Day 49 - Bacon Sandwich

You can't really go wrong with a bacon sandwich. Even the cheapest bacon tastes good. But you can't really do much more with a bacon sandwich either. Therefore this sandwich gets a respectable, but not great score.




Description: Bacon sandwich with ketchup
Location: Home, London
Accompaniments: Tea
Companion: None
Rating: 6/10

Day 42 - Homemade Fish Finger Sandwich

Crispy hot white fish, heavily buttered fluffy white bread and a squirt of ketchup isn't a classic sandwich combination for no reason. Especially if you get good quality fish fingers, so the fish is moist and flaky inside, whilst remaining crunchy on the outside. The ketchup adds sweetness, saltiness, and tanginess to this sandwich, all of which offset and cut through the more stodgy elements. Great stuff.



Description: Fish finger sandwich with tomato ketchup
Location: Home
Accompaniments: Coke Zero
Companion: None
Rating: 8/10

Day 41 - Homemade Crisp Sandwich

In my opinion, you haven't lived until you have put crisps in your sandwich. Most people do this when they are children and then grow out of it. I still do it as an adult. In this case I was making a simple cheese sandwich. Therefore I decided I would liven the whole thing up with a dash of hot sauce and a handful of salt and vinegar McCoys (the ultimate sandwich crisp). And it tasted like school packed lunches. As in this case, there is something evocative about certain flavour combinations that set your mind back to a particular pleasant memory, or an era, in a way that alters your perception of whether what you're eating is actually good. So whether I actually liked this sandwich, or liked the way this sandwich made me feel, is up for interpretation.



Description: Edam cheese sandwich with Maggi hot sauce and salt and vinegar McCoys
Location: Home
Accompaniments: More salt and vinegar McCoys
Companion: None
Rating: 7/10

Day 40 - Homemade Tandoori Chicken Sandwich

I think this sandwich is the best sandwich I have ever made for myself. And, as you may have cleverly deduced, I have made a lot of sandwiches in my life. I started off by baking a chicken thigh fillets marinated (for a day) in a yoghurt and spice mix. Once cooked, and slightly charred, I cut a couple of fillets into strips, put them between two slices of buttered (not margarine) seeded wholemeal bread, added some date and lime pickle and finished off with a handful of rocket and cress. The result was wonderfully aromatic, spicy and succulent chicken with hints of sweetness from the pickle and pepperiness from the rocket. The textured bread and leaves added a nice bite to the sandwich as well. If I hadn't made this myself, I would have given it a 10, but for some reason I find it difficult to award my own creation a 10.



Description: Homemade tandoori chicken sandwich with date and lime pickle and rocket and cress
Location: Home
Accompaniments: None
Companion: Friends
Rating: 9/10

Day 38 - Friend's Homemade Brie Sandwich with Chorizo and Pesto

The advantage of this blog is that people want to make me sandwiches. And I, for one, am not going to stop them. So, on day 38, another friend made me a sandwich. She forgot to name it so I have called it, rather imaginatively, by the name of its primary ingredients. I have mentioned proportions on this blog before, namely how important it is to appreciate the quantity of each ingredient in proportion to the others, and the amount of those ingredients as a whole to the bread. This sandwich is one of the best examples yet of good proportioning. The star of the show was the brie, therefore, logically, there was more of it than the other ingredients. It's flavour was mild but intensely creamy. This meant that other, stronger, flavours could be used to enhance the sandwich (not overpower it), and that's exactly what was done. The chorizo provided a spicy and salty element, the pesto added garlic and basil undertones, all of which combined with the cheese to give the sandwich a pleasant Mediterranean feel. The bread was deliciously thick cut tiger bread which was soft, but not in a way in which it absorbed the filling's flavour. My criticisms are minor: the rocket added to the aesthetics but was somewhat overpowered and lost underneath the pesto, and, as a whole, I think the whole sandwich could have been lifted with a dash of balsamic vinegar or a few capers. Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed eating this sandwich.



Description: Brie Sandwich with choizo, pesto and rocket
Location: Home, Northampton
Accompaniments: Pretzels, 7up
Companion: None
Rating: 8/10

Day 35 - Homemade Pizza Sandwich with Beelzeblood Sauce

Two of my friends, after reading this blog, proposed to make me a sandwich. I obviously said yes, as long as I could, anticipating disaster, ruthlessly rate their offering. So they made me what they called a "Pizza Sandwich with Beelzeblood Sauce". This comprised of spicy tomato sauce (the Beelzeblood Sauce), steak, mozzarella, smoked cheese and cajun chicken in between thick white toasted bread. The result was very impressive. The ingredients were distributed liberally, but not excessively, allowing for each mouthful to sample the individual components of the sandwich. The downside of the sandwich was that the steak was a little tough and the bread was sliced unevenly, meaning that the sandwich imploded halfway through eating. The best thing about the sandwich was the sauce, which is by far the best home made tomato sauce I've ever had. It married the flavours, without overpowering them, and added a nice amount of heat and zest to the sandwich. Overall, slightly flawed, but very enjoyable.



