Delicious in Dungeon #42: Sky Fish and Chips

Sky fish! Does that look familliar to you? You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like.

I'm aware that this dish is meant to be more of a reference to regular battered fish and chips... but that's NOT what they made when actually creating the familliar in the manga/anime. they made it out of leftover supplies. So I thought it'd be cute to make a crazy spring roll instead!

  

Here's a lil cross section shot, but let's now back up and show how we got to this..

I've got my defrosted spring roll wraps, and based on that diagram of the ingredients used to alchemize the skyfish, we've got leftover beef, cabbage, carrots, and spring onion. I... don't... remember why I bought smoked tofu for this recipe...? I guess it can be the cartillage? Whatever im using it.

I've chopped and julienned the cabbage, carrot and spring onion. I'm going to fry them in a bit of sesame oil.

And then cut the beef and tofu into thin strips. Come to think of it.... everything's already cooked (or edible raw) so I guess we didn't need to do this step...? Oh well.

Now I carefully separate and arrange the fillings, and wrap it all up with 2 sheets into a giant extra-long spring roll! You can scroll back up to see how that turned out.

All the remaining veg and spring roll wraps can be a problem for tomorrow, because this wack recipe wants us to BATTER AND DEEP FRY the thing. 

I'm preparing just a really small portion of tempura batter in a big bowl so I can roll this giant wingwang in it.

Here goes... I have to be very careful not to tear it. it's a 2 spatula job.

In it goes! ....Hmm, this is stupid. If its going to come out bent like this i might as well just cut it in half at this point. I'll cut it with a plastic spatula of course. Should have just done this sooner. Or like... why didnt i just make 2 normal sized spring rolls....?

The wings get rolled up and dunked in the rest of the batter and thrown in there as well!

While thats cooking we can make a little dip. I've decided to mix yuzu salad dressing, soy sauce and vinegar.

***

It's perfectly crispy! It was a little over-laboured so I didn't expect much, but I was quite impressed. The plain wings were crispy and chewy and went great with a vinegary dip, and the spring rolls tasted so fresh... After a while though, I started to think.. maybe smoked tofu and slow-cooker beef is a bit of a weird flavour in a spring roll actually... and the oilyness gets a little sickly after a while, I should stop minmaxing fried things and start serving them with a side.

Delicious in Dungeon #20: Let's Cut The Red Dragon Cutlets

A deceptive recipe - these cutlets are FOR cutting the red dragon, the red dragon hasn't been cut yet!

It's still at large.. somewhere nearby... so what are we cooking today?

It's the leftover giant frog thigh! And we're going to coat it in breadcrumbs and fry it, served on a bed of sautee'd onion in wine sauce.

Heating my mini-fryer. Please excuse the mess of dishes, its been a busy damn day. I'm so tired i don't even want to do this recipe right now but I defrosted the meat already so we're locked in. We can do this.

I drained off the excess moisture from the frog thigh (theres a lot, has someone been injecting these frogs?) and we season them with salt & pepper and dust them with flower. I'm doing the worlds sloppiest job by just doing it all in a plastic ice cream tub. It ain't stupid if it just about works ok.

Senshi doesn't use egg in this recipe, but I did coat it in egg next as a binding agent to make it easier (and forgot to take a picture) and then coated it in breadcrumbs. Because it's not a breast fillet its a bunch of de-boned thighs, the meat is all loosely connected lumps we've kinda rolled up and tucked together, so I have to do this carefully to try and keep in a rough cutlet shape.

The recipe has a bit of butter in the sauce, but i still have this leftover lard from something and I actually think itll go alright in this dish.

Meanwhile the chicken is frying away! We started this early because I have to do them one at a time in my dinky fryer. Lets give it a bit longer, these fillets are so thick.

Sliced onions and a clove of crushed garlic go in the frying pan with the lard! This might also help cut through the sometimes-nauseating smell of the deep fryer.

Once thats browning nicely I add a pinch of sugar, a drizzle of soy sauce and a splash of red wine and cook it until its reduced into a wet pile of onions.

Yeah, like that! Once the cutlets are all done it's time to plate up! 

