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January 27, 2022

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retro recipe: fancy sandwich dominoes

Name: fancy sandwich dominoes
Prep time: 20 min
Total time: 20 min
Yield: 12 sandwiches
Cuisine: mystery
Ingredients: five slices of rye bread - we use Schneider Brot ( Gesundheit!) from Tesco but I know for an absolute fact that Lidl and Aldi do an equivalent - but if you're stuck, use any heavy bread; two hard boiled eggs; 300g of Philadelphia Lightest; 1/2 tsp of salt; pinch of black pepper (they use white pepper, but who does that, honestly, might as well not bother); one teaspoon of strong mustard, though I'm not sure how you measure the strength of mustard: presumably if your teaspoon comes out of the jar looking like Uri Geller's been having dark thoughts then that'll do); they recommend a pinch of saffron but these are austere times, feel free to choose heating your house over this step; one teaspoon of tomato puree; pinch of paprika; few drops of lemon juice; one teaspoon of dried mixed herbs, or a tablespoon if you're chopping it out nice and fresh

Firstly, before we even get to the dominoes!

We are taking part in Situ Live at Westfield London on Saturday between 2-4pm where we will be doing our very first product demonstration for the Instant Vortex Dual Basket Air Fryer, which I’m sure they’ve given us just so I stumble over the name. We have no idea what we are doing having never done a sales thing before but lordy, it’ll be fun and there’ll be free food, so please do some along. We’ll sign anything that isn’t going to make our fingers sticky. Us being in London does mean next week’s blog entries will be pushed back a day or two, but fret not, they’ll be coming.

Did I choose this recipe simply because it had the word dominoes in it and I thought it may get you all in a tizzy with the thought of dough laden with cheese and oil and wonder? Maybe. But all I’ll say is, steady the buffs a little: although these sandwich dominoes are actually rather pleasant, they aren’t going to beat the taste of anything that you can pull from a greasy box.

This recipe for sandwich dominoes is the next in our little trip through old recipe books and I shall confess something right from the off: this recipe is very much a compromise wheeled in at the last moment to replace something I just could not face eating this week. It isn’t a spoiler to tell you that it comes in a moulded jelly shape. But so do I, and here we are. However, I did try and select something that was faintly edible but unusual this week and, deciding to give old Sonia a week to catch the dragon she’s been after, turned to ‘The Best of Salads and Buffets’, published back in 1992.

Perhaps that’s the most bewildering point about this book, actually: it’s published in 1992, so came out when I was eight, yet so many of the recipes look entirely alien to me. Admittedly I wasn’t cutting about hosting many dinner parties at the age of eight: I was far too busy pretending I was on the Crystal Maze or stotting my head off my bedroom door attempting to do a cartwheel in my bedroom to Could It Be Magic by Take That. Mother, if you’re reading this, the clues were there, no? I’ve got a very faint scar across the top of my forehead from that one and I’m fairly sure if you looked at the door you’d be able to see an imprint of my lips.

I tried to do some research into the author of the book with the aim of inventing some backstory for the author but, a shade mysteriously, I can find very little about the chap who penned it. I like to imagine he lived a merry life full of parties and buffets where people could coo over his wares and slap him on the back for spending an hour making flowers from radishes, before he finally passed away content and happy. I bet the queue of visitors wanting to pay their respects at his funeral ran out of the church and down the street, though if they were anything like me they’d be turning up at the wake just to see if there was one final splendid buffet to be snaffled. To be fair, he was probably buried with his body set in aspic and squeezed into a giant fish-shaped mould for one last flourish. I do hope so.

Finding a recipe that didn’t involve eight hours of preparation and the use of every utensil in our kitchen was a chore indeed so, in the interests of brevity, I settled on the sandwich section. Let me tell you: I could cheerfully live on sandwiches for the rest of my life if I had to and I consider them to be one of the greatest food delivery systems there is. If I ever found myself in one of those classic action movie moments where I’d raced from a picnic to the edge of a cliff to stop Paul falling to his doom, only to find myself with him clinging onto one arm and the other arm holding a cling-film-wrapped cheese sandwich that was warm from the boot of the car, well, it would be an impossible choice indeed. Do I let Paul go before I had a chance to reach down into his pockets with my teeth to check if he had a sachet of salt to hand, or drop him straight away and risk a slightly unflavoured sandwich? It’s little wonder I can’t sleep at night.

