Delicious in Dungeon #11: Court Cuisine Full-Course Meal

 Another crazy huge recipe to tackle, just a total feast of food. I thought about splitting this up in multiple meals, but its not too complicated if we just rely on lots of pre-made elements actually.

Aah, a sumptuous feast committed to paper... don't you wish you could have your own personal banquet?

On a tuesday?

It's more likely than you'd think.

This recipe is sketchy with the methods and details, but it seems deceptively straightforward. We've got roast duck (sliced breast and whole leg) with a side salad, white fish and edamame beans, pumpkin soup, bread, cheese with nuts, and wine. The recipe image also has a fruit bowl and a basket of breads, but im going to leave those out because this is already... so much. 

So for the cooking method on the duck, the packaging actually has some great suggestions that sound good: score the skin with a knife, add seasoning, and then pan fry the fillets for a few minutes until the meat is seared, before wrapping it in foil and roasting in in the oven. For the seasoning i've chosen orange pepper (with salt), garlic powder, chilli powder, and just a dash of balsamic vinegar.

Then searing it with a tiny spritz of oil. I think this seasoning will add a nice rich flavour that goes well with duck, without making it one of the well known typical duck in fruit sauce dishes which might overpower the rest of the meal.

Once the breasts are looking fine as hell, I do the same with the duck legs. I got more than I need, but ill cook em all now and keep the rest for leftovers.

Once these are nicely seared, they can go in the oven for about 10-20mins. They are pretty thick so theyll be pretty raw on the inside if we served them now. Hence ROAST duck.

Once the pan is free we can sautee the fish next. The duck fat and seasonings will already add some flavour, but im going to add a different seasonins as well, some lemon, thyme, bay & salt mix. Once the fish has cooked off a lot of the water we can add a couple handfuls of the edamame beans as well.

Looks like the duck breast is ready! ill give the legs a little bit longer because they are bigger and denser. We can plate these up on some of the new plates i got for my birthday. The breast is sliced and arranged around a bagged salad mix I got of spinach, watercress and rocket. Then the graphic appears to have some sort of dollop on the salad, so im using salad cream which is like a mix of mayo, mustard and vinegar I think?

Here's the legs looking ready to go as well, anyway we gotta quickly finish everything else!

The fish and edamame are sauteed and ready to plate up...

Alas, I wasn't able to get pumpkin soup... I couldn't even find squash soup! Nothing! So we're settling for the final orange soup option, carrot and coriander. I'll just pour a little bowl and microwave it, cause again, we have so much food.

The wine is poured! I don't know anything about wine I just picked a cheap one that sounded sweet.

The fish fell apart when I tried to arrange it.. we had to make a weird fish circle anyway. It looks tasty.

I wanted to get a rustic looking white loaf for this, but they didn't have ANY!!! So we just have this weird dark brown nut loaf, thats all they had. Feels weirdly hard, its probably a bit stale... oh well. We can dip it in the soup. I do like nuts though.

Cheese is unwrapped! I think ill just cut a wedge off and keep the rest in the fridge. And I got a packet of almonds to arrange on the plate with it. 

OK ARE YOU READY!?

*****

What a feast! Every element went surprisingly well together. The brie paired great with the nutty bread, duck, greens and wine what an obvious combination, the light fish and beans countering the heavy meat and bread, and the spiced soup complements everything too.

I think I managed to polish off quite a lot... but there's plenty of leftovers (with more duck, cheese and soup in the fridge) that can make a variety of smaller meals for the next few days. And in the end, it wasn't that much work, a simple matter of frying a couple things and roasting in the oven. After all, we already made bread once, and we'll be making pumpkin soup in the future...