Delicious in Dungeon #37: Soul Eggs Benedict

Ah, the indispensable egg. It's a lot like a human soul, is it?

When it breaks...... bad. When it hot... nice.

We're musing and we're making a variant of eggs benedict with harpy eggs. And barometz is included somehow. I'm not sure, that was both a plant and an imitation lamb. i thought it'd be cool to honour the imitation meat by adding some plant-based ham slices. Also looking at this now I realise I'd forgot the lemon juice. 

This is all terribly quick to prepare, so I'll start with just frying the asparagus, I trimmed the base and rinsed them and cooked them with a bit of butter.

For eggs benedict it's traditional to use english muffins, but this used some sort of funny shaped thick sourdough loaf, so I thought it might be cool and delicious to use some square ciabatta buns. I'm also just gonna lightly toast them, im a toast fiend.

I've never poached an egg before. It always seemed intimidating. I think I know what to do, you just sort of... drop the egg in boiling water but you have to keep it together by making a water vortex, or surely just using a big ladle?

Here we gooo

Ah shit crabs I fucked it up... i thought it looked done already so i tried putting it onto sandwich and it slid right off and it looks raw still at that. Oh well, sometimes with eggs and souls you get to scrape the obliterated remains off the floor and try again with a forbidden resurrection spell. 5 second rule and that.

I think i have something useable now. Next, half of the recipe is to make the hollandaise sauce from scratch too, but I didn't want to. It's hard enough to finish a jar of this stuff, let alone a homemade one with zero preservatives. So im just going with the jar. Also it said to add spices, so we're sprinkling on my go-to seasoning for eggs, japanese spice mix. Now we just add the asparagus and garnish: barometz fruit...?

****

Umm wow tasty! I thought it would be offputtingly soggy with all that wet egg and sauce that I didn't know how to make drier... but the ciabatta was the perfect choice of bread, its very oily and drying. I think the eggs still might have been a bit rough and waterlogged though, the sandwich does a good job of hiding how unprofessional my poached egg really is. The vegetable sides were really fresh and full-flavoured.

Delicious in Dungeon #36: Barometz Balut (Or Barometz Chops)

Barometz is a weird one... a plant that grows a lamb-like fruit. An unusually peaceful monster, but its a little unsettling somehow.

So this recipes another misleadingly named one. It's only "balut" in the sense that its meant to be a kind of embrionic lamb... really what this dish is, is lamb chops in tomato sauce.

Since its actually a plant with the appearance of a beast, I thought it be cool to source some imitation lamb made from plants! Big tesco had just what I needed, I guess this country aint so bad sometimes... Anyway for the sprouts garnish we also got some bean sprouts, for the fruit innards we have chopped tomatoes, and then we've got garlic, wine, and salt & pepper seasonings.

First im frying up the lamb steaks and sprouts... they were in the freezer so we're gonna need to thaw them then cook off all that excess water. Im also gonna cook the in this lime & avocado oil, add a little bit more flavour to the sprouts especially.

Meanwhile, since I bought tinned tomatoes theres not really much other work to do! Just peel some cloves of garlic to crush.

While its cooking i can add some salt and pepper, and then ill add a bit more to the tomato sauce as well.

That's looking nicely browned and dry! We can put these to one side and cook the rest of the stuff.

In goes the chopped tomatoes, garlic and red wine.

And then we cook it until... I dunno really? I guess its just a bit thicker and the tomato and garlic smells cooked?

****

I liked how easy it was to make... Did the barometz taste like crab? No! It tasted more like... soy mince with mint and parsley, the real reason why its been labelled as imitation lamb! But the minty herb flavourings do go well with the tomato and garlic, giving it a vaguely moroccan/greek style flavour. It tasted good, but not quite peak, maybe a more enhanced tomato sauce with more complexity would have added more?

Delicious in Dungeon #35: Ice Golem Savory Egg Custard And Cooked Fish (From In The Golem)

 'Tis the season.. ice golem season.

I don't like the cold, so lets deal with this quickly.

Wow! How did I do that? Well my freezer needed some defrosting as well... I thought about putting these in my steamer but actually they are dirty and we shouldnt contaminate my steam with dirty freezer runoff! Plus it would waste extra energy to not just use water.