And I jest of course, I’d save Paul every single time without fail, because you have to think about the long term here: an alive Paul can make me many more sandwiches, after all.

Now you might think you can’t really present sandwiches in any unusual ways but reader, you’re so wrong. You don’t know how wrong you are! For example, Nigella Lawson does a croque monsieur bake in Nigella Express which is quite possibly one of the loveliest things you can put in your gob of a morning. But you expect nothing less than perfection from Nigella, so that’s an easy win. In this ‘Best of Salads and Buffets’ book however they come up with two ‘attractive’ ideas: the sandwich skyscraper and the dominoes. The sandwich skyscraper is simply four sandwiches stacked on top of one another and then the entire thing ‘iced’ in cream cheese, so instead of a selection of sandwiches you’ve simply got a warm, anonymous, white cube to tuck into, the mystery of the fillings never revealed until it was cut open. As above, I love sandwiches, but I don’t think we need to go down the gender reveal route to add excitement.

The alternative were these dominoes which are really nothing more than several sandwich fillings stacked ever so neatly and cut into these attractive shapes. Before I get to the recipe, such as it is, a word about dominoes. Growing up in the middle of Tumbleweed, Northumberland didn’t leave you a lot of things to do in the evening when you were young and hadn’t discovered wanking. The village elders, in between waving their fists at cars going faster than the average man could walk and spending two years debating on the right type of swing for the playground, would occasionally put on something called a domino drive. Most of the village, including us youngsters, would be shepherded into the village hall to play dominoes, working your way around the tables and up the ranks until victory was yours. Well no it was never mine, I never had the right type of brain to play strategically nor the heart to tell old Thelma she was breaking the rules. It’s hard to be authoritarian when you’re 11, respectful of your elders and unsure whether someone’s knocking on the table because she has nothing to play or a degenerative essential tremor. Between that and the beetle drives, it was a roaring time. Paul is still mystified by the idea of everyone getting together to roll dices against one another and draw bloody beetles – unsurprisingly perhaps given his childhood was a whirlwind of twoccing cars and putting together the waltzers with a prison-grade roll-up clenched between his teeth – but it was bloody good fun. Might be overselling it with ‘bloody good fun’ but I’ll tell you this: the old joke about how you get 70 old ladies to shout ‘fuck‘ at once (you get one old lady to shout ‘house‘) is very true: there was utter acrimony against whoever won that beetle drive and the naff little shield that was given out to first place.

Explains why, a couple of weeks later under the ruby light of a blood moon, we stuffed Thelma’s wolf-fleece jacket with straw and assorted herbs then sacrificed her to the beetle Gods in a swirl of flame.

Goodness me, that wasn’t so much a diversion as a cathartic trip down memory lane – but I make no apologies. Let’s do the sandwich dominoes then!

sandwich dominoes

See the recipe for sandwich dominoes to explain why they look a mite frozen…

sandwich dominoes

Can you imagine dishing that up to guests? Here, have you tried our sandwich dominoes? No, but have you tried going clean?

sandwich dominoes

Turns out if you cut the sandwich dominoes just so, a tiny little rye vagina – a ryegina, if you will – will appear to ruin the shot

fancy sandwich dominoes

Prep 20 mins

Total 20 mins

Author twochubbycubs

Yield 12 sandwiches

I'm going to level with you: this is an absolute faff. They suggest making a batch of these ahead of time to 'spoil your guests' but given the state of my kitchen after I'd made them, chucked the first batch out, made another batch and waited diligently to carve them up, I'd be in no mood to receive guests. In fact, at this point, I'd be asking people to leave and then crying into whatever pint of hard liquor I could find.

So, to that end, although I'm going to show you how to make them, I suggest if you don't want to fart about making them so frou-frou, the individual fillings would do very well served on a Ryvita or similar. This made enough for twelve dominoes so I'm saying three each as finger food. Haha, finger.

Final thing - it's bloody hard to take a photo of these because of the boring colours. In the book, they seem to suggest serving them with a garden trowel of paprika close to hand. Presumably that's so you can hurl the powder into someone's face when you need to shut them up. But who'd do such a thing?

Calorie counts are approximate. Depends on your bread, what cheese you use and whether or not the chicken that laid the eggs was a heavy smoker.

