Dugtrio Sandwich Trio

The Dugtrio Sandwich Trio, as endearing to look at as the Pokemon itself, is the strangest test of my force of will I have ever encountered, and I'm not sure why I chose to torture myself in such a very specific way, but, nonetheless, I survived this random encounter. 

Unlike many of the recipes that will be prepared on this fantasy food journey, this particular lunchtime snack has an official recipe, which can be found here. I followed this the best I could, considering all instructions are listed in Japanese. 

I came across a number of snags trying to recreate this item as closely as possible, and most of this was down to cut the bread. As it turns out, finding accurately curved bread in suburban England is a little more difficult than I had anticipated-- most everyday pre-cut loaves have the typical loaf shape only (almost cut-mushroom in silhouette) and our dear Dugtrio has no hips-- they're surfboard shaped at best. This made my recreation a little more curvy than the game version, but hey, maybe this Dugtrio has a little more junk in their trunk, he might like pilates, I haven't asked. 

The second issue with the bread was how the original recipe added the eyes. In the video, they cut two holes out of tinfoil, presumably to protect the bread in a toaster oven or press, which I, unfortunately do not have. I attempted to recreate this with an oven (as its not safe to put tinfoil in a typical toaster, and I strongly do not recommend it) and gained very little results. My solution was to simply add the eyes after traditional toasting by pasting on some careful globs of Marmite, not just to give some more colour to Dugtrio's otherwise one-tone face, but make the eyes more shapely than the tinfoil technique was otherwise allowing. 

Finally, getting Dugtrio to stand on its own uh... nubbin legs, was insanely difficult, especially with all three of them struggling together. After a number of attempts to try to give them the stat boost they needed to hold themselves up, I eventually elected to hit the B button and prevent evolution: this was now a relaxed and reclined Diglett, who didn't need to stand up because he was uhh... napping. Everybody loves a relaxed 'Mon, and while attempts to prop the trio up were tried and tested, there was little that actively changed this without the integrity of the sandwich being at risk. 

Additionally to this, I also adapted the type of lettuce I used, as only iceberg was available, and didn't cook the prosciutto ham prior to applying it to the sandwich, just as it didn't need to go in the oven, and doing so was saving both precious time and energy. 

All in all, the recipe took about 20 minutes to complete, including prep, but not including the time it took me while experimenting for the best result. Experimenting took most of a weekend, but, worth it in the end for a very Diglett-looking sandwich!

Tastiness

I may be slightly biased, as I am not the greatest fan of tomatoes in the world, but, as far as sandwiches go, the Dugtrio Sandwich Trio is fairly basic. The overall combination works in terms of cohesion, and the number of layered ingredients certainly makes for a hearty sandwich. I think next time I would also like to add something else to the face, other than burnt in circles or Marmite eyes; a family member suggested I try raisins, and I can imagine that would drastically change the flavour combination, for worse or better. I think wasn't by any means bad, but it would not be my partner Pokémon of choice, as to try to consume three sandwiches this big in one go may take the strength of a Fighting type much greater than me. 

Difficulty: Recipe

Its a sandwich with a face. I'd say its pretty beginner level!

Difficulty: Accuracy 

Recreating the game image was going to be difficult enough, and initially I thought with a real-life recipe to assist me, this would be an easy recipe to complete. I was not correct on that one. As the recipe is in Japanese, and I was unable to translate it, I was guessing at certain steps at what they were asking me to do, and I had to adapt some anyway to work around aspects that were not working, namely the application of the eyes. 

Mainly, the presentation was the most difficult part of this one-- finding a round wooden board to hold my sweet Dugtrio friend securely was far more time consuming than the actual sandwich construction, and faffing over the bread type took a lot of time prior to making the recipe. If anything, I spent the most wasted time on this recipe debating on how much of a cop out it would be to avoid making the companion tomato soup and finding a visually identical mug to with it, and once I demoted my sandwich-y boy to a first evolution, I decided the soup was overkill. If you're not going for total accuracy (which I was, and its quickly becoming my nemesis in this project), then this is a cute set of sandwiches that are, all things considered, pretty fun to make! I would recommend telling any guests about the cocktail stick holding on the nose ahead of time though. Nobody likes an unwelcome tongue piercing. 

Final Recipe

Ingredients

    - white bread/brown bread (whichever best dugs your trio)

    - iceburg lettuce

    - sliced prosciutto ham or bacon

    - sliced cheddar cheese

    - large beef tomatoes 

    - plum tomatoes (sliced lengthways)

    - mustard

    - butter spread

    - marmite (for eyes)

Dugtrio Version

1. First, prepare your ingredients. You'll need 6 slices of your bread of choice, 6 slices of ham or bacon, 3 slices of cheese, (at least) two beef tomatoes sliced evenly-- you should have 4 tomato slices per sandwich-- two plum tomatoes sliced in half (one half will be extra), some mustard and butter ready to spread, and marmite on standby for the eyes. All vegetables should be rinsed before using. 

2. Toast your bread. This can be either by oven, or conventional toaster, dealer's choice. 

3. Add butter to your first 3 slices of toast, and mustard to the other 3, spreading evenly. 

4. Gently lay a leaf or two of lettuce across the buttery slices, making sure there's enough to cover the whole of every slice. 

5. Add the prosciutto or bacon on top of the lettuce. If using prosciutto, cooking is optional, but if using bacon, fry in a pan on on a grill until fully cooked before adding to the sandwiches.  

6. Next, on goes the cheese. I had one big slice ready for each sandwich, but small chunks also works fine. 

7. Tomato goes on. Add two tomato slices per sandwich, placing them vertically down. 

8. Add some more lettuce on top of the tomato. 

9. Flip over your mustard bread slices onto the rest of the sandwich. 

10. Time for those Dugtrio eyes! I used a small stencil made of tinfoil to dab on the marmite correctly, but do freehand if you're confident enough to! I wasn't, hence the magic that is tinfoil stencils. 

11. Using a wooden cocktail skewer, position and attach the plum tomatoes halves as a nose. 

12. Present, and you're ready to go! 

Diglett Version

1. Exactly the same as above, except you make just the one sandwich boy! Enjoy!