Goodbye to the Extreme

Hello visitors. Recently a medical issue with my kidneys which has forced me onto a modified renal diet. This means limited intake on my sodium and my potassium. Unfortunately with these new restrictions, it’s had to make extreme sandwiches unless I threw them away after making them. Since I don’t like to waste food, I will have to look at other options.

For now, Extreme-Sandwiches is on hiatus for the foreseen future. I hope someday I will be able to return. Thanks for your patronage over the years.

Double Bison burger with Smoked Gouda and Onion Strings

Is this the manliest creation I’ve ever made? I think so. I had a buffalo burger on my trip to Glacier National Park last month, something I hadn’t had eaten since I was a kid. It inspired me to make some for myself. I wanted to go all bold flavors in this creation, and the onion strings (or onion straws) are from a recipe at The Pioneer Woman Cooks.

• Potato Buns are the best hamburger buns you can get in a regular grocery store. THE BEST. So soft and buttery…
• A-1 Thick and Hearty Steak sauce may be the most savory taste on the planet. Pure Umami.
• The onion strings are cut so thin and cook at such a high temperature, they really melt in your mouth.

The onions make it tall

The Ingredients:

• Potato bun, seasoned with Emerils Garlic Parmesan Essence and then toasted in the greasy hamburger pan.
• smoked garlic mayo blended with diced beef jerky. Fantastic stuff.
• 2 quarter pound  ground bison patties, done smash burger style with a little bacon grease in the pan since bison is fairly lean.
• Smoked Gouda melted on each patty.
• A1 thick and hearty sauce
• A big pile of  onion strings on each burger

Pizza Diversion: Rosemary Chicken Grilled Pizza

It’s the last weekend of summer, so I decided to bust out my grill and finally make myself a grilled pizza. I had the privilege of eating at the two best pizza places in town the previous two days, so I guess I was inspired to cook up a pizza instead of a sandwich.

The trick to a grilled pizza is to grill the dough before hand and put the toppings on quickly. A few minutes on the oiled side, flip, and then toppings with a closed lid for a few minutes more.

By the way, the two best places for pizza in Spokane are: Veraci Pizza and The Flying Goat

Ingredients:

• Tuscan herb flavored olive oil from Oil and Vinegar
• Diced garlic cloves
• Chopped rosemary
• Goat Cheese
• Fresh Mozzarella
• Sliced grilled chicken breast, seasoned with olive oil and rosemary

7 Meat Sub

So I’ve wanted to do a traditional sub for a long time, but of course I couldn’t wimp out on it. I combined seven different deli meats for this giant extreme sandwich and it was great.

I’ve been trying to improve the quality of my food pictures for this blog, and I think I did make it look a little better even with my very modest camera. I poured in a ton of incandescent light and then did some post processing with some help from online friends. I hope these pictures make the food more appetizing.

Pretty Meats all in a row

Here is the bad boy

Look at all those layers of processed meats and cheeses

The Layers of the sandwich from bottom to top:

• bottom of the french bread
• green leaf lettuce
• A combo of Tuscan Herb Olive Oil and Special Balsam Vinegar from the Oil & Vinegar Store.
• Large deli  pepperoni sliced from Huckleberries
• Fresh mozzarella
• salami from Egger’s Meats
• baloney from Egger’s Meats
• Sliced Red Onion
• Some awesome pastrami also from Egger’s Meats
• Yellow Mustard
• More Green Leaf Lettuce
• Real ham from Egger’s Meats
• Cheddar Cheese
• Roast Beef
• Turkey (real turkey breast not processed turkey loaf!)
• Alfalfa sprouts
• smoked garlic mayonaisse
• top of the french bread, then some more oil and vinegar sprinkled on the whole thing

Sponge Bob Cake

My friend Jennifer did a cake for her friend’s daughter’s birthday (I think she turned four) She loves Sponge Bob so she made a cake featuring Sponge Bob Square Pants and Patrick. I like the blue color of the cake’s frosting. Yeah, that stuff on top is edible.

Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?

SPONGE-BOB-SQUARE-PANTS!

