Sriracha Tuna Melt

I am a big fan of the tuna melt and, despite having previously only done one write-up for a very cheaty home-made version and one shop-bought frozen version, it's something I have made for myself, from scratch, quite a few times by mixing up a tin of tuna, some mayonnaise and some capers, then slapping the result into what would otherwise be a humble toasted cheese sandwich.

This week, while I've been away from work due to a lingering illness, I had a moment of inspiration while searching my fridge for the capers: I noticed a small, squeezy bottle of Sriracha sauce (acquired from Yo Sushi months ago, as a result of ordering one of their specials) and wondered what that would taste like in a tuna melt...

...And so, here's the first post of 2016 - a quick, simple and spicy variant on an old favourite. Enjoy!

Ingredients:

• Bread (2 slices per melt, I used Kingsmill 50/50)
• Tuna Chunks (160g tin - 120g drained - makes 2-3 melts, depending on how generous you are with the tuna mix)
• Mayonnaise (1.5 to 2 heaped tablespoons, depending on your preference and how high you heap)
• Siracha Sauce (about 2 generous teaspoons, but basically according to your preference)
• Mature Cheddar Cheese (grated or sliced according to your preference, I used Tesco ready-sliced from a 250g pack, but had to use just over 1 slice per melt due to the size of bread)

Preparation Time: Less than 10 minutes in total

Tools Required:

• Tin Opener (duh)
• Toaster (duh, again)
• Small Bowl
• Mixing Implement of Choice (such as a fork)

The Process: 
Preheat your grill to about 170C. Open the tin of tuna, drain thoroughly, then empty into the small bowl. Add mayonnaise and stir, then add the Sriracha sauce and stir in so it's all nice and even. Toast a slice of bread for the base of the melt, then spread the mix over evenly. Top with cheese, then place under the grille and start another slice of bread toasting for the top of the melt. While the timing may not be perfect for everyone, I've found that my toaster, on my preferred setting, finishes toasting at precisely the right moment for a nicely melted cheese topping, so the moment the second slice pops up, I took the melt out from under the grill and topped it with the second slice of toast.

The quantity of tuna mix makes at least 2 melts, so the most efficient way of doing it would be to make 2 simultaneously: toast 2 slices of bread, add the mix to both, top with cheese and pop both under the grill while toasting another 2 slices of bread.

The Results:
My only concern, going into this, was whether cheese was still a suitable accompaniment for a tuna melt imbued with the spicy power of Sriracha, but I needn't have worried. Just as supermarkets have so-called 'Mexican Cheese' which is basically cheddar with added chilli, the combination if spicy Sriracha and sharp mature cheddar is excellent. I'm not sure whether capers might still be able to add something worthwhile, or whether they would clash with the Sriracha, but I suppose there's no harm in finding out at a later date...

And if you're not a fan of the tuna melt, this concoction works equally well as the filling for a baguette, or if you fancy something hot in temperature as well as in spiciness, I'm sure it could be used as the topping of a baked potato.

Spicy Tuna Melty Perfection!

Iceland Let's Eat American Loaded Burger with Pulled Pork & BBQ Sauce

One of the guilty pleasures of the occasional evening when my girlfriend goes out is the option to eat something quick and dirty. More often than not, I've tended to pop to one of the local takeaways, or the local KFC but, since the latter recently gave me a case of food poisoning that lasted through at least half my recent holiday to Chicago, I'm starting to think better of all that.

Yet, still, the urge to have something quick and dirty is strong, almost undeniable... and so, while trawling my local Iceland for something vaguely sensible (their Pizza Pala range, while currently small, is worth a look), my wandering eye alighted upon a selection called Let's Eat American. Having only recently been in that very country, you can imagine my curiosity was piqued. There's quite a variety of products in this line, but there's nothing quicker or dirtier than a burger that you cook in the microwave.

Nothing, that is, other than a burger with pulled pork slapped on top that you cook in a microwave.

The product comes in a (frankly, oversized) cardboard box containing two separate bags - one with the burger and pork in a plastic tray, the other with the ready-cut sesame seed bun - which must be irradiated separately, the former taking four minutes, the latter a mere thirty seconds. After that, it's just a case of opening the bags, removing their contents, and throwing them together.

The result is, naturally, nothing like the picture on the box. For starters, the edges of the burger/pork crisp up and stick to the sides of the tray, so it doesn't look as moist or appetising as the promotional image. There's also some weird, gelatinous stuff in there which I generously presumed to be some sort of cheese component. The packaging does describe the contents as "A cooked quarter pounder beefburger, topped with a BBQ flavour sauce, pulled pork, fried onions and grated red Cheddar cheese", but it's clearly a miserly quantity of cheese that ends up as a mildly disturbing goop that's not even plentiful enough to ooze convincingly... it just sort of lurks, looking unappetising. And, if there are fried onions in there, I can't say I encountered any... but then, in all honesty, I can't say I encountered anything "BBQ flavour" either.

The pork itself is not bad, but it certainly lacks flavour - and not just the BBQ flavour of the questionable sauce. The texture is good and, for something that's been microwaved from frozen, it was nice to see it didn't turn out too soggy or too dry - microwaving frequently goes one way or the other, and it's very difficult to fine-tune the timings for a better result. The burger, meanwhile, was decidedly average for this type of product... which is to say of limited flavour, dubious texture, and with a quantity of gristle/bone flecks sufficient to make the likes of me wary of the next bite.

That said, for a mere £1.50, it's not offensively bad - the burger is certainly a decent size (slightly larger than the bun, in fact) and the quantity of pulled pork is reasonable - but given the underwhelming flavour and the typically rubbery nature of the microwaved bun, this isn't a product I'll be picking up again in a hurry.

Fourth Anniversary Drinking

OK, I admit, I'm backdating this post because, despite setting an alarm for myself on my phone, I forgot to make this post on the day...

...But today marks the fourth year of this blog, and it's just typical of me that the day is marked (retrospectively) without a proper new posting. What I will do, however, is mention something booze-related as a kind of quasi-celebration.

Most weekends, these days, my girlfriend and I venture to our nearest branch of Morrisons for a weekly grocery shop. Morrisons have an absolutely massive section for booze (which we normally ignore), in which is nestled a tiny section of shelf devoted to frozen cocktails, including Smirnoff's distinctly underwhelming sorbets and the rather marvellous Parrot Bay 'Freeze & Squeeze' cocktails, which are essentially the same sort of thing but with rum rather than vodka.

The full range comprises five drinks - Berry Daiquiri, Citrus Daiquiri, Mojito, Passionfruit Caipirinha and Pina Colada - but my local Morrisons tends only to stock the Berry Daiquiri and the Mojito options (though we did once find a single Passionfruit Caipirinha and have yet to try it out). It's a simple concept - each plastic bag contains a ready-mixed cocktail which you stick in your freezer. Once it's ready, you squeeze the bag to crush up the ice (it's often helpful, as the directions suggest, to run the bag under warm water for a few minutes) before cutting it open and squeezing the contents into a glass for the perfect frozen cocktail.

It's a neat idea, and a pretty successful one... Just be prepared for possible brain-freeze.

On a non-alcoholic note, at least one of my properly local shops has started stocking Coke Life, a variation on the usual caffeine fix that claims to be nice and natural, as well as lower-calorie than the original. Having tried it and liked it, I thought it worthy of mention here... but I also feel the need to link to an article about it on Marketing Week because it follows a train of thought I hadn't considered. I'm not entirely sure I agree with the prophesy of doom, but I'd certainly agree with the assessment that Coke Life ain't half as 'natural' as it claims to be. The other amusing thing is that it mentions Pepsi Raw which, going by the ingredients listed, was basically a rip-off of the rather awesome Whole Earth Cola, but with cane sugar rather than agave syrup (and I'm not sure that was an ingredient when it first came out...)

Iceland Ultimate Snacks Beef Yorkshire Pudding Wrap with Gravy

Iceland's Ultimate Snacks line of microwave foods is not only shaping up to be a serious rival for Rustlers and the like, they're fast becoming my first port of call for guilty pleasure food. Top of the list, in theory at least, is the idea of a beef wrap that uses a large Yorkshire pud rather than a soft tortilla (or naan... or dosa).

