Stardew Valley #12: Fried Mushroom

Ingredients: Common Mushroom, Morel, Oil

Item Description: Earthy and aromatic.

Morels are an extremely rare and expensive mushroom, and i dont really care much for the most common varieties on their own, so i went and got a fancy mix of oyster and shiitake mushrooms.

Here's your oil.

I'm just going to throw these in whole, since they look quite chunky in the reference.

After a while they get smaller and shinier, thats about it really. Seasoned them lightly with some salt/bay/thyme mix.

The green parts in the dish are left open to interpretation,b ut I have some leftover bok choi so im going to fry it in some soy sauce.

**

Its slimy, its umami, its fine.

Stardew Valley #11: Lucky Lunch

Ingredients: Sea Cucumber, Tortilla, Blue Jazz

Item Description: A special little meal.

We have corn tortillas, for the "blue jazz" I've got some chives because they have long stems and round purple flowers, unfortunately i couldnt find any flowering but theyll bring a nice oniony flavour, and we have a sea cucumber...

Whats that? it looks more like a peeled courgette? ....hmmmm 

First we gotta wash this spinach, im just using these for the presentation plate.

I'm gonna dice everything into fine cubes, starting with the cour-...sea cucumber. I actually though about incorporating some other seafood into this dish, but after last recipe, i just dont feel like it..

Next we've got some extra stuff im sneaking in, some feta-like cheese and a bit of mint. Why? Because I love myself. Lets be good to ourselves.

Here's a bunch of chives and the mint, finely chopped as well.

This looks great and smells excellent! You could probably just add some dressing and enjoy this as a salad.

So, what am I doing exactly? I'm going to make these in to a sort of salad samosa! And brush them with oil. I had lime & avocado oil, which sounded like it would go well.

Five triangles! That's enough to make a star with, you see. These dont need to bake very long, like 5-10 mins or else we'll start burning the tortillas. And the insides can be raw or cooked.

Now we arrange a leafy spinach backdrop for our lucky lunch and pop the samosas on top. there's probably a better, cleverer way I could have arranged these, but I am not great at making sturdy samosas (or wrapping burritos, or won tons... anything really) so I was just placing them delicately with a spatula to keep them together.

***

These are quite nice! The flavours taste very greek to me, I guess its not far off a spanakopita really. The courgette makes it a little wetter though, and the corn tortilla isnt as crispy as filo pastry. I guess its like, a spanakopita in a pinch... It feels like theres just a better way to do this, but for something that fits the brief I'm pleased with the result!

Stardew Valley #10: Strange Bun

Ingredients: Wheat Flour, Periwinkle, Void Mayonnaise

Item Description: What's inside?

Alright this one sounds like another proper weird combo. One things for sure, its gonna have a bun. I'm gonna go with a steamed bao dough.

We've got bread flour, a mix of yeast AND baking powder, a bit of sugar and a pinch of salt.

Then we mix in warm water, milk and cooking oil. All the liquids!

Seems to be on the dry side, but maybe thats preferable, its probably going to be a bitch to shape and stuff.

Leave it to rise for a few hours.

Now for the fillings! So, a periwinkle is actually a sea snail. Not my favourite thing to start with, but in the spirit of things im going to try for a near neighbour, another type of mollusc, cockles! I found this jar of pickled, cooked cockles, so we shouldnt have to worry about how well they'll steam inside a bread roll. Maybe.

And leaning in to the pickled seafood flavour, I thought i'd combine it with some carrot and ginger. Then for the "void mayonnaise" I thought it would be cool to mix mayo with some pickled red cabbage to give it the ominous appearance (and flavour) of an otherworldly mayo.

I used my julienne slicer and a knife to dice the carrot and ginger pretty nice. I suppose I could have just used a grater... ANYWAY then ive added some salt, pepper and an extra dollop of mayo which i probably wont regret.

Mix it all up and the filling looks like this. Its uh... its vinegary. Yeah.

OK now for the hard part probably... I dont really know what im doing AT ALL but ive crafted a greaseproof paper cone so that we can try and hold a conical shape to stuff the filling into, and hopefully end up with something roughly resembling the conical buns at the end. 

This is still a hassle but it sorta works, kinda.

We have a stuffed bun! This is more like pottery class than cooking. Then ive tried to score lines in the sides in order to see if i can get the "stripes" like on the bun's graphic.

Alright these seem close enough to me. Now they go in the steamer to cook!

Finally we want that void mayo topping. Turns out the cabbage juice immediately turns the mayo into watery liquid, so ill just incorporate some shredded cabbage and hope for the best.

*

By the time I was done cooking i was starting to dread this somewhat. I don't know, all those smelly pickled things... When i bit into the bread it was sweet and pleasant, and the filling was... well it wasn't great, but not a dealbreaker. By my second bun i started to feel queasy... 

Then i got diarrhea that evening so the leftovers went in the bin.

Not exactly sure where it went so wrong but im gonna have to stop doing shit like this. It's not worth it.

Stardew Valley #9: Fried Calamari

Ingredients: Squid, Wheat Flour, Oil

Item Description: It's so chewy.

2 defrosted squid fillets, tempura flour, oil

I went and found whole squid tubes just so that i could show myself cutting them up instead of buying squid rings. What a meaningful endeavour!

The oil is for the deep fryer, so ill fill 'er up and start heating.

Next we can mix up the batter, we want to keep it light and not overmix it.

Maybe its because the squids a lil watery, but now the batter is a bit thinner than it probably should be. Let's hope it stays on the meat ok.

***

These don't make good leftovers so i ate all these in one sitting and now I don't feel so good. I hope I cooked them enough. Pray for my stupid ass. They look alright tho and nice n crispy..