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.

****

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 #65: Final Stew

Final Stew! Actually not sure if that's even true, i think there's another stew coming up. 

I didn't have a giant tail to stew, but I looked it up and pork shoulder is apparently a good stewing cut. 

Got a huge hunk of pork shoulder, butternut squash (the closest i could get to pumpkin), onions, garlic, carrots, celery and cabbage.

The onions and garlic can go straight in the pan, maybe with a bit of oil or butter. But then i'll chop all the rest of the veg and put them aside before we do the pork.

Time to go peel crazy and peel the pumpkin and carrots.

Its quite hard to cut when its raw.. but itll have plenty of time to cook in the stew. Also don't forget to remove the seeds!

Theres already so much here, i think ill just use half of the cabbage and celery and save the rest for other stuff.

Once everythings chopped up and put to the side, we can finally get to the meat.

Plenty of it! its all wrapped and ready for roasting in the oven, unfortunately we are going to undo all that and chop it up to fry. sorry.

I guess i'll remove the hard rind? Maybe it doesnt matter. I'm methodically slicing it into big steaks and then cutting them into chunks.

Hmm, this us really filling up my biggest stew pot huh.. maybe its time to admit this is a 2 pan sized stew.

Better! Maybe we can already start applying the spices. I'm not really sure what im doing yet so lets go rummaging. I think i want something simple and european herb-y.

Ok how about this... celery salt, pepper, bay leaf, thyme, worcestershire sauce and white wine?

Once the meat and onions are browned we can finally put in all those vegetables and extra water, and try our best to evenly distribute the seasonings.

Oh! I just remembered ive got that open jar of chillis in the fridge. And some horseradish too! Lets use some of that in there.

Ive covered it and left it on low for like an hour, stirring occasionally. Looking good!

****

Wow! The pork is so tender! Its a bit simple, but not bland, you can taste the thyme, horseradish and chilli as well as the hydrating combination of vegetables.

Delicious in Dungeon #57: Head-Hunting Rabbit Curry

We have to make curry. No like, we have to make... LOTS of curry.

Sorry, ominous fantasy world rabbits, but you're going in the soup again.

Maybe I won't make as much as they make in the manga, but I will make a nice big batch, as much as my cookwares can handle. We have rice, potatoes, carrots, onions (not pictured oops), mushrooms, garlic, instant curry, and a big cylinder of rabbit meat.

Let's start by steaming plenty of rice. I guess traditionally they do japanese rice with japanese curry, but I have some thai jasmine rice that I think will be nice with it.

First I will chop the stewing vegetables (potato, carrot, mushroom) into nice chunky pieces and put them to one side.

Then i'm going to slice up the garlic and onions, which I will fry in some butter along with the meat to add a nice flavour base.

Once all the vegetables are good to go I can chop the raw meat last.

I'll just take the whole wadge of it and slice it all up. That's a good amount of rabbit!

Once they are looking lightly cooked its probably fine to add the rest of the vegetables..

OK... I may have overdone this a little... um... hopefully the water will soften them down and stop them from burning, if not maybe we'll get a second pan.

Next we dump in all the curry blocks and plenty of water. You can check the back of the box for the right proportions but tbh I just eyeballed it. We've got a lot of added ingredients to soak.

We can just pop the lid on and trust the process... well occasionally stirring it gently. As you can see its already coming along nicely, once the potatoes are soft its good to go.

*****

I love a nice stewed curry, its mild but well-rounded and comforting and you can pack lots of veggies in there. It's also super easy. Maybe I could have chopped the vegetables up real tiny make it look more like a giant serving? But this process was more authentic.

And it also makes plenty of meals worth!

Delicious in Dungeon #50: Stewed Dullahan's Horse Head

This friggin horseman he got no head (just trust me bro)

I got his horses head definitely real definitely happened.

This ones a weird theoretical recipe, they don't end up cooking it in the manga but I'm going to cook it for them! Well, I can't get real horse head meat... but I have managed to get ox cheek, which comes from the face so I thought that could be a pretty good substitute.

First im gonna sear it with a bit of leftover lard (animal fat) and, again there's no guidelines so ive decided to season it with salt, pepper, a clove and a bit of juniper berries for when we stew it in a sauce.

I should hurry up and add a crushed clove of garlic too before its done searing.

Once its ready to turn the heat way down and go into stew mode, I'm adding red wine, tomato concentrate and worcestershire sauce. 

It's coming along, it smells super garlicky... Now we can just cover it with a lid and leave it for a bit and play some zelda.. right?

Ah no! I checked in on it after like 15min and it had already burned! I guess my smallest hob on the lowest setting was still not low enough. I tried adding more hot water to try and recover some of whats on there... but i don't know, I might have just ruined it. Oh also I was gonna serve it on a bed of mashed potato, ill do that still.

**

Oof I know it looks nuked but actually the meat tasted fine, it was nice and tender and it didnt all taste too burnt. But... in rehydrating it what i managed to do was just burn all the flavourings and wash it off so it ended up just tasting like plain unseasoned beef. I feel like if I had done it right, maybe it would have been 5 stars. Shame.