It sounds utterly insane but, as anyone familiar with Yorkshire pud can tell you, they end up resembling bowls most of the time, so flattening it out, stuffing it with shredded beef and gravy, then rolling it up isn't such an off-the-wall suggestion after all.

A quick web search suggests that a similar snack is available in certain pubs and football clubs (with or without the addition of horseradish sauce), so it's another example of Iceland making their own version of something, rather than managing to brainstorm a wholly original snack of their own, but this is my first experience of this particular idea.

It cooks inside a strange plastic wrap that seems to crinkle and expand in the microwave. The bag is opened both sides to allow steam out, and the instructions say to turn it over halfway through cooking to assure thorough irradiation.

Unsurprisingly, it's not exactly bursting with beef... but, to be honest, this is one of those products where overfilling would just end up with spillage and - heavens forfend - wastage. The shredded beef isn't exactly scarce, and the gravy serves the dual purpose of adding a subtle punch, and keeping the beef inside the wrap, where it belongs.

Yorkshire pud does tend to deflate, but it still makes for a more substantial wrap than yer average tortilla or dosa, if not a naan (are naans ever used for wraps? Might be worth investigating...) and yet, even with the minimal amount of beef here, it doesn't overpower the meat and gravy filling.

I do wonder if a touch of horseradish would improve this product - it's not exactly bland, but it's also not the world's most flavoursome snack. That, or perhaps some kind of vegetable or herb component, just to enhance it a little. Other than this, my only complaint would be that a couple of mouthfuls included what seemed to be a chunk of beef jelly and some kind of fatty membrane, neither of which were particularly pleasant, but that kind of thing is always luck-of-the-draw with this sort of cheap-and-cheerful product.

And, for a mere £1.50, this is a decent snack and, again, I'm not sure it would be possible to make something equivalent from scratch for the same unit cost. If I remember correctly, Iceland do sell bags of multiple, frozen, large-format Yorkshire puds, so an approximation could probably be made with mince... but to get the same effect would require something akin to Waitrose's beef brisket to be shredded by hand, and that would significantly increase the cost.

This definitely ranks as a guilty pleasure and, despite my suspicions about the random not-exactly-meat content in the one I tried, I shall no doubt be picking up more of these in future.

Sausage & Egg snackMuffin

There is something incomparably dirty, yet singularly satisfying about the Sausage and Egg McMuffin as a breakfast or brunch. The processed cheese that has but a passing acquaintance with Dairy produce, the grease-seeping sausage patty of undefined meat-like substances, and the egg... which is, thankfully, unmistakeably egg. Pressed together within a good, thick muffin, they create the kind of taste sensation that the old "It's like a party on my tongue..." jokes were made for.

But if it just ain't Breakfast Time at McDonalds anymore, what's a guy to do but...

Come on, you're reading snacks & the single man, a blog in which I prepare myriad and sometimes bizarre foodstuffs in my very own kitchen (when I'm not being lazy and cooking something prepackaged), surely you can guess..?

...That's right: Make His Own.

Those of a fragile disposition, or who dislike even the concept of Home-Made McDonalds should leave while still in possession of their faculties. What are you doing here anyway? It's not all cookies and brownies.

Ingredients:

• Muffins
• Pork Sausages (2 per snackMuffin)
• Eggs (medium will do)
• Processed Cheese Slices (Dairylea again, on this occasion)
• Butter
• Cooking Oil (just a dash, to prevent the butter from caramelising)

Preparation Time: about 10-15 minutes

Tools Required:

• Frying Pan
• Toaster
• Knife (to cut Muffins and Sausages)
• Spatula
• Egg Rings (optional

Process:
Start by slicing open the muffins, then cut the sausages lengthways, opening them out but taking care not to split them entirely. It's helpful, but not imperative, that the sausages are of approximately the same size as the muffins.

Melt the butter in the frying pan and add the oil. Once it's all good and medium-hot, add the sausages, as they'll take the longest to cook. Turn them occasionally so they're cooked evenly on both sides. As they begin to go grey and show signs that they're nearing completion, lower the heat, crack open the egg and dump it into the pan, using an egg ring if your obsessive compulsion requires a perfectly even, circular egg. Mine does not. I arranged the sausages to act as barriers to the egg, so it came out nearly shaped like a quarter circle... but I'm just awesome that way. I flip my omelettes, remember.

As the egg cooks, pop the muffin halves into the toaster on a relatively low setting - muffins tend to be thicker and more moist than yer average slice of bread, so adjust accordingly. You're aiming for a light toasting, rather than '3 seconds from charcoal'.

Keep turning the sausages in the last couple of minutes. When the muffin pops back out of the toaster, lay the processed cheese slice on one half, then transfer the two sausages on top (draining if necessary), then the egg. Finally push the other half of the muffin down on top and consume while still nice and warm.

The Results:
Bizarrely, McDonalds so-called 'sausagemeat' patties actually have more flavour (or, perhaps, more salt) than the sausages I picked up (Waitrose Premium Pork), and their processed cheese must contain some form of fireproofing, because this didn't actually taste as good (or should that be as dirty?) or stay as solid as the genuine article. Nevertheless, it was a most satisfactory snack.

It requires rather more time and effort than the Filet O'Fish Fingers, but it's effort worth making and time well spent. The contents ooze out in an enticing manner, made all the more precarious by the fact that there are two split-open-and-flattened sausages in there, rather than one sausagemeat patty. Either one could slip out at any time... perhaps even both. That could get messy.

Again, those with food-related OCD issues may want to take the sausagemeat out of its skin and fashion their own patties to go in the pan along with their nice, tidy egg rings. My wonderfully assymmetrical snackMuffin was just right.

Variations onna Theme... Inna Bun: Filet o'Salmon Fingers

Yes, after searching far and wide and repeatedly coming up empty, I happened upon some Salmon fish fingers in a branch of Asda, on the way home from work during the week... And so, I can finally attempt this variation on the guilty pleasure that is Filet o'Fish Fingers.

Ingredients:

• A Bun
• Salmon Fish Fingers (3-4, depending on the size of the bun)
• Processed Cheese Slices (Dairylea this time round!)
• Dill Sauce

Preparation Time: 12 minutes

Tools Required:

• Knife (to cut the bun, as per usual)
• Other Knife (to spread the Dill Sauce upon the inner surface of the bun)
• Oven Gloves
• Spatula
• Baking Tray

Process:
Essentially the same as the original, and the Vegetable Finger remix: Lay out the Salmon fingers on the baking tray, slap them in the oven for 12 minutes, then start preparing the bun while you wait. Cut it open, put the processed cheese slice on the lower half, then spread a decent amount of Dill sauce on the upper half. Note that, as long as you use a halfway decent Dill sauce, the flavour is fairly strong, so you shouldn't need quite so much of that as you would the Tartare sauce from the original 'recipe'.

When the Salmon fingers are done, scoop them up with the spatula and lay them out on the cheese slice, then close up the bun. Consume at your leisure.

The Results:
By God, this was awesome. Truly, this is the Lord of all Snack Foods... Salmon fish fingers are actually quite bland in and of themselves... there's something about coatings something in breadcrumb that just erodes flavour, and so I find that some kind of sauce is a necessity with any fish finger. It's disappointing that the Salmon version is affected in this way, but a good Dill sauce brings that flavour right back. The Dairylea slice melted perfectly, becoming one with the bottom half of the bun and adding a subtle note of flavour, while the Dill sauce added just the right note of piquancy to the proceedings. Dairylea could well be the best choice for this kind of thing, so I'll have to revisit the original and see how it fares with either Cod or Pollock.

This, my friends, is what Snacks & the Single Man is all about: Quick, vaguely nutritious, and easy to cook as an alternative to the post-clubbing kebab.

Although I had this for dinner tonight... and I hadn't been clubbing.

