should be about 700-800 calories. So calm down.

30 Gourmet Sandwiches #20: Pork Sandwich with Red-Onion Relish

 After that slightly sad processed turkey in the thanksgiving sandwich, I felt like maybe i haven't been putting in as much effort, and getting more sliced ham instead of a proper roast pork wouldn't do for this one.

So I am going... for it!!! I bought a whole-ass roasting pork joint. only £7.50 actually, pork has gotten really cheap here. It's a workday so I sneakily pop this in the oven a couple hours before I finish work, one of the many perks of work from home eh. Bit of red valkyrie lore for ya.

Still, it would be a crime to do all this and not give it some season. I've got a drizzle of olive oil, a splash of red wine vinegar (more on that later), paprika salt (mostly just salt at this point) and some chilli flakes. And then some fresh sage leaves from my herb planter!

A couple hours later and I've finished up at work, time to complete the dinner... I've got a big loaf of sourdough bread, red onions, olive oil and red wine vinegar, and some... ketchup for this? really?

I'll thinly slice 2 onions, thatll probably make me plenty.

I've already done a later recipe where i had to caramelise onions, and i cooked them too hard and fast and burned them a bit, so now im gonna try really hard to do it low and slow. They're sauteeing in some olive oil and then when they've softened I add in the red wine vinegar.

A nice chunky slice of the sourdough will do. I think sourdough is a bit overrated, this bread looks a little dense and cakey. Never seemed worth the hassle to maintain all that starter stuff, just to make a slightly worse and more sour bread than yeast can do. Still better than any bread ive ever made.

These are looking much better! And as for the pork?

That's looking great! I've tried to slice it as thin as I can.

Nicely proportioned and smells so good.

The onion relish goes on top, there'll be plenty of both for leftovers.

And lastly. perhaps controversially.. I must admit, even as a big ketchup kid this wasn't my first thought to pair with pork and onions! But i love sauce on my sandwiches, i couldn't help but want to try it. Is that a good idea though...?

*****

This is sooo good. It's mainly the roast pork that tastes soooo goooood. It pairs surprisingly well with the sourdough, and the ketchup really doesn't clash with the vinegary onions after all. I should definitely make roast pork loin more often, sandwich or otherwise.

30 Gourmet Sandwiches #16: Thanksgiving Sandwich

 Happy thanksgiving! Hang on we're a month early.

I was hoping they'd have some chunky pre-cooked turkey in the deli meats, I wasnt planning on cooking a whole one for this. They had chunky chicken, but I was stubborn about the turkey thing so we've ended up with some slightly sad wafer turkey. We also have whole-wheat bread, cream cheese, bacon, avocado, and cranberry sauce.

I managed to get pre-cooked turkey, but not pre-cooked bacon, so we're still gonna make our own bacon bits, despite it being such a minor sandwich feature.

Crispy! This should be perfect for making little bacon bits.

I'll slice the avocado, its got a bit of a bad spot but just less than half a'cado is plenty.

We toast the bread for this one. I should probably de-crumb this toaster sometime.

We're ready to assemble! Beautiful toast.

Cream cheese layer. Honestly? turkey and cranberry is a pretty normal combination to me, but cream cheese and avocado is a bit out there.

since we don't have proper leftover turkey breast meat we'll make do with a generous stack of slices.

The avocado and the bacon bits. This looks so much more colorful than the reference image! Where are all these supposed ingredients hiding?

Finally, a generous slather of cranberry sauce. 

***

Hmm. It's very sweet and jammy, quite salty and a little creamy. Odd. I think you'll get a very different effect from different types of cranberry sauce and cheese, as well as the turkey to avocado ratio. Maybe I didn't make a good example of this, despite following the instructions technically. I don't dislike it though. But it's a bit like... random.