Oh! And you'll note that they look a little frozen in the picture. I'll explain that in the recipe.

Ingredients

five slices of rye bread - we use Schneider Brot (Gesundheit!) from Tesco but I know for an absolute fact that Lidl and Aldi do an equivalent - but if you're stuck, use any heavy bread
two hard boiled eggs
300g of Philadelphia Lightest
1/2 tsp of salt
pinch of black pepper (they use white pepper, but who does that, honestly, might as well not bother)
one teaspoon of strong mustard, though I'm not sure how you measure the strength of mustard: presumably if your teaspoon comes out of the jar looking like Uri Geller's been having dark thoughts then that'll do)
they recommend a pinch of saffron but these are austere times, feel free to choose heating your house over this step
one teaspoon of tomato puree
pinch of paprika
few drops of lemon juice
one teaspoon of dried mixed herbs, or a tablespoon if you're chopping it out nice and fresh

Instructions

peel your eggs and discard the whites by eating them before anyone else gets a chance
beat your cream cheese with a pinch of salt until it's nice and fluffy then divide into four bowls
- in the first, add the pepper and mustard and mix
  - in the second, add the egg yolk and beat into the cheese
    - in the third, add the tomato puree and paprika
      - in the fourth, mix the lemon juice and herbs in with a pinch of salt
        
        on the fifth, let the waters abound with an abundance of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the face of the firmament of the heavens
alright calm yourself down
spread the cheese mixes across four slices of bread and stack them ever so neatly on top of one another, then pop the final slice on top of the stack

Now, this is important: whoever came up with this recipe clearly had access to a laser cutter because they suggest slicing it up straight away. Do not do that: it'll ooze out the sides like well, something that isn't nice to talk about. Instead, wrap the whole brick firmly in tin foil and pop in the freezer for about an hour. Once lightly frozen, take it out and with a sharp knife, slice into dominoes. Arrange on a plate and be ready for people to gasp in admiration at your astonishing skills.

Or, make the fillings and whack them on a slice of bloody toast like a normal person.

DO NOT DO what I did and stick it in the freezer for seven hours because you meant to put it on for an hour, but Paul was at work and the sunlight on your face was making you frisky so you took yourself off for some alone time and fell asleep.

Mmmhmm.

Notes

Recipe

if you do end up freezing it to the point where you could use it as a murder weapon, let it defrost naturally - if you do what we did and microwave it, you'll regret it

Books

despite this blog post, we're actually excellent cooks these days and you can see the fruits of our labour in our wonderful second cookbook, which is full of delicious recipes and lots of nonsense: order yours here!
mind, book one was talking, and book one was talking first - 100+ slimming recipes that'll really make your bull run: click here to order
want to keep track of how you're doing and marvel at cartoon versions of us - try our weight loss planner: here

Tools

nothing to say other than you'll need a good sharp knife - I asked Paul what he uses to sharpen the knives he plunges into my back every night and he recommends this very simple knife steel - I'm just shocked he doesn't just buy new ones when the old knives get dull, given that's what he does with his clothes

Disclosure: the links above are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, we will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and make a purchase. Which is handy, as Sola's just been done for GBH and aggravated assault and we have to pay to get her out of the country before the rozzers get her.

Courses retro, sandwiches

Cuisine mystery

Here, if you are just after a normal sandwich to fill your hunger-hole, why not try our egg, cheese and pastrami endeavour? You can find it here, fussy-knickers.

Mr. Haze, is it way too loud?

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

January 18, 2022

Posted under

recipe card, retro, salad, snacks

retro recipe: fantasia cocktail (salad, but fancy)

A fantasia cocktail awaits you at the end of this retro recipe, which sounds utterly magical until you realise it’s really just a fancy salad. But, having made it, we can confirm that it is both tasty and fairly low in calories. In my new quest to find recipes of old I am inexorably drawn once more to the comfortable, modest busom of Sonia Allison, the utter maniac from the previous retro recipe entry for cheesy bananas on toast. I was going to try out a Fanny Craddock recipe but the book hasn’t arrived so, and you’ll understand this is a sentence I thought I’d never say, I’ll be saving the fanny for later.