Baking Special - Halloween Surprise Cookies

OK, here's something a bit more interesting and challenging... Every so often, my boss bakes a round of what she calls 'Cardiac Cookies' (so called because the quantity of sugars involved in making them means they're liable to induce cardiac arrest if consumed to excess). Since starting this li'l ol' blog, I've been thinking about baking... I've got the makings of brownies, but in a box bought from a shop, so the next most interesting option was to attempt to bake my own Cardiac Cookies.

...Or my own version.

I considered what could be used in place of the Snickers chunks used in the original recipe, and ended up with After Eight mints... after all, how often do you get mint choc cookies? So... here we jolly well go...

Apologies for the use of American cup sizes for measurements... The recipe is technically American, but I shall endeavor to update with coherent UK measures once I have them figured out. Please note that these measures do not equate to a teacup... though I'd imagine that, as long as the proportions remain the same, you'd just end up with loads more cookie dough if you used teacups.

Ingredients

• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup softened butter
• 1/2 cup Golden Syrup
• 2 eggs
• 3 cups flour (preferably self-raising, or add a tablespoon each of baking powder and baking soda if using plain)
• 1 box After Eight mints

Preparation Time: About 20 minutes for the dough, then about 10-15 minutes per batch to bake

Tools Required:

• Large mixing bowl
• Measuring cups
• Bowl or jug for beating the eggs
• Fork or whisk for beating the eggs
• Spoon or somesuch stirring implement for mixing the dough (but see personal note below)
• Baking tray
• Foil
• Oven for baking cookies
• Rack for cooling cookies
• Microwave for softening butter (or patience, if waiting for it to happen naturally)

Process:
To begin with, soften the butter by chopping it up into manageable chunks, placing in the measuring cup, and sticking the whole thing in the microwave on the lowest setting for about 30 seconds. Mix together the two kinds of sugar, butter and golden syrup. Beat the eggs then add them to the bowl and mix thoroughly. Add in the flour and mix some more, until you're dealing with a sticky mass of sugary, cookie dough goodness. Due to the way I measured out my ingredients, I got this bit hopelessly wrong, and consequently had a very hard time mixing it all up. My bowl received three cups of self-raising flour first, followed by the sugars, butter and syrup. I may have given myself RSI trying to beat that stuff into submission so, once I'd added the eggs and mixed them in to a certain degree, I cast aside my spoon and got to mixing the old-fashioned way.

Meaning 'By Hand'.

Oh yes, I did.

This automatically makes my cookies sexier, not to mention more sensual and intimate... Or something. Certainly more personal than carrying on with the spoon and, frankly, more comfortable.

And, yes, I washed my damned hands. Several times, in fact. Messy work, making cookies, and I can get a little obsessive about keeping my hands clean when dealing with food.

Anyway, once the dough was ready, it was placed in the fridge for a while, just to give me a bit of a rest. Cooling the dough does make it easier to handle, also. It is very, very sticky, and will end up sticking to your hands better than the fillin' once it's warmed up. Theoretically, this fridge time was also when I should have made myself some dinner.

Ahem.

Once the dough is cooled, yank it back out of the fridge, and grab a heaped tablespoonful. Grab an After Eight mint, pretending it's nowhere near 8pm so you're not obliged to eat it, and wrap the dough around it. Try to ensure it's all even and nicely sealed. My first round of cookies used rather too much dough, and ended up swelling to virtually fill the baking tray. These things expand a hell of a lot in the oven, so be sparing. There should be sufficient dough should make about 20-30 cookies in total.

Lay out on foil on the baking tray (this makes extracting the baked cookies far easier) and bake in an oven pre-heated to 200C (350F) for 10-15 minutes (closer to the low end, if using a fan-assisted oven like mine). The cookies should be golden brown when done. Transfer the foil sheet to a rack, allow the cookies to cool for a couple of minutes, then remove them from the foil to allow them to cool more fully without going sweaty. As long as they're not overdone, they should remain reasonably soft.

Once the baking is complete, scoff any remaining After Eight mints. Go on, you deserve them.