Description: Steak, chicken, mozzarella, smoked cheese, tomato sauce on white bread
Location: Friend's house, Northampton
Accompaniments: Nachos
Companion: Friends
Rating: 8/10

Day 33 - Homemade Pav Bhaji

Pav Bhaji is a fast food dish that originated in Indian Marathi cuisine. Pav bhaji consists of bhaji (a thick vegetable and potato based curry) garnished with coriander, chopped onion, hot chilli peppers and bread, which is usually buttered on all sides. This was my first time having the dish. My fiancée's family's friend made it and brought it over on the last day of my visit to the USA. The vegetable curry was loaded on to a buttered and heated slice of bread which I rolled up and ate with gusto. The curry had a texture akin to chilli con carne and the flavour was incredibly rich. It could honestly sit amongst the finest vegetable currys I've eaten. Sweet and salty, sour and spicy, it hit all of the key elements for good Asian cuisine. The depth of flavour was also impressive; like it had been cooking for days, with all of the flavours melding together perfectly. The only criticism of the sandwich was the bread. It's supposed to be served on white rolls. If it had been, it would have received a 10 for sure.



Description: Pav Bhaji garnished with coriander, chopped onion and hot chilli peppers
Location: Future in-law's house, Sugar Land, Texas
Accompaniments: Water (lots and lots)
Companion: Many
Rating: 9/10

Day 22 - Fiancée's Homemade Turkey and Cheese Sandwich

It's really satisfying having a sandwich made for you. Even more so when the person making it for you knows that you will be rating them. And, honestly, I thought this was the best homemade sandwich I have had whilst I have been doing this blog. The bread, as you can see from the picture, was imbued with cheesy sun-dried tomato flavour which acted as a great base for the turkey slices, the cheese and spinach. A lot about good sandwich making depends on the proportions of each of the fillings to each other, and also the fillings in general to the bread, and in this sandwich that balance was struck perfectly.



Description: Homemade turkey and cheese sandwich with spinach
Location: Apartment, Chicago
Accompaniments: Pita chips
Companion: Fiancée
Rating: 8/10

Day 20 - Homemade Spicy Turkey Meatball Flatbread

I'm good at making meatballs. I'm also good at making Italian style meatball sauce. Logically I should be good at making meatball sandwiches. But, on a whole, this sandwich was disappointing. It was made with left-over meatballs and sauce, which are usually better the day after cooking. I heated the meatballs and sauce, lay them on a pita flatbread and added cheese and rocket. The taste was okay, but lacking something, like hot sauce. The bread was also a poor choice, I should have used a baguette. Distinctly average.



Description: Homemade spicy turkey meatball flatbread with spinach and cheese
Location: Fiancée's Apartment, Chicago
Accompaniments: None
Companion: None
Rating: 6/10

Day 10 - Dessert Sandwich

This was made by mashing a frozen cream filled profiterole thing between two chocolate covered crepes. The result was a deliciously chocolate and creamy dessert pancake. To be honest, I was being lazy because I couldn't be bothered to make a real sandwich but the result was very pleasant indeed.



Description: Homemade dessert sandwich
Location: Home, Northampton
Accompaniments: None
Companion: Family
Rating: 7/10

Day 9 - Chip Butty

No detailed description needed really. Chips, bread, butter, ketchup, done. Unfortunately, in this instance the sandwich was made of whole meal bread. White bread would have been better. On the plus side I replaced the ketchup with Maggi masala hot sauce which makes everything taste better. Still, a pretty average affair.



Description: Homemade chip butty
Location: Home, Northampton
Accompaniments: Coke
Companion: Family
Rating: 6/10

Day 8- Christmas dinner left over sandwich

After stuffing myself with food, egg nog, mulled wine and cognac all day I, at 11.59 on Christmas day, sat down and had a Christmas dinner leftover sandwich. Despite my initial thoughts of vomiting or killing myself, I managed to squeeze the sandwich inside of me. I did this for you blog readers (edit: reader). Now that's commitment. Saying that, it tasted great. Succulent turkey breast, stuffing, sausages, bacon, roast carrots and parsnips, bacon, sprouts, more bacon and some cranberry sauce all combined into a pleasurable mouthful. The only downside is that I'd had almost exactly all of the ingredients 6 hours previously which detracted slightly from the enjoyment. Also no one saved any gravy from the Christmas dinner. If they has, it would have notched the score up another mark. (Warning: picture below makes it look super gross - rest assured it was not super gross).



Description: Homemade Christmas dinner leftover sandwich
Location: Home, Northampton
Accompaniments: Nine
Companion: Family
Rating: 8/10

Day 7 - Homemade Deconstructed Sandwich

So this may be a bit of a cop-out, but after a week I'm already finding it difficult to sustain my sandwich adventure. So although many of you may not regard today's sandwich as an actual sandwich, I do (well at least for the purposes of this blog). It's actually, if you insist on being technical, a bunch of bread, cheese and ham on a plate. At the time I thought it would be possible to review such a thing. But you really can't. That's because it's exactly the combination of ingredients that makes a sandwich what it is. If you 'deconstruct' it, it becomes something else. So yeah, day 7 was a bit of a failure.



Description: A bunch of cheese bread and meat on a plate
Location: Home, Northampton
Accompaniments: A bunch of other cheese and meat in a plate
Companion: Family
Rating: N/A

Day 6 - Part 2 - Dad's homemade fried chicken sandwich

My dad makes good "no nonsense" sandwiches. I think that's where my passion for sandwiches comes from. He doesn't fanny about making them look pretty, but he knows what goes and what doesn't. On this occasion he made me a sandwich consisting of left-over southern fried chicken, sautéed spiced tomatoes and cheese. The chicken, although processed, was nicely succulen and the tomatoes' acidity cut nicely through the fatty chicken. The bread was toasted to add a crunchy texture to the sandwich and the mayonnaise and hot sauce complimented the other ingredients without being overbearing. On a whole, very tasty.



Description: Homemade southern fried chicken sandwich with sautéed tomatoes cheese mayo and hot sauce
Location: Home, Northampton
Accompaniments: None
Companion: Family
Rating: 7/10

Day 6 - Part 1 - Sister's breakfast sandwich

As I was staying with my sister, she offered to make me a sandwich for breakfast. Which was nice of her. I said I would review it honestly and not pull any punches, which is nice of me. So, if I'm beng honest, on a whole, I did not like this sandwich. First of all, most fried egg sandwiches I've ever had or seen have just one egg in them. This one had two. In addition, it had lots of cheese and a couple of slices of chorizo. The sheer quantity of food meant that the flavours got lost in each other. The idea was good but there were too many faults, the most critical one being that the eggs was overlooked and under seasoned. One less egg, one slice of cheese and chorizo, some hot sauce and black pepper would have propelled this sandwich to a good standing, instead it fell short of average. Sorry sis.



Description: Homemade fried egg, cheese and chorizo breakfast sandwich
Location: Bow, London
Accompaniments: None
Companion: Miscelleneous family members
Rating: 5/10

Day 4 - Homemade Chicken Mayo

Warning - this post is like this sandwich; boring. There's nothing exciting I can say about this other than I made a chicken and mayonnaise sandwich. As I like spice, I added some chopped jalapeños and drizzled some Cholula hot sauce over the mixture.

It's not my favourite type of sandwich so I can't rave about it, but it was pleasant enough. The chicken was pre-cooked breast from a packet, and was not really of great quality but the jalapeños were an inspired addition.



Description: Homemade chicken mayo
Location: Home, Northampton
Accompaniments: Salt and vinegar McCoys, 7up
Companion: None
Rating: 6/10

Day 3 - Homemade Grilled Cheese Sandwich

Because I'm not surrounded by sandwich restaurants, I have to make some of them myself. However, I'll still be reviewing them in a similar manner. When I do make homemade sandwiches, I'll try and recreate some classic recipes. Today; grilled cheese.

I've never been good at making grilled cheese sandwiches. In England, we either have cheese on toast or use toasted sandwich makers. Therefore, the process of putting a sandwich on a grill pan is still a little alien for me. Nonetheless, I love these sandwiches, so I persevere.

The result was tasty, but poorly executed. It's hard to mess up the flavour. It's frickin' cheese! But the bread was almost burnt and the cheese had not melted enough. All in all, an average effort.



Description: Grilled cheese sandwich
Location: Home, Northampton
Accompaniments: Cheese and Onion McCoys
Companion: None
Rating: 5/10