Breath of the Wild #3: Fish and Mushroom Skewer

Ingredients: Any Fish, Any Mushroom

Description: "A simple dish made by cooking skewered fresh fish alongside fragrant mushrooms."

I managed to get a nice bunch of whole sardines so i can really sell that rustic fish-on-a-stick look! and some big chestnut mushrooms.

It turns out I have to gut them myself... ok... um ive never done this before, im sparing you the gruesome blood and guts but i think ive succeeded, and rinsed the cavity. All that effort for extra horrible bone texture and mostly skin type of fish.

But here's the fun part! Coming up with a nice seasoning that might go well with these. I've picked paprika, salt and oregano, and then a big squeeze of lemon juice, making sure not to miss the insides of the fish too.

And then something a bit weird! No it's not a demon boner, its a massive horseradish root I found at the local farm shop. It's fairly potent so im just going to grate a bit onto everything. If you don't know horseradish, it's hot in a mustard sort of way. European wasabi.

And then some olive oil to help it crisp up on the grill.

It's assembled and ready! The other 2 sardines will become the fish skewer recipe.

** 

You might be starting to get the idea why im combining some of these recipes, well apart from it being very resource efficient. It's also because these are pretty plain ways to cook ingredients that nobody even really likes that much. I expected the worst with these nasty little whole fish and shrooms, but you know what, it could have been worse. The seasoning was zippy and worked well, the fish... well i hate that texture where even though you take out the main spine, theres tons of micro thin bones in there that are small enough to eat so its sort of like eating a shoe brush, but the flavour was alright and you get a satisfying amount of fish meat. It was probably very healthy.

Breath of the Wild #2: Meat and Mushroom Skewer

Ingredients: Any Mushroom, Any Meat

Description: "A filling dish made by grilling various mountain ingredients with meat."

I thought beef and chestnut mushrooms would be a good pairing for this. Like a french stew on a stick. Yeah.(???)

And i'll do a different marinade to the last one, with olive oil, red wine, red wine vinegar, dijon mustard, salt, and plenty of pepper. Like french stew on a stick! (why am i like this)

Just whack that in there and mix it around. Looks like that pepper mix also has plenty of coriander seed. Is that a way to cheap out on the peppercorns? Sounds fine though.

Now I can leave this for 2 hours while I finish work. I was on a tea break honest!

I also thought I could do the all-meat skewer for an upcoming recipe while I was at it. Ended up getting a few portions out of this! Frugal! And fungal.

**

The meat is SO TOUGH. I thought the marinade would soften it a lot more. Skill issue though? i think i overcooked it. The marinade was just ok, it was peppery but its not exactly bourguignon. Filling, sure I guess, mostly a workout for the jaw.

Breath of the Wild #1: Mushroom Skewer

Ingredients: Any Mushroom

Description: "This simple mushroom-packed skewer has its colorful presentation to thank for its appeal."

Ah, mushrooms. You enduring menace. I went on a proper mission to find a good range of mushrooms to use for these recipes, and for this skewer ive settled upon shiitake. It's a very mushroomy looking mushroom, and its one of the least bland ones out there. I don't think this is going to qualify as a "colorful presentation" though.

But we don't have to go on this adventure alone, do we? I don't care if link has the palette of a paleo diet influencer or not, im going to make these with a nice marinade. I chose something I feel is a general classic. Olive oil, soy sauce, vinegar, salt, pepper, chilli flakes, sugar and garlic.

Splatting the mushrooms in there.

Oops! I accidentally dropped in some more mushrooms for a future recipe. But this box of mixed mushrooms has the most gigantic shiitake i've ever seen, so its going on this shiitake-only skewer. Oh, and i left these to marinate for a few hours.

Look at that beast! It's so hulking its threatening to break the wooden skewer. 

Now it can go in the grill pan, never you mind about those other ones they'll come up later.

***

Meaty and chewy. I definitely think shiitake was a good choice for grilling. The marinade did a lot, it was a very punchy flavour thanks to the garlic and chilli. Almost as good as a chicken skewer, but not quite.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Triforce of Forage

 One guy. One pot. An indeterminable amount of fire.

I realise there is a second game in this series, I've played it even, but since thats around 200 recipes, I thought it would make sense to split it into 2 challenges, and do recipes in BOTW first, and then add in TOTK's unique recipes as a sequel challenge later.

I will be using TOTK's recipe book as a loose guide though, since BOTW didn't have one and recipes didn't seem to have a canonical order back then.
I'm also just going to do combined food recipes and not the individual cooked/frozen ingredients, elixirs and inedible garbage. Well, probably. Mostly. Maybe a little garbage, we'll see.

Alright, let's recover some hearts.

30 Gourmet Sandwiches - Challenge Complete!

Put the top slice on it, because this sandwich challenge is complete!

Things I learned:

- I tried a few new cheeses i've never had before!

- The difference between prusciutto cotto and crudo.
- German pumpernickel and American pumpernickel are different.

- Mustard goes with damn near everything.
- A clever use of fruit here and there can take a sandwich to the next level.

- Hard to beat a good ol' middle-eastern flatbread.

Total Ratings:

*            x 0

**          x 4

***        x 7

****      x 15

*****    x 4

Average score: 3.63

Favourite Recipe: 

#6: Grilled Cheese with Pears

Could have been any one of the 5* sandwiches really, but this one was a fun discovery. Elegantly simple, yet unusual and delicious. Weird fact, when I was younger i didn't like cooked fruit or pears... oh how the tables have turned. 

Least Favourite Recipe:

#22: Sushi Sandwich

OK so this actually tasted just fine. But there was something fundamentally humiliating about ordering an expensive japanese sashimi platter crafted by real chefs, taking it home, dismantling it, and popping it on a 0.10p store brand snack-a-jack. It's not even a sandwich, its a cracker! Does this list writer know they have real sandwiches in asia?

Special thanks:

Special thanks to the following resources:

MensHealth.com & Chow.com - alleged sources of the recipes

Waybackmachine / Internet Archive Project - for allowing me to find old posts

Tobi - my spreadsheet legend, morale booster and baguette boy

30 Gourmet Sandwiches #30: Banana and Fromage Blanc Grilled Cheese

 Last one! Lets end it on a sweet treat.

I got a cinnamon & raisin bread (is a fruit loaf the same thing?), i dont know what the closest thing to fromage blanc is but I got ricotta cheese, and then we got a banana, vanilla extract and icing sugar.

I've actually never had ricotta before. I thought it would be lumpy and sour like cottage cheese tbh but I guess its more like mascarpone? Thats nice. I'll mix up 3 tablespoons with a little bit of sugar and vanilla.

This is quite a small banana so ill just use it all.

Gently folding the banana chunks into the creems cheems. Could deffos use a pinch of cinnamon and nutmeg but thats what the breads for i guess!

Bread! Its quite small but dense, and we're to butter just the outside!?

Once again, im using my tamagoyaki pan for crimes. This is how much I think I can fit into the sandwich, ill have to eat the rest.

Oh my goddd the leftover cream cheese and banana mix is soo good! I should just have a bowl of this for breakfast. Ok its probably toasted enough time to take a weirdly closeup photo.

****

Well im sold on sweetened ricotta and banana, thats very nice. I'll be honest with you though... I think maybe I liked the chilled leftover filling more than the warmed sandwich. Somehow the heat made it seem a bit... blander? I do like all the components though, its easy to like.

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.