The Results:
Y'know, I have to say I'm pretty happy with the way these turned out. As mentioned, the first batch turned out pretty massive... four of them almost becoming one megacookie... but, other than that, they were probably the most successful. Subsequent batches suffered slightly (none burnt, but they were more than 'golden' brown) through mistiming and leakages where the corners of the mints protruded from the dough. The original recipe suggests 12-18 minutes baking time, which must be for ovens that are not fan-assisted (or possibly the Snickers bar, and the addition of Peanut Butter, change the composition of the dough to the extent that it takes longer to bake), so I had to dial back the time for each batch. Even ten minutes turned out to be a bit too long once I'd got the correct amount of dough per cookie.

I must further confess that the later batches suffered from a loss of attention as my inherent laziness kicked in. Making up the cookies to be baked is a very fiddly process, made worse by the stickiness of the dough as it warms in the hand. Possibly rolling it out might have been a better idea, but I don't have a rolling pin, and I didn't have space to do the rolling anyway. I ended up washing my hands a lot.

I ended up with about 28, 8 of which were the oversized initial batch, and two of those were used for sampling purposes (the first one was pretty good... but I just needed to be sure, darn it!). The remaining six oversized cookies will be given to my sister tomorrow, and the 20 'normal' sized cookies will accompany me to the office. Not enough for a full house but, being Friday, I don't expect there to be a full house.

Terry's Chocolate Orange - Volcanic Popping Candy version

Look, it's called 'snacks & the single man'. It's inevitable that chocolate would come into it sooner or later.

I'm not quite sure why I've avoided Terry's Chocolate Orange. It's not that I dislike chocolate, or orange-flavoured chocolate, or orange-shaped, orange-flavoured chocolate, either in theory or in actuality. Maybe I tried one when I was younger, and it didn't light my candle..?

These days I'm clearly not so fussy about my chocolate delivery systems.

The standard version is perhaps a little too sweet for milk chocolate so, if Terry's were to make a dark chocolate orange, I'd be all over that like... well, like the remnants of chocolate on my fingers from the last one. Or, most likely, more so.

I was given the mint chocolate variety by a friend, and I found that very moreish. It really was a struggle not to finish it in one sitting, despite it being still quite rich... the milk chocolate again somewhat spoiling the otherwise pleasant flavour... Though whoever thought of making a mint-flavoured chocolate orange was clearly in need of some quiet time in a padded room. It's just not right, OK?

So when I saw this thing in all it's orange and purple Halloween/Bonfire Night glory, I could not help but try one. I quite like the concept... but does the execution live up to the promise of 'volcanic' popping candy?

The short answer is 'no'.

The popping candy is barely discernable, causing only the mildest of crackling at the back of the tongue. The average serving of fizzy drink is comparatively more 'volcanic' than this stuff, even without having been shaken. What little popping candy there is does add to the sweetness, though, making the end result almost unbearably sugary except when eaten straight from the fridge.

Rather disappointing... and probably best not given either to diabetics or hyperactive children on Halloween.

Variations onna Theme... Inna Bun: Filet o'Vegetable Fingers

Following the success of the Filet o'Fish Fingers, I have been considering my options for other bun-filled snacks. While browsing my local Iceland today, I happened to espy Birds' Eye Vegetable Fingers, and thought to myself they would make an interesting experiment.

Virtually everything about the procedure is identical to the original (though the fingers take 15 minutes to cook, rather than 12), so take a look at that page for the finer details. Obviously no tartare sauce with this variation... and, on this occasion, no sauce at all, just the processed cheese.

The Results:
It needs a little something extra because, frankly, the fingers themselves are not particularly flavourful. Not bland, as such, but not seasoned in any significant way, and the content just merges into a melange of breadcrumb-coated mixed veg.

So, what do we think? Ketchup? Brown sauce? Mustard? Either one of the latter two would certainly give the snack a much-needed kick, and there are certainly plenty of mustard varieties to play with. It's actually amazing how well the processed cheese slices go with fillings other than the fish fingers... but I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that they worked here, considering that veg can be served in all manner of cheese sauces. Still, for a quick, vegetarian snack, this worked out very nicely.