What caught my eye about this recipe is the way she presents it: in a giant wine goblet. Now I know there’ll be people out there already mooing and wanting to shake me by the shoulders and say there’s nothing wrong with that, it’s not too dissimilar to a prawn cocktail, and listen, perhaps you’re right, but prawns are absolutely gopping so you can shove that argument. No, I’ve never sat down to a plated salad and pushed my tomatoes around with a tittylip and imagined how delicious the meal could be if only I could pour it straight into my mouth or see at a moment how it would look all layered up in my belly.

I suppose we ought to be thankful she hasn’t served the bloody thing on a teaspoon because lord knows she’s tried to do that with most of the other recipes. Teensy tiny mouthfuls of food all served on an array of shiny teaspoons. I’m not suggesting for a moment that she was on the gear but I can’t conceive of any other reason why one might own so many bloody teaspoons. Check the underside for scorch marks, I say. I mean we’ve got three teaspoons to our name and two of those were only recently acquired from a Premier Inn breakfast. Maybe I’m onto something though: maybe this book was at the start of her dangerous slide into addiction and that’s why she ended up doing the Microwave for One book: she’d pawned everything else. Someone ring Cash Converters and see if they’ve got an AGA kicking around from 1982.

Everything that doesn’t fit onto a tiny teaspoon has been stylishly decanted into a seemingly never-ending pile of serving dishes that are shaped like the food they contain. Got a salad that’s heavy on lettuce? Why not impress your guests by serving it in a giant ceramic lettuce leaf! Have you tried serving your eggs from a giant chicken – your visitors will barely be able to eat for laughing uproariously and slapping their legs. Spaghetti bolognese (or spaghetti neapolitan as she rather primly calls it: I bet Sonia voted leave so hard she cracked her pencil in two scratching in the ‘X’) is served in a dish painted with spaghetti as though she is expecting a party of visually impaired folks to turn up unexpectedly and she wants to leave clues. It really is a colossal amount of tat.

Perhaps I’m only jaundiced because it brings back memories of a bloke in Doncaster who I ‘visited’ in my late teenage years. He promised me a rough time and no mercy, what I actually got was gently troubled in his living room. And even that’s stretching it, although you mustn’t worry, it tends to snap back after an hour or so. Anyway, his rough butch exterior didn’t quite marry up with the exhaustive and highly visible collection of Clarice Cliff cookware and plates that he had dotted around his entire house. It was like making love in a nursing home whilst peering through a kaleidoscope and I can’t pretend I had a great time. Mind you, nor did he – at one point I exuberantly kicked a leg out as though I was Edele from B*Witched doing the Riverdance bit from C’est La Vie and knocked a saucer clean off the side table and onto the floor. We agreed there and then that it was perhaps best I left as we were never going to be best friends.

I have no regrets even now: I might have wasted a good chunk of my disposable income on the train tickets but I did steal a fancy looking spoon rest off the side as I departed, so we’ll call that a win. I used it to keep my change in for a couple of years before it was lost – Mother is probably holding onto it so she can sell it at the right moment and nick off to Greece.

But it is certainly an era of cookware that has passed us by. Frankly, unless someone can find me an entire set of those soup bowls that had the recipe emblazoned on the side, I’m happy with that.

Shall we get to the fantasia cocktail then? For the novelty we did indeed serve this up in a wine glass like Sonia suggests, but I don’t think it will impair the flavour too much if you serve it on a plate. Oh and just one further note: Sonia suggests using tongue, but you’d expect that from a goer like her. I can’t bring myself to eat tongue, not least because I know where my own has been, but if you were so inclined you can pick it up in most major supermarkets. Not for me though: I don’t like to think that my food can taste me as I eat it.

fantasia cocktail

Hosting a swingers party? Try this fantasia cocktail to get the conversation started!

fantasia cocktail

Remember, you don’t need to serve it in a glass, a plate will do just fine for your fantasia cocktail

fantasia cocktail

You’ll note I put my key in a bowl for this fantasia cocktail photo – it just seemed somewhat fitting

fantasia cocktail

Prep 10 mins

Total 10 mins

Author twochubbycubs

Yield 4 glasses of salad

I mean, let's not pretend that this fantasia cocktail is anything more than a salad in a wine glass, but it's a good salad none the less and the homemade dressing actually had a good bit of kick to it. If you were so inclined you could swap out the dressing for a ready made one and no-one would be any the wiser.

We have worked the calories out via the NHS app at roughly 350 calories, but of course it depends on the meats and cheese you use. So do make sure to double check.