We've got a random fish from the golem, the leftover nightmares and nightmare-broth, harpy eggs, mushrooms, mandrake leaves and... shapeshifter meat!?

I'm going to pan fry the meat and mushrooms ahead of time, partially because they are frozen but also because I think they will be nicer than half-cooked steamed meat.

Don't be alarmed by the appearance of the broth, it's because we cooked those nightmares in wine and butter, so the butter has cooled into little grease blobs. I added some eggs, and some soy sauce (i ran out of the cheap stuff so im using my fancy stuff!) and then decided to add an extra egg because the dark soy sauce is turning it all brown.

Giving it a good whisk. Well not that good, im just using a fork. Its gonna be lumpy anyway.

The mushrooms are cooking way faster than the meat so ill add those in and the leftover nightmares. I wonder if they'll all just sink to the bottom when it cooks though..?

Adding the bacon and pouring it into the mugs, and finally those mandrake leaves on top. Those seem to change every time I do a recipe, hm..? To be whatever herb i feel like? TBH i used basil because its the only one im growing indoors and I dont wanna go out, its stormy today.

Its ready to get steamed! Now we can do the fish.

It's a boneless mackerel fillet and im gonna just pan fry it. 

**

It's ok. With so much stuff in it, its hard to say if i made a custard properly... and not like, fried fillings with some scrambled egg in between. The egg really has the texture of silken tofu though! I didn't expect to be that into it, and i'm not. I dont really like the fried mushroom flavour in it, the texture is wet and smooth, with chunks of wet and chewy, but everything goes together inoffensively. I just think i'd rather be having clam chowder.

Delicious in Dungeon #34: Nightmares Steamed In Sake

 Hmm ive not been sleeping well lately... 

Well I have, but my neck hurts actually and im having stressful dreams.. about being late for work... and smelling like seafood... what gives?

Huh!? whole nightmares!? frozen and packaged? I knew it!

Pretty simple one this, barely a meal. We've got nightmares, and they specify some cooking seasonings for us: butter, sake (or white wine, which im using because im european innit), and a drizzle of soy sauce.

Im just throwing it all in my steamer right away. My butter is cold so im topping it with some shavings that will melt into the mix, and adding a sensible amount of wine. The soy sauce can be drizzled on top at the end.

After some time in the steamer, looks like theyve all opened! Nice! I will swish it around in the buttery winy clamwater and add a splash of soy sauce.

***

Pretty good! Nice flavour and they taste surprisingly fresh. Not much of a meal though... barely even a snack, so I had it with some other sides... I'm saving the rest (including the juice!) to use in a more substantial recipe.

Delicious in Dungeon #33: Risotto With Mushrooms Picked In a Graveyard And Cheese From The Orcs

 What an innocent sounding recipe...

Speaking of innocent, caught this CREATURE trying to get into my cupboards. Let's cook them.

What, no? Ok fine. Cook *FOR* them. Picky picky kitty who only eats beige food. You heard the title text, we got mushrooms from a graveyard and cheese from the orcs. And garlic and rice and other stuff from... looting corpses I guess? Technically.

Starting off with about a tablespoon of butter and some garlic. Maybe I should have used more butter? I was finishing up a packet.

Oh we can throw in the rice already, but before it burns we should add water pretty soon.

While we add the water we can get some mushrooms quickly chopped and lobbed in there as well.

And I saw senshi adding something from a bottle for seasoning, im gonna choose to intepret that as white wine, a classic pairing with garlic and mushrooms.

The rice will take a while to cook on the hob, but we have to keep stirring it. I normally like to just use my steamer for rice so i can forget about it for 30 mins! Anyway we can prepare the cheese while we wait. I've got 2 kinds so ill use a bit of both: sharp cheddar and italian hard cheese.

As the water cooks off I try the rice, if its not fully soft yet I add more water. Hmm, come to think of it im using unsalted butter, I should probably add some salt back in. And some pepper for good measure? 

Once the rice is done I can add the cheese and stir it in until its melted and everything gets all creamy looking.

****

Not bad! I wish I added more cheese, i was surprised how little I tasted it. It mostly tasted like mushrooms with garlic. I really like how creamy and rich a good risotto is, and I think I did a good job of cooking the rice.