Filet O'Fish (Fingers)

It is perhaps fitting that this, the inaugural posting in my new Blog, is nothing more than an attempt at reproducing the guilty pleasure of that late-Friday-night McDonalds. Who knows, perhaps guilty pleasures will become a running theme (*adds label*) as this Blog develops.

The idea occurred to me as I've often heard tales of fish finger sandwiches, and the McDonalds Filet O' Fish is essentially just that - a slab of battered fish (not reclaimed - possibly the only McDonald product that can make this boast), a slice of processed cheese, a dash of tartare sauce... inna bun.

So, here's where I stretch the definition of 'ingredients':

• A Bun (any kind will do, so choose your preference. I used Kingsmill 50/50 because, you know, fibre and stuff. They're a bit small, frankly, but serviceable... and can work well if lightly toasted)
• Fish Fingers (go for a halfway decent make, not a shop's own brand. 3-4 required, depending on the size of the bun)
• Processed Cheese Slices (1 if it's a reasonably good make, 2 if you've gone cheapo-cheapo)
• Tartare Sauce (any kind will do, again... but I've heard it suggested that 'home made is the best')

Preparation Time: 12 minutes
(for the fish fingers, that is. If you're dim, like me, it's worth remembering that you can actually progress the bun part of the equation while the fishy fingers are cooking, thus saving a couple of minutes at the end, during which time the fish fingers might (a) start going cold and (b) get stuck to the blasted baking tray. Damn, but I hate scraping stuff off those things.)

Tools Required (other than an oven/grill... come on, keep up!):

• Knife (to cut the bun, unless you bought pre-cut... in which case, you're even lazier than I am for crying out loud)
• Other Knife (with which to spread the Tartare Sauce upon the inner surface of the bun)
• Oven Gloves
• Spatula/Egg Turner 
• Baking Tray

Process:
Retreive thy packet of fishy fingers from yon freezer, and read the instructions that appear thereupon. Set oven accordingly (let's assume preheating to an average of about 210degrees, with the cooking time set to about 12 minutes). Once the oven is preheated, place thy fishy fingers upon a baking tray, which can then be safely ensconced within yon furnace of food preparation.

I am assuming, by the way, that when I refer to 'fishy fingers' you're all quite aware that I'm talking about the kind that are coated in breadcrumbs or batter. If not... Ew.

With a timer set to go go off once the proper cooking time has elapsed, turn thy attention upon thy buns.

No, the ones made of bread, you fools.

Cut the bun open, to facilitate the later insertion of additional foodstuffs. Unless, again, you're using pre-cut buns. Tsk. Take one (or two) slice (or slices) of processed cheese, and lay upon the lower half of the bun. Spread a good-sized dollop of Tartare Sauce (note: one Dollop = approximately five Teaspoons, by my reckoning. Three if heaped) over the upper half of the bun. Now go off and do something else for the remaining 11 minutes of cooking time.

Upon the sounding of the alarums, retrieve the cooked, still-sizzlin' fishy fingers from the oven (this is where the oven gloves come in, folks) and collect them up with the spatula/egg turner. Transpose to bun, laying them neatly upon the processed cheese slice(s), which should begin melting in a pleasant fashion. Close bun, aiming to apply enough pressure that the Tartare Sauce bulges out the sides but does not ooze and drip. It's tricky, but you'll get there in the end. I have faith in you.

The Results:
Well, it's not exactly a Filet O' Fish, but it's a reasonable approximation. The interplay between the fish, the Tartare Sauce and the processed cheese slice(s) is subtle, depending largely on the quality of the processed cheese and, in hindsight, perhaps a firmer bun would have been preferable. Certainly tasty and quick.

The Alternatives:
I'm considering trying this with Salmon fish fingers and a Dill Sauce... but I'm not sure the processed cheese slice would still be an appropriate accompaniment. Naturally, the subject of 'salad' will come up sooner or later, and a slice of lettuce would probably work well with the Cod/Haddock varieties. Other cheeses could be used, but I'd caution against even the likes of Cheddar... Something fairly plain like Edam or Emmenthal might be agreeable.