Delicious in Dungeon #5: Mandrake Kakiage and Big Bat Tempura

Me an me mandrake have spotted a big bat!

Normally bats is endangered, but not dungeon bats. Or zubats. So lets chop it and deep fry its delicious meat.

Leftover mandrakes, bat breast fillet, and some extra greens that they showed in the pictures. I was gonna use some kale from my garden, but i've surrendered it to the butterflies, its absolutely heaving with caterpillars now. So we just have some leftover lettuce.

Using the slicer peeler to get little matchstick mandrake fries, and chopping the lettuce into strips.

2 mandrakes looks like plenty.

Now i almost forgot - seems they actually season/marinate the bat meat in lots of stuff! Cooking sake, salt, soy sauce, ginger and garlic. Good thing we have some.

I'll add a bit of the ginger, garlic and salt to the vegetables as well.

I wanted to chop the meat into medallions, but the breast is deceptively flat they just sorta rolled it up, so i guess we're getting some long wobbly worms of meat instead.

For the batter, I have leftover tempura mix! You actually don't normally add eggs to this, but this recipe uses basilisk egg so im just gonna. I guess it will help the kakiage hold together too.

Im making a batch according to the packet instructions, but subtracting the egg from the weight of the water.

Whisked the batter up, looks good! It should be liquidy and a little thick, like pancakes. It will be very drippy and messy, thats just how it is.

When we're all ready to go we can heat up the OIL TRAP! The real star of this chapter.

First I dip the bat meat in and cook it. It's looking good. Like I say, more like weird little wiggly shapes, but whatever.

Once they're all done, we can throw all the vegetables in the remaining batter and scoop a kinda "nest" of it and gently lower it in the oil with a slotted spoon. And then pray it doesnt all just stick to my basket at the bottom.

Yoo its working.

****

Yaay! The kakiage looks great and came out in perfect big nests. The egg made the batter a little more soft and chewy, as did the marinade on the meat i think, but the parsnips mandrake kept the kakiage all crispy crunchy. Another W for this attention-hogging root vegetable.