Stardew Valley #36: Red Plate

Ingredients: Red Cabbage, Radish

Item Description: Full of antioxidants.

Got (hopefully enough) leftover shredded red cabbage in my freezer, plenty of radishes, and a few other things! I thought some pomegranate seeds would add a burst of sweetness with each bite and they're also very red and antioxidant rich.

To differentiate this from all the coleslaws I thought it'd be nice to do something hot and make a sautee'd cabbage dish. I'm also cooking it with butter, I really like how that goes with cruciferous vegetables.

We'll dump in the cabbage and leave that to cook from frozen for a bit, while thats cooking I chop some radishes, eh just as many as I feel like..

Now to add some seasoning! I just picked some herbs based entirely on vibes, so we're adding parsley, sage, thyme, salt, pepper, and a splash of cider vinegar to add some crisp fruity and sour flavour!

In they all go, fry fry fry

At the very tippy end we can dump in pomegranate, maybe it can get a bit seared but we don't really wanna cook it i guess.

****

Really nice! A very sweet and sour salad, but light enough that the herbs really make a difference. Heavily red-themed but still a pleasantly balanced flavour. Would be a great side dish for a roast dinner.

Stardew Valley #35: Tortilla

Ingredients: Corn

Item Description: Can be used as a vessel for food or eaten by itself.

So when they say you need corn for this recipe, what you really need is a big bag of masa harina. And like, i probably could order some from a specialty store...? Or I could just find some corn tortillas in the big tesco which I did.

 

This wont be completely cooking-free, as a good tortilla should really be toasted a lil' bit 

**

Hmm I mean its edible on its own, but its very plain if you ask me. I guess a homemade one might have been better to eat on its own.. BUT IT SAYS I CAN USE IT AS A VESSEL FOR FOOD IN THE DESCRIPTION

SO I actually had it with some leftover homemade doner kebab instead. Better!

Stardew Valley #34: Maki Roll

Ingredients: Any Fish, Seaweed, Rice

Item Description: Fish and rice wrapped in seaweed.

Right off the back of the sashimi recipe, lets get these rolled while the fish is still fresh. I've got some steamed and cooled sushi rice, and i'm gonna season it with a little bit of salt, sugar, rice vinegar and sake. 

then just fluff that up, mixing it a bit.

For the filling we're slicing up half an avocado, the rest of the raw salmon, and some cucumber into matchsticks.

And of course the seaweed! And a handy little bamboo roller that supposedly helps you roll it tightly.

You put the rice on first, and the topping in the middle, I think leaving a bit of a gap for the seaweed to overlap... I dunno I don't make these often enough to have a good feel for it.

One big log. Cutting it can be a bit of a challenge, depending on how sharp your knife is. Making sure the seaweed is damp enough to stick to the rice really helps, and then try to glide the blade diagonally so you are slicing and not crushing, that's my tip I guess. Let's see how well it works out for me.

****

Fresh and delicious! But, having these right after the previous recipe (same meal btw) I feel like the sashimi was just a bit better. I think I could have seasoned the rice a bit more, used a bit more sugar and vinegar, since with the soy sauce it was a little bitter. Very nice and I love sushi, but let's leave it room for improvement.

Stardew Valley #33: Sashimi

Ingredients: Any Fish

Item Description: Raw fish sliced into thin pieces.

First of all, we've gotta do this right. I mean we've GOTTA do this right, I don't want parasites. I ordered some proper sashimi grade salmon, and carefully defrosted it in the fridge for a day.

Simplest recipe yet? I've just gotta take a knife to this thing. We'll use the rest for the next sushi recipe.

Hang on, wait...this needs a little somethn'. Let me just... 

*****

Yeah that's more like it! Yeah im a bit of a japanese food fan. I've got extra fancy soy sauce, sweet pickled ginger and wasabi. Anyway, the sashimi was amazing. So smooth and meaty.

Stardew Valley #32: Spicy Eel

Ingredients: Eel, Hot Pepper

Item Description: It's really spicy! Be careful.

Mackerel again! MackerEel. I had a lot of options for this one, i had some spicy hot pot base or stir fry sauce or ground chillis, but i thought id crack open this jar of crispy chilli oil mix and try that out.

Thats about it really, a very quick and lazy one for a cold busy evening. Bit of coriander to garnish.

