Delicious in Dungeon #29: Rolled Harpy-Egg Omelet

Well well well, if it isn't tamagoyaki again.

What are you doing up there you strange, naked lady bird thing?

I raided a nest of their eggs haha!

I've got my tamagoyaki pan and a fancy spritzer, could I be any more prepared?

It says add seasonings, but I wanted to keep it minimal so we've just got salt, pepper and that mirin again that we used on the last recipe.

Mixing it up simple style with chopsticks.

I accidentally got a bit of a heavy sear at the start... it looks tasty like that but its kinda wobbly. Looks like a crepe. Also i never know which direction to roll it in with the pan.. am I doing it backwards? I feel like it was better when I did it the other way.

***

Hmm nice enough but still not my best work, but im getting better having a thin layer and rolling it. Flavour wise all I was getting from the mirin was an added sweetness... it somehow wasnt peppery enough. I wish I had used rice vinegar and soy sauce... or even just cheese, cheese really makes an omelette.

Delicious in Dungeon #28: An Eastern Meal

Hmm the boys are arguing... probably about shonen animes or something.. boring.. 

Let's settle in and make AN EASTERN MEAL. Like the travel rations recipe, this is another non monster meal made with travel-ready provisions. I will eat it all while they are distracted.

I cooked a big batch of sushi rice so that we can use some for this and some for fried rice later.. I can't get dried fish but i got smoked mackerel, we've got some pickled things, instant miso sachets, and mini nori bits (saves me from opening a whole pack of sushi nori sheets!)

I'll flavour the rice and with salt, sugar and rice vinegar and fluff it up a bit. I forgot to cook it earlier so its still quite warm, hopefully it will stay together as a rice ball.

Check it out, thanks to all my other weeb related cooking adventures I have a nice RICE BALL MOULD to use.

Yeah we got this! The nori snacks are more brittle and seasoned than ones designed for wrapping, but because the rice is warm and wet I got them to stick just fine.

This is just down to personal preference, smoked mackerel is ready to eat, but I wanted to sear it with some mirin as my "sweet sake" flavouring. 

I picked out some miso soup sachets from a big multipack I got. I'm not sure but I think maybe I got brown miso and some sort of.. "blue" seaweed?? We just need to add hot water from the kettle and its done.

Oh! It has little mini rings of something. Cute.

The fish is looking all toasty. I think just one fillet will do.

I can't find many japanese style pickles around here, so I settled for some sliced up gherkins and some pickled ginger. I expect a more authentic pairing would be plum and mustard leaf or something.

*****

Delightful! Each thing on its own is a bit too plain, sweet, salty or sour, but when you put the fish or pickles on the rice and take a bite, and alternate with the soup, it becomes more than the sum of its parts. It also feels good to make something like this so easily at home. I guess its a classic for a reason.

Delicious in Dungeon #27: Cockatrice Stone-Baked Mother-And-Child Dish with Starchy Sauce

The dungeon's "cleaners" really blur the line between magic and monster, these microscopic mites repair the dungeon according to the whims of the dungeon lord.

Anyway today we're eating a brick I guess.

Coz its a fridayy and i have to work, i'm cooking up the grains ahead of time. These are the same barley grains from the porridge recipe , which was a while ago now. But yeah, they keep.

And then we have a TON of leftovers. Cockatrice rib meat (minced), mashed dryad fruit, grated mandrake, depetrification herb, leafy greens (from my planter), and harpy eggs. Filling!!

Here's the cooked up barley, good to get that out of the way for now.

Throwing the meat straight on with some veg oil, and the recipe just says "seasoning: to taste" so I guess its a choose your own adventure today. Since this is sort of inspired by oyakodon, I'm going to try using some japanese 7-spice mix (shichimi togarashi) the warm pepperyness should go well with the pumpkiny flavours. And also some salt. I dunnoooo

Using the rest of the defrosted dryad and half of the (still frozen) mandrake. Maybe I should have used less, this is gonna be so much stuffffff

And for the freshies, just a bit of the depetrification herb and all those leaves sliced up. They just sort of re-grew in my planter, so I hope they are kale. They look like kale I think? They taste like.... leaf.

We can just sautee this for a while. There's so muuuuch.

OK now for the real hook of the recipe. I wanted to imitate the "edible hollow brick bowl" made out of dungeon cleaner secretions. At first I thought about a loaf of bread or something... but then I had a brainwave: simple pastry!? So i've got my conveniently sized loaf tin, and some pre-made rolled shortcrust pastry.

Now, I don't really have a plan for this... i need the baking paper to stop it sticking to the pan or else I won't be able to take it out. But how do I, like...

Wait, I have an idea!! If i blind bake it outside of the pan first, and then when its firmed up a bit i switch it back inside, and then it.. wont stick or collapse...? Is this... an idea...?

While we find out, time to taste test the cooked uh... pulp. Its very orange, hard to believe theres meat in there. It smells like pumpkin pie, which is a bit unsettling for a savory dish. On taste test though... its good!

I don't know what an "egg sauce" is, but it just says its made with "harpy egg" so ill just mix up egg?

Actually I looked it up, its some whole japanese raw egg sauce with lemon, miso, and some other stuff. I'm not going to eat raw egg tonight so im going to use some of this "yuzu salad dressing" to flavour it, and then pour it on top and let it cook with the rest of the um... the... brick.

Oven check! We've got it where we want it, I think. Its hopefully just flexible enough to sort of fit inside the tin.

Yeah! Ok its a little rustic. I could have trimmed the edges and tried to shape it more closely but I didn't want to risk what little structure we have. It's definitely not watertight, and probably way too weak to hold the insane weight of all the fillings, so I doubt we can pop it out of the tin in the end.

But, you know... if this was a viable idea, don't you think the french would have invented this already?

Anyway, it's a brick shaped meal, so I have won. Here's the egg "sauce" on top, its seeping straight through the layers, I guess it might have been better off if I just cracked an egg straight on top. In the oven it goes until everything heated back up, and the egg is lightly cooked.

I hope this is good because theres gonna be a LOT of leftovers.

****

I like it! The egg seeped right through so there was zero chance of it coming out of the pan in one piece. The flavours are surprisingly comforting and nothing clashes, with the juicy meat and the egg really coming through. It kind of tastes... a bit like a sausage roll actually... It's lacking a little something though, it could use an extra sauce, something tangy and bitter, like mustard or cranberry..? Though it was a successfully edible experiment, I feel it strayed extremely far from the flavour concept of oyakodon or ankake that seemingly inspired the dish.

And it's mighty filling! I managed to eat about 1/3 of the brick. As you can see, the pan will be ok.

Delicious in Dungeon #26: Eisbein-Style Cockatrice With Sauerkraut-Style Dryad Buds

 Basilisk? No way, that's a cockatrice! They're totally different colours!

So, I