Entry tags:

character: angeal, character: genesis, character: sephiroth, course: main dish, fandom: final fantasy vii

Three takes on not-just-peanut-butter sandwiches

Angeal had always been more domesticated than a person would expect from the sword-callouses and the armor -- gardening just didn't quite fit the manly-man persona, but after having survived both Genesis and Zack in succession for three quarters of his life, he was pretty much tease-resistant through sheer sanity maintenance. And he had this garden, and he grew things, and then eventually he had his hands full of grown-things and he had to come up with something to do with them, so learning to cook was pretty much self-defense in the quest to keep his garden squads from overrunning the kitchen entirely.

Which was why Genesis was so utterly boggled to realize that for all his culinary skills, Angeal had been making himself the same lunch for the past eight years solid: peanut butter and jelly with a Banora apple, whatever vegetables were in season, and a thermos of tea with lemon. (Potato chips were deemed too unhealthy to have a place in a soldier's lunchbox.)

After about 45 minutes of ranting, histrionics, and incredulity, Angeal pointed out that it wasn't the same lunch for the past eight years.

After all, he kept three different flavors of jelly to choose from in the refrigerator.

Sephiroth, who'd been watching the proceedings in vaguely appalled fascination, had started bracing for the explosion even before Angeal had finished the sentence. Fortunately, his hair was long and pale enough to hide the iPod headphone cords. So while Genesis was dramatically flinging himself all over the furniture wailing at the heavens about the cosmic wrongness of a semigourmet chef's staggeringly uncreative (though presumably-well-liked if the recipe had lasted eight years) lunch monotony, he found a moment to plug the earbuds in and turn up the volume.

The argument was still going on when Sephiroth's shift ended. Angeal was mumbling something defensive about the biohazard levels of mayonnaise and unrefrigerated meat or fish. Genesis had fallen back on Act V -- the really melodramatic bits with hysteria and bloodshed from a couple of trigger-happy violence-prone prats who should have been court martialled and then sent to a squadron of psychiatrists for the next decade, in Sephiroth's admittedly less than unbiased opinion.

The next day, Genesis brought in the Properly Sophisticated Version of That Damned Sandwich (TM).

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Genesis' Hot Fudge Sundae Sandwich

Ricotta or whipped cream cheese
Your favorite ice-cream-flavor of yogurt (lemon flavored yogurt with ricotta makes a nicely cheesecake-like base)
Whipped cream (optional)
Fresh organic strawberries out of Angeal's garden (or whatever else you find in season at the time you're Making Your Point)
Valrhona or Ghirardelli semi-sweet chocolate chips
Honey, preferably orange blossom or lavender
Butter
Actual* bread
    *in Genesis' universe, square bread is a skin-crawling abomination against nature and must (like many other things) be promptly cleansed with fire. Angeal keeps buying it because he grew up on it, it fits tidily into the square-bread-shaped bread keeper on the countertop, and possibly also (Sephiroth suspects) because he gets some peculiar amusement out of watching Genesis twitch.

Stir together the cheese and the yogurt until you have something nicely spreadable. If you have whipped cream, stir some of that in too.

Apply butter to one side of two slices of bread.

On the non-buttered side of one slice, apply:
The cheese-yogurt spread
Sliced strawberries
Light drizzle of honey to make the chocolate stick and punch the chocolate flavor
Chocolate chips

Top with the other slice of bread.

Griddle-cook until lightly golden and the chocolate is melty.

Cut on a bias (straight cuts are for plebeians) and top with more whipped cream (if you have it).

Top with a maraschino cherry because you can't really properly sexually harass scandalize entertain the audience victims co-workers without a prop. :3

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After tasting it, Sephiroth was forced to defect to the other side in the Great Lunchbox War. However, he was fairly certain the substance in question was far too decadent and arousal-inducing to meet Hojo's approval, so he stripped it down to what he could filch from the break room kitchen on a fairly regular basis.

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Sephiroth's Zen Essentials Remix

Square bread (yes, Genesis, we know)
because there's always a loaf on the shelf in the back of the receptionists' mail room by the coffee supplies, for when they don't have enough time to get actual lunch hours

Peanut butter jar, nabbed from the top right cupboard
labeled "Cait Sith's anti-hairball medication ♥" which was clearly disturbing enough to keep Reno out of the stuff long enough for Sephiroth to acquire some

Chocolate syrup, found in the back of the Turks' staff suite refrigerator
labeled "Anti-Bitch Serum. For strategic use when Laney's PMSing again! :3" and also, in a faster scrawl, "eat shit and die Reno! >:E".

More of Angeal's strawberries
because jelly involves extra sugar, which was fairly well covered by the chocolate syrup. And also because Angeal needed a way to get rid of his extra berries without having to resort to canning, since four-hundred-some-degree explosive compression-bombs (aka pressure cookers) and Zack's homing instincts for sugar syrup were a match made in Angeal's nightmares.

Spread bread with peanut butter. Add berries. Drizzle with chocolate syrup, since chocolate goes with both peanut butter and strawberries.

Cover with other bread and eat quickly before anyone aka Reno discovers (a) that you don't entirely follow Hojo's prescribed experimental-science-subject dietary guidelines and (b) the blackmail and/or porn-mag potential inherent in the way you eat any leftover chocolate-covered strawberries.

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About six months later, Angeal finally surrendered to the combination of blatant sexual harassment (i.e. the extremely pointed way Genesis ate hot fudge-and-strawberry sandwiches at him, complete with sound effects) and the random comments about some people's staggeringly uncreative tastes (whenever Genesis' mouth wasn't otherwise occupied). When apple season came around again, Angeal made a point of showing Genesis his lunch.

Angeal's Surrender

Bread*
fancy OR square - okay, so Angeal didn't surrender everything...

Prosciutto or thin-sliced honey-cured ham
because ham's designed to survive without refrigeration for months at a time if need be, so a few hours shouldn't be too horribly biohazardous if he has to bring it along on patrol, right?

A Banora apple, peeled and sliced very thin
(or, for those of us not in the Banora region, something crisply sweet-tart -- Honeycrisp, Gala, Fuji, or for the hardcore tart fans Granny Smith)

Apple butter

Provolone

Parmigiano Reggiano

Butter

Butter the outside of each slice of bread. Apple-butter the inside. Layer the ham, then the provolone, then the apples (so that the cheese helps stick the layers together). Add some shreds of Parmigiano on top of the apples so the salt will perk up the flavor. Close the sandwich and put in a panini press or griddle under a moderate weight.

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Chef's notes: 50 hours hard physical labor over past 3 days therefore too tired to cook + leftover strawberries from the weekend + reminder of just how crazygood chocolate-dipped strawberries really are + out of actual jam = wild things happen around here...