*****

I was so tired hungry maybe I would have eaten anything but... I think this worked out perfectly.  I was just relieved the cutlets weren't raw in the middle. I hadn't prepared for the mysterious garnishes pictured in the final image, so I grabbed some carrot greens from my garden. The red wine onions worked so well as a flavourful companion that I didn't add any other sauces! I still think maybe breast meat works better for cutlets, but... well, maybe not frog ones?  I was so tired when I made this today... but next recipe i'll be ready to kick a dragon's ass!

Delicious in Dungeon #5: Mandrake Kakiage and Big Bat Tempura

Me an me mandrake have spotted a big bat!

Normally bats is endangered, but not dungeon bats. Or zubats. So lets chop it and deep fry its delicious meat.

Leftover mandrakes, bat breast fillet, and some extra greens that they showed in the pictures. I was gonna use some kale from my garden, but i've surrendered it to the butterflies, its absolutely heaving with caterpillars now. So we just have some leftover lettuce.

Using the slicer peeler to get little matchstick mandrake fries, and chopping the lettuce into strips.

2 mandrakes looks like plenty.

Now i almost forgot - seems they actually season/marinate the bat meat in lots of stuff! Cooking sake, salt, soy sauce, ginger and garlic. Good thing we have some.

I'll add a bit of the ginger, garlic and salt to the vegetables as well.

I wanted to chop the meat into medallions, but the breast is deceptively flat they just sorta rolled it up, so i guess we're getting some long wobbly worms of meat instead.

For the batter, I have leftover tempura mix! You actually don't normally add eggs to this, but this recipe uses basilisk egg so im just gonna. I guess it will help the kakiage hold together too.

Im making a batch according to the packet instructions, but subtracting the egg from the weight of the water.

Whisked the batter up, looks good! It should be liquidy and a little thick, like pancakes. It will be very drippy and messy, thats just how it is.

When we're all ready to go we can heat up the OIL TRAP! The real star of this chapter.

First I dip the bat meat in and cook it. It's looking good. Like I say, more like weird little wiggly shapes, but whatever.

Once they're all done, we can throw all the vegetables in the remaining batter and scoop a kinda "nest" of it and gently lower it in the oil with a slotted spoon. And then pray it doesnt all just stick to my basket at the bottom.

Yoo its working.

****

Yaay! The kakiage looks great and came out in perfect big nests. The egg made the batter a little more soft and chewy, as did the marinade on the meat i think, but the parsnips mandrake kept the kakiage all crispy crunchy. Another W for this attention-hogging root vegetable.

Stardew Valley #73: Crab Cakes

Ingredients: Crab, Wheat Flour, Egg, Oil

Item Description: Crab, bread crumbs, and egg formed into patties then fried to a golden brown.

Got some tinned lump crab. Apparantly that's the good stuff. It's not a lot though...? It never is... time to fill it out with a lot of other stuff. We've got breadcrumbs, spring onion, coriander, eggs and a chilli.

I want these flavourful vegetables chopped nice and fine, so im gonna use my blender. Will I turn it into sauce? Time to find out. Also just using half a chilli, because i don't trust ill have a lot of mince overall.

We've already got the nice colourful crumbly appearance we want! And we haven't even added the main ingredients!

In goes the crabmeat, an egg, and PLENTY of breadcrumbs to pad this out.

Why not some spices too? I'm feeling celery salt and paprika for this.

Oh! and maybe some lemon juice? adding that in as we mix it all up gently and then shape it into patties with my hands. My poor cold hands. No summer weather here this week either.

OK so far this has been a total breeze, and these are looking good as well! Frying them up with a good puddle of oil. Thought about using my deep fryer, but if this is gonna work then lets just do it.

Oops these are looking quite toasty on one side already. I hope they are cooking through OK.

*****

Well well well, don't these look good! They taste great as well, but especially because I had them with a swedish dill and mustard sauce. I'm not one to get excited about fish cakes or fritters, but there's something about making them yourself that makes em that much more appealing. It was such a quick and easy recipe as well! You could lure Elliott to your farm with these no problem.