Delicious in Dungeon #48: Hamburg Steak With Changeling Sauce

Is it me... or are dungeon mushrooms getting bigger these days?

The popular japan-german dish is back! It's a dungeon twist on the HANBAGU or Hamburg Steak which we seem to have visited quite a few times in other challenges.

This time we've got the monstrous ingredients of mixed leftover griffin/hippogriff (im using a beef&pork mince mix) and a changeling-based sauce with a bit of mandrake and frog skin.

Big load of mince, nice. And then i'm adding onion chopped as finely as I can manage, breadcrumbs, and an egg.

It says I can add whatever seasoning I want, so im adding my trusty paprika salt, pepper, mild chilli powder and ginger powder.

Now for the messy part... theres no way around it i have to knead it with my hands. Its cold and getting pork fat off your hands is SO WEIRDLY DIFFICULT. The mince seemed slightly dry and crumbly so I decided to add another egg as I went.

Now I can bust out my new MEGA ULTRA DELUXE FRYING PAN!! I could make paella in this someday.. hmm.. anyway, throw in a slightly generous portion of butter because we'll use the rest for the sauce.

These brown quite fast, so we might have to turn my overpowered hob off and on again to cook it slower. I'm not taking any chances with pork mince.

For the mandrake... in the past its been parsnips or ginger... its really whatever root vegetable we need? but i saw some whimsical looking radishes that I thought would be perfect. they come in 2 kinds!

What a nice pink and purple, very changeling.

For the changelings, I got a mix with 2 types of mushroom: shiitake and oyster, and can chop them up roughly.

For the "frog skin".. well, i don't have frog skin. but I was wondering... whats it there for? Is it to add brothy, collagen-y flavours and thicken up the sauce maybe? So I thought a good substitute would be a concentrated chicken stock.

These are getting somewhere, a bit longer and then I take the patties out and use all that oily meat juice as the sauce base..

Adding in the mushrooms and stock.

It says I can use whatever seasonings I want... so as a nod to the hanbagu recipes i've done in the past, im adding a bit of sake and soy sauce.

At the end I sprinkle in the grated radish as well. I was hoping it might add a pink sparkle, but it just looks brown and oily.

*****

Delicious! I think this came out perfectly. The mushrooms go really well with the beef and pork, and the oilyness of the sauce balances out the dryness of the mince. It's hearty and satisfying.

Delicious in Dungeon #25: Jack-O'-Lantern Potage and Dryad Bud Sauté With Cheese Sauce

 Bloody dryads, get out of my swamp.

What the hell is this? Horrible. Also I forgot to take a horizontal photo. Lets eat it.

We got a good vegetable haul from the dryads domain. Dryad fruit, dryad buds, mandrakes, mushrooms, and I have some cheese as well, I don't remember how.

We should be able to just cut into the pumpkin like this and lift the top off..

Voila! That went pretty smooth. Now, instead of trying to carve into it while its still tough, and risk slipping and making holes into it, im going to roast the whole thing. It'll become soft enough to scoop out with a spoon!

Don't look at me like that!

Oops! I guess its getting a bit scorched in there so I'll take it out. It smells amazing and its so tender inside. I'll scoop the seeds out first and then start collecting the flesh to use for the soup.

Aah noo! Disaster! My structural integrity! I guess maybe roasting it wasn't the smart move after all.. The inside got nice and soft but the outside got a lot softer than I expected too.

I'll keep it together in a bowl while i continue scooping, maybe we can gently get it out of the bowl and stick it back together when its cooled down.. Also, getting LOTS of delicious pumpkin flesh that smells amazing. I'm going to use half of it now and stick a tub of the other half in the freezer for future recipes.

The stuff we are using I stuck in the blender and it easily turned into the most amazing looking paste. I LOVE pumpkin. It's so bright, so smooth, aromatic, sweet and savoury. It's MAJESTIC.

What else goes in the soup? You can add a soup stock if you want or wahtever, but I'm going to add a bit of miso paste, pickled garlic, grated ginger, salt, pepper, and single cream.

Then we'll need to add some hot water cause its like a concentrated paste and stir it all up, you can add as much as you want really based on your preferred soup consistency! I like it pretty thick.

As for the mandrake root... I decided to do something a bit fun for myself, since the soup had a kind of lumpy texture in the manga, I thought i'd dice into small cubes and sautee the mandrake separately (like with the omelette!) and then stir them back in at the end.