Grilled Chicken and Roasted Red Pepper Panini

A man can only go so long until the spontaneous urge to make a sandwich overtakes him. It started with a breakfast trip to the best bakery in town, Petit Chat Village Bakery. After having one of their amazing croissants I bought a fresh Tuscan loaf and had it sliced. It look great for grilling so I fired up the grill and made some grilled chicken and roasted a red bell pepper (which was surprisingly easy.)

I brought the food inside and used the electric grill I got for my birthday to make a panini. It was delicious.

The bread was large enough to fit a whole sliced chicken breast.

Inside is the pepper and chicken and cheese. MMMM.

The Ingredients:

• Two slices of Petit Chat Tuscan Loaf
• One boneless skinless chicken breast, seasoned, grilled and sliced
• A slice of Provolone cheese
• A slice of Colby Jack “Marble” Cheese
• Half a roasted red bell pepper
• a spread of Stephen’s Gourmet Fry Sauce
  because sometimes you want to mix it up from the usual mayo.

Tao of Pooh Cake

The latest cake from Jennifer, It’s called the Tao of Pooh cake and is based on a book of the same name by Benjamin Hoff. The colors are amazing with this birthday cake, look at the contrast between the white and red.

Beer Battered Tri-tip sandwich

It’s been too long since my last extreme sandwich, so I decided this weekend another one was due. Tri-tip is one of my favorite cuts of steak, and I have been wanting to make steak fingers, so I started there.  I don’t drink beer, but a friend had left one in the back of my fridge, so I used it to make a beer batter, the carbonation gives the breading body and the beer adds a unique flavor.

I also added sauteed bell peppers and mozzarella sticks Normally I would hand make the cheese sticks, but I guess I was feeling lazy.

I put it all on a roasted garlic boule, I looked up boule, and I guess it just means ball in french. I toasted it with a little olive oil and it made a good foundation for the sandwich.

For the sake of your arteries, Limit your intake of this much fried food to very rarely!

The sandwich stood about 7 inches high

I squished down the sandwich to cut out a wedge

Ingredients:

• Roasted Garlic Boule loaf, sliced in half and brushed with olive oil and toasted with Emerils Garlic Parmesan Essence
• A healthy dose of A1 Thick & Hearty Steak Sauce
• Beer battered tri-tip steak, sliced diagonally and coated with a mixture of with Pride of the West Batter Mix and Hornsby’s Crisp Apple Hard Cider Beer
• Half a sliced Green Bell Pepper
• Half a sliced Orange Bell Pepper
• Half a sliced Red Bell Pepper
• About 8 Farm Rich Cheese Sticks

Chicken Alfredo Baguette

One of my new year’s resolution was to become better at cooking Italian. I decided I would practice at least three dishes until I perfected them. Of course, this spilled over into my sandwich making.

I’ve spent the past week chasing the perfect fettucine alfredo recipe. The best alfredo recipe is actually the original, and it is very simple.The problem is, you can’t really make it without pasta. So I had to use a modified alfredo sauce recipe for this sandwich. Thankfully, it was still fantastic (the secret is lots of butter. LOTS of butter.)

This is the longest sandwich I have ever made. I measured it before eating and it was 22 inches long. The flavor was great, I ate too much.

It was hard to capture the full length of the sandwich in a photo

Alfredo sauce dripped on the floor

This new camera is better than my cellphone camera

Ingredients

• French baguette, split down the middle
• about a cup of home made alfredo sauce (butter, heavy cream, parmigiano reggiano, salt and pepper)
• three boneless skinless chicken breasts, seasoned and sauteed in olive oil
• three strips of prosciutto (did you know this is uncooked pork? holy crap!)
• four ounces of marinated braided mozzarella
• chopped parsley

Extreme Cakes: Heaven’s Dawn Cake

This is another cool cake from Jennifer, she made it for her friend Erica’s birthday. The tree is made out of fondant! It is an homage to a series of painting by one of Erica’s  favorite artists, Natasha Wescoat. Check out her Jeweled Trees series on her website

The Original Painting: