Delicious in Dungeon #69: Egg and Carrot Mush

Our final meat is all done! Now the penultimate recipe, a simple babymode food for eepy baby princesses

like that! This is supposedly a good meal for delicate stomachs, which checks out because i might be about to do the FODMAP diet myself and these are low-fodmap foods indeed.

I guess its just eggs and carrot. I saw a similar dish called ninjin shirishiri, its scrambled egg and shredded carrot, sometimes seasoned with sesame seeds. Sounds like a plan!

Going to town on the carrot with my julienne peeler, and then making sure the strips are a good bite-size length.

Then i can beat the eggs with seasoning. Just some of my paprika salt and mixed peppercorns. I'll add the sesame in at the end.

Frying the carrots with a bit of butter. I guess if you worry about dairy you can use vegetable oil.

After the carrots are softened I pour in the eggs and sprinkle some sesame seeds, I gotta keep it moving around the pan with a spatula to scramble the eggs.

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Tasty! simple! A little bit bland though. Definitely a good idea if you're feeling so delicate, but im feeling like... wheres the rest of the stir fry?

Delicious in Dungeon #68: Final Cream Stew

Oh look its another final stew...

Different this time though!!! Don't judge me i didnt write this!

This time we're doing a cream stew, which deceptively has a bechamel sauce base instead of actual cream. OK. Anyway we have leftover shoulder meat from the cutlet bowl that ive already chopped, potatoes, carrots, onions, broccoli, mushroom, chicken stock, and ingredients for bechamel sauce (aka white sauce)

I'll start by roughly chopping the onion so we can brown them with the meat.

The meat isnt quite defrosted yet, but its got plenty of time to cook while we chop everything else.

Potatoes and carrots chopped, we can put them to one side.

Broccoli chopped as well.

While we are cooking we can also add some seasoning, ive just got salt, pepper and nutmeg.

I should have probably used a shallower pan if  i wanted to get it more seared, its already producing a decent amount of liquid without adding anything.

Alright we can put the other vegetables in now, with some stock and a bayleaf and hot water to start stewing and- oh... ive done it again haven't I? theres too much here... i should have started with 2 pans... 

Well. This is fine. It will cook down. Will there be enough room for the mushrooms at the end? I.. don't know.

OK yeah we can fit the mushrooms on.. its had 30mins simmering and the potatoes are soft...

We can begin the final phase now while the chopped mushrooms cook, make the bechamel sauce in my next biggest pan, and we'll admit defeat and split the stew between 2 pots again.

Starting with a roux made with melted butter and flour. I guess the consistency doesn't matter much this time, since its going in the wet stew, and honestly its already looking well thickened from the potatoes.

Stirring in the milk on the heat and once its starting to thicken, we can just pour half into the pot, and transfer a load of the stew back into this pan.

Here's the stew! well about 2/3 of it actually! looks tasty.

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It's nice! Came out a bit dark though... and not so light and brothy like how the japanese cream stews look. I think i simply used too many vegetables and didnt make nearly enough bechamel sauce. It tasted most strongly of the broccoli, with a pleasant creamy mushroomy and meaty secondary flavour. Yeah, not nearly a creamy enough cream stew, but a perfectly fine stew.

Delicious in Dungeon #67: Final Cutlet Bowl

This isnt even an official recipe, but just scroll down and look at that glamour shot... its begging me to make it. So shiny and meaty looking, our pickiest eaters would crave it.

I looked up some japanese recipes, it doesn't really look breaded in the image like katsudon so ive settled on a bbq pork recipe called butadon instead. But... instead of making a whole caramel sauce, im going to make a simpler bbq style glaze with syrup.

Got a big load of medium-fatty shoulder steaks! I considered doing a massive batch, but... itll be quicker and easier to do just 1 saucepan full, and save the rest of the meat for the next recipe, which I think itll work well for. 

OK first up, cooking some nice japanese sticky rice.

For this we just need the white part of spring onion for garnish. I can chop the rest of the greens up and store them in my freezer stash, they're one of my go-to toppings for instant noodles.

We gotta have a big pile of flat steaks, so ill tenderise them. This will probably also make them pick up the sauce better with all those spike holes.

We filled the pan with only 4 pieces. Seems like a reasonable amount!

Now while thats browning, we can make the sauce. I'm mixing minced garlic, golden syrup, sake, mirin, and soy sauce.

Just eyeballing it really. I dunno. then i mix it up so the syrup dissolves.

Once the meat is looking about 3/4 cooked ill drain off any excess oil and add the sauce. Its really thin, so heres hoping it reduces nicely without burning the sugar too much.

Look at that, a transformation!

Now maybe ill season the rice a bit too, just with some salt and rice vinegar. Then fluff it up and pile it high in the bowl!

The onion looks a bit tough as a garnish, so im going to fry it a little bit at the end.

Oh! I also wanted to add some pickled ginger to the bowl, that often came suggested in the recipes and I happen to have some.

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Cor! It's as good as it looks. Im not as robust as Tade after all. (im sorry i cant be her...) so i split it into 2 meals after I took the photo. It's simple, but i love rice, i love bbq... it's sweet and sour and sticky and perfect!

Delicious in Dungeon #66: Final Gratin

The starch boys are at war again.. can't you be more like cheese and tomato?

We've got a bit of a decision to make on this one. In Japanese cuisine, gratin is typically a macaroni bake, sometimes with veg and chicken or prawns, and bechamel sauce & cheese. But in Europe, its a potato bake, using slices of potato with bechamel & cheese.

All we know is this recipe has to incorporate plenty of our FINAL MEAT. So, I decided to get minced meat, and do kind of a cross between a cottage pie and a gratin dauphinois, which is the potato one. I also have a bunch of leftover vegetables, so we'll work a bit of that in too.

I've peeled the potatoes and im gonna shove them in the steamer, that way I can leave them and I dont even have to keep an eye on them as they do their thing.

I've roughly chopped the onion, and a bit more finely chopped the celery and carrots and we can fry them up in a bit of oil.

We could also enhance it with garlic, ive got a big jar of garlic paste I can crack open. 

We can also throw the meat in already, and just cook it all till its nice and browned.

Again just going with my nose on these spices. I'm using worcestershire sauce, oregano, nutmeg, black pepper, chilli powder and paprika.

Thats looking good, we can turn the heat off and let it sit while we make the bechamel sauce aka white sauce.

I always forget how deceptively easy this is... just a couple tablespoons of butter and flour...

melt the butter and mix it until it becomes a beige paste

and then you can just slowly mix in milk as you heat it until you have a nice thick sauce. Why did I use a fork instead of a whisk? I could have used a whisk. Whatever.

while thats warming up we can drop the cooked mince in the chosen casserole dish. I choose a big round flat one. Oh god its gonna get too full again isnt it.

Looks like a sauce, check!

Potatoes are steamed. Hmm. I dont know if they are supposed to be pre-cooked, they are quite a lot fluffier and starchier than I expected. Makes it hard to slice them actually. Still, that wont matter because the gratin looks all lumpy in the manga.

Our fluffy potato layer! yep its definitely overfull again.

The white sauce! And we can add another layer of seasoning here. I've just got paprika salt, pepper and nutmeg.

And now, we have a decadent 2 types of cheese! Cheddar for flavour and mozzarella for texture. Is it me or do they look like the mario bros?

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Is it me or did i overreact to the overly wet pie and end up making something a bit dry? I should have added more/thinner sauce. Apart from that minor room for improvement though (and the potatoes cut a bit too thick), its super delicious! Meaty, cheesy, flavourful. I absolutely would make this again.