Meanwhile the pumpkin cooled down so I thought i could see if we can transfer it back to a plate or a clear tub...? NEVERMIND ABORT ABORT, ITS FALLING TO PIECES, I GUESS IT STAYS IN THE BOWL. Damn. I screwed this one up, annoying. I could have sworn ive done this before with a roasted pumpkin and it didnt collapse like this, but whatever.

Agh now I burned the mandrakes while I was trying to reassemble the pumpkin! Its all going to shit right now.

Oh well, on to the next. Now for the dryad buds, it would maybe make more sense to do something all layer-y like an onion or a napa cabbage... but, well, the scoop on me is that my stomachs been kinda sensitive to cabbage and allium types and i've already had a lot this week... so my first idea that sounded good was celeriac root...but they didn't have that, instead they had a big ol' bunch of swede turnips in season. So... swedes it is!

I'm frying them in plenty of butter, and once they've had a head start a couple of those mushrooms sliced can go in as well.

Now we need that cheese sauce!! It's getting hectic as hell in here, heres some grated cheese.

I'm mixing it with some more of that cream. 

And adding my go-to cheese sauce seasonings as well.. nutmeg and black pepper! Now to collect all these tortured components and assemble them into.. well, something.

****

It tastes fucking phenomenal damn it. I am definitely making roast pumpkin soup and turnips with cheese and mushrooms again. But... rrgh, i'm still giving it 4/5 because I messed up so many things. The pumpkins been shredded, and I also should have roasted the turnip slices instead of sautee'd them, because they are very al dente in the middle. Which is fine, you can literally eat them raw, but if they were all tender with that cheese sauce it would have been sublime, peak even. The recipe is top tier, but my execution... lacking.

Stardew Valley #56: Artichoke Dip

 Ingredients: Artichoke, Milk

Item Description: It's cool and refreshing.

Got some leftover artichokes, just half a can so I will plan to do a relatively small batch. Which is also good because last time I had these artichokes I didn't like em. For the "milk", im being sensible and using sour cream instead, much more dip-appropriate, and cross-referencing a few recipes online with what i already have, ive come up with adding some mayo, dill, celery salt and powdered garlic as well.

I've never made this before, but hopefully chopping/tearing them into small chunks is right? The dip graphic looks chunky.

Thrown it all together, but ah! I just remembered something else from other recipes I was gonna add!

CHEEEESE gromit! Seemingly all kinds of cheeses are used for artichoke dips, but a common one is hard cheese. I got a tiny bit of grana padano left.

Don't cry because you dropped your grater in the dip. Laugh because you dropped your grater in the dip.

Stirred and decanted into a bowl, this is looking like a dip! Now for the last step I wouldnt have guessed.. we bake it in the oven! Glad I looked this up.

****

Alright first off, can't have a dip without the chip!

A personal favourite, some store brand not-chilli-heatwave-doritos. These are already delicious which might be a bit of a cheat, but i think this dip pairs really well and makes for a fun dinner that im sure my doctor wouldn't recommend. I'm not sure if artichoke is redeemed and if i fundamentally like the flavour, but it adds an adventurous je ne sais quoi that makes me glad I tried this and not just a bowl of unbaked sour cream. It does get stuck in your teeth something fierce though.

Stardew Valley #44: Cranberry Sauce

Ingredients: Cranberries, Sugar

Item Description: A festive treat.

Planning ahead, that's what I'm all about. When my mum said she'd make cranberry sauce for christmas dinner I said ooh! Let me get in on that. So we've time travelled back to christmas for this, after all, it is "a festive treat".

The ingredients are cranberries (from frozen if you like), a good amount of sugar, and we've added some orange peel for a little extra sumethn'

Now you just heat and stir, heat and stir, until it becomes a sauce.

Simple as that!?

Or is it... looks like someones mixed in a bit of port as well.

Here's a cheeky pic of the whole christmas dinner. Obviously this is rated ******!

***

Don't get me wrong, my mums cranberry sauce is the best of the best. But cranberry sauce is just pretty good at its best. It comes and goes and I don't really miss it most of the year. It's bitter, astringent and sour, goes alright with turkey, pork, potatoes and cheese. But usually I still prefer ketchup or chutney.