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?

****

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.

Delicious in Dungeon #53: Succubus and Bicorn Brain Doria

Hot guys and horses, together at last!

Wait, are they making out..? Sigh... always a bridesmaid of frankenstein...

First while we got an hour before we should start, I'll cook up some rice! I think its traditionally done with japanese short grain, but I feel like italian short-grain (risotto) was made for this sort of thing.. its kind of creamier than sushi rice imo (is that just in my head?) so itll go great with dairy I think.

We have the rice, vegetables, succubus milk, vegetables, ingredients to make bechamel, 2 kinds of cheese, and for the young succubus i'm using some nice big prawns and for the bicorn brain!? I got some ZEBRA meat burgers! It's probably not brain meat, but ill be nice and squishy.

Diced up the carrot and onion really small, like a soffritto.

What i'm going to do is just break up this patty into little rough meatball-y chunks. I think just one will be plenty. The other can become a regular burger later.

And them im frying them all together in a wok with some butter.

While those cook, i need to make a start on grating the hard cheese. It's pretty hard, and my shoulders are bad again. Takes ages.

Once thats looking nicely browned, i'll add in the succubus too. They're frozen and pre-cooked so we just need to heat them up and then start making the sauce.

I've put the cooked rice in a nice casserole dish... maybe I shoulda picked a bigger one, is there enough room? Eh.. probably...

I pour in the milk and the parmesan.

Wait!!! Wasn't I going to put the parmesan on top at the end!? oops! I also completely forgot about the mushrooms! They''re also in my freezer so we can throw those in, and grate some more of the cheese, I was going to do that anyway. 

Hmm I haven't thought about seasonings AT ALL. It says it has some, so... eh, some of my go-to cheese pairings: paprika salt, pepper, nutmeg and chili (cayenne) pepper.

And lastly, adding FLOUR to the sauce, don't forget that step. It's kind of weird to make a bechamel sauce around so many other ingredients, but.. well it does seem convenient.

Once its thickened, we pour it all on top of the rice. Honestly...? looks kinda unappetising. I think the milk has separated a bit... and it smells like seafood, hot milk and feet. Also I hope I remembered to actually set a temperature when I turned on the oven.... (no)

Finally the cheese topping before we put it in. More of the hard cheese to help make a crust layer, and sliced up mozzarella to hide our sins. The cheese isnt really specified, but i saw this somewhere when i was looking up doria and it sounded like a good idea.

OK after some time in the oven this looks and smells a lot better.

*****

Oh! It actually tastes great! I still think rice instead of pasta or potato in a gratin is strange... but.. with the grana padano, mushroom and seafood flavours we acheived a really nice seafood risotto type flavour, a nice crispy chewy top, and the meatballs were nice too.. they had a sort of smokier darker flavour than horse i think, like a spiced venison or lamb.

It also made 6 hearty portions, and it holds together a lot better when its cooled down. A great alternative to lasagne if you're bored of tomato and pasta.