***

Its not really that spicy, my bad. Should have used a bit of the hot pot base. I quite like the flavour though, goes well with the mack. I also should have put on the chilli bits nearer the end as the tofu chunks got a bit overdone. Nice, easy thing that would work really well as a rice bowl or salad topper.

Stardew Valley #31: Fried Eel

Ingredients: Eel, Oil

Item Description: Greasy but flavorful.

I don't have Eel! That shits rare. But mackerel is nice and common, and i'm no eel expert but i think its the best substitute? its a very oily and meaty fish. For oil im gonna pan fry it with some vegetable oil.

Just frying up a fillet with a few big leaves of pak choi. Gonna keep it simple with some basic seasoning and then a big squeeze of lemon juice.

Non stick pan is doing its thing, cooking nice and clean like.

***

Maybe im just craving a stronger flavour because its cold lately, but its a little bland and boring. The lemon juice makes it quite bitter, so maybe a sweeter glaze would have made it pop. Not bad though.

Stardew Valley #30: Spaghetti

Ingredients: Wheat Flour, Tomato

Item Description: An old favorite.

Spaghetti time! I'm going to be real with you boo, "spaghetti" isnt very specific. Since its got tomato, you could probably interperet it as just pomodoro/tomato sauce. But to me, a classic spaghetti is a tomatoey beef bolognese. And I have the ingredients for that so i'm gonna make it.

Haven't used my veg chopper in a while! Saves a bit of time in dicing things, plus you gotta slam it dramatically.

Got a lot of pink onion (maybe too much?), garlic, and carrot.

Then we can throw in the beef and cook it dry till its brown.

Now the beauty of Spag Bol, you can just throw in whatever you feel like as long as its roughly along the lines of meat, tomato, wine, umami, sugar, italian herbs, and tomato. I have way too much stuff in my kitchen so we're taking full advantage. I've got celery salt, pepper, worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, tomato concentrate, red wine, balsamic vinegar, jalapeno sauce, basil and oregano.

Its looking brown and sauced up, now we can add the tinned tomatoes and leave it to simmer for a while.

I could have also bought some fresh tomatoes to really lean in to the tomato aspect, but i didn't.

Don't forget the spaghetti! You can't spell spaghetti without... get it

When the spaghetti is done the rest should be... good enough for a weeknight yknow.

*****

I dunno if im just hungry but this is one of my better bologneses! i mean its still a pretty standard, "classic" spagbol but ive had ones that came out slightly blander or less well balanced in previous challenges. Perhaps the lesson is 2 large onions is the right amount?

Stardew Valley #29: Cookie

Ingredients: Wheat Flour, Sugar, Egg

Item Description: Very chewy.

Cookies! We like those. The description says very chewy, and I think I usually make quite soft buttery ones, so im going to google for a chewy recipe and just use the first one that comes up.

It's cold so my butter hard like my feelings, maybe we should melt it gently in a bain-marie? (like my feelings)

The recipe says half white and half brown sugar, I have the most delicious malty brown sugar, as we learned in the pie recipe, it smells so good. Might be a bit intense for choc chip cookies, but we'll find out.

Once it's melty enough we can whip it all together

Once thats mixed we add some wets, we've got an egg, a teaspoon of vanilla, and a whole teaspoon of salt!? Ok you're the boss recipe.

Crikey that makes a difference doesn't it. The power of egg!

Now for the flour, and a teaspoon of baking soda. I feel like the ratio of flour to sugar is kinda low on this one, I guess that will make the cookies more chewy.

Now we fold in the flour instead of power-whisk it. It's that something something gluten structures again. I don't know I'm not a bread scientist.

Now we bust in a load of chocolate chunks! I prefer bar chocolate to chips, as they typically need less stabilising agents so theyll be less waxy. I normally put dark chocolate in cookies, but for some reason I feel like Evelyn, (the canonical recipe keeper in stardew valley's world) seems like a milk chocolate kinda gal to me.

The recipe actually says to chill them 30mins-10hours if possible. I want em for tonight so they've had about 3 hours to chill, then we scoop em out onto baking paper and cook them in the oven for 15mins.

****

Oops I kinda overcooked these. I should have been more on the ball really, my oven is nice and powerful. They're dry and crunchy on the outer rim but on the inside they are indeed very chewy. They melted a lot and came out very flat. They're nice, but I'm pretty sure ive made better. They are a bit oily and sugary to me, I think next time I would use more flour and less sugar, and i'd use more white/golden sugar rather than the dark stuff. And I would definitely keep an eye on them and take them out sooner.