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My sandwich won the work sandwich contest! My opponents were all very formidable indeed, and included a 3-foot high club sandwich, a footlong onion bhaji sandwich (that was surely tastier) and haute cuisine made from an Aldi triangle of tuna.

To celebrate, here's a picture of the sandwich's cross-section, just before it was eaten. Many people tried it, and all agreed it actually tasted great, which was quite surprising indeed.

Tagged as: personal competition sandwich cookery followup
I'm feeling lazy

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The folks at my work have organized a sandwich-making contest for tomorrow. Naturally, I signed up as soon as I heard about it.

And I've just got a new phone with a very posh digital camera inside, so I thought a little photo journal of the sandwich-making experience would be a good test of the camera's power.

My sandwich idea? A couple of years ago I was at a restaurant in Edinburgh called The Filling Station. They had the most amazing meal on their menu known as the engineer's grill. It was a steak and chips... A steak and chips and a full English breakfast on the same plate... The perfect hangover killer!

So I thought in homage to the great dish, I would assemble a hangover-killing sandwich for tomorrow's competition.

(Click on any of the photos to see a larger version)

Here's a picture of most of my ingredients before I got to work. How clean my kitchen looked at this point!

As you can see, I'm using a freshly baked pan de campagne from the Sainsbury's bakery, and Taste the Difference Lincolnshire sausages. Only the best is good enough for my sandwich.

Garlic! No recipe is complete without garlic.

You should try my chocolate and garlic gateau.

Let's get the chips in the oven early. I went for the Southern fried kind - very non-canonical for a steak and chips, but I don't care... they taste nice.

What isn't shown here is that putting the baking tray in lengthways like this makes it impossible for one to close the door. If this was Blue Peter, it could have been edited out.

Melting butter in a pan. Exciting stuff!

This butter will see the cookage of many different things before the day is out.

This glass of red wine did not contribute to the sandwich at all. In fact, it was a rubbish assistant.

So I drank it. There's no point in making a hangover killer for tomorrow if I'm not going to have a hangover to kill.

Here, you can sort of see garlic mushrooms being made. Butter, garlic, mushrooms and mixed herbs.

Sadly, the photo was all overexposed thanks to my camera's auto-flash and the reflective surface. I guess this is what they mean by "flash in the pan".

Next up, frying some eggs and tomatoes. I'm useless at frying eggs, but amazingly these ones came out OK.

As for the tomatoes, well... how do they work anyway? They sort of just turned from tomatoes into, well, slightly hotter tomatoes.

Beans, beans, good for your heart. (Is there any evidence that this is true?)

All beans must legally contain a sprinkling of Worcestershire sauce, by order of the Beans Act 1943.

Two prime sirloin steaks. I only need one, but I'm greedy and hungry.

The story that a Tudor or Stuart king once knighted a delicious piece of loin steak has no basis whatsoever in fact. The name sirloin actually comes from the French sur longe meaning "over the loin". Yeah. Sorry to burst your bubble like that.

Now I add the sausages.

What makes a sausage a Lincolnshire sausage? I didn't know, so I looked it up. Apparently it must be 70% pork, no more than 25% fat, and contain only breadcrumbs, sage, salt and pepper in addition to the pork. There. We all learn something new every day.

Here's the pan de campagne in all its glory. It looks a bit like a squashed basketball or something. But I believe it's actually bread.

A few minutes in and the bacon joins its meaty cousins.

Actually, this bacon is left over from a recipe earlier in the week. Aren't I sneaky? I've still got a rasher left too - tomorrow's breakfast?

This is the one thing the wine glass did help me out with. Here you can see it standing by the result of its bread-sawing experience.

Actually, it was a bit of a rubbish job. I should have done it myself.

Look at this pathetic photo of the now-cooked meat products. I was trying to be artistic and get the chips in the frame as well, but instead I just ruined it.

OK, now it's time to assemble the sandwich.

First layer, the steak and chips are placed side by side. Here I had to be careful that I didn't accidentally eat my sandwich before proceeding.

Oh pants! Forgot to make the fried bread. What kind of breakfast would it be be without fried bread?!

Add the beans carefully so as not to make the whole sandwich a slippery red farty mess.

Now for the layer of fried bread to keep everything separate like the pointless bit of bread in a Big Mac.

Try typing 'fried bread' a few times and see how often it comes out 'fried beard'. Or that could be the wine.

The next layer is the bacon and sausages.

The bacon is, of course, smoked. But don't worry, I wasn't smoking it in my place of employment.

Now the garlic mushrooms. Om nom nom. Does anyone else get really excited by garlic mushrooms?

And the final layers: the fried eggs - which seem to have become a sort of conjoined twin egg - and the hot tomatoes. A big dollop of brown sauce finishes off the fillings.

And here it is! The finished product. It all fit quite nicely inside the gigantic bun without the need to scoop out any unwanted bread.

Here I tried sticking some skewers in it to hold it all together. It looked quite good, but then I couldn't fit it in the box I was planning to use to take it to work, so the skewers had to go.

Of course, there were plenty of leftovers. Now I don't have to cook any tea for myself.

Would anyone like to help me with the washing up?

Tagged as: personal competition sandwich cookery photos breakfast steak chips
I'm feeling zonked
I'm singing Idlewild - You Held The Word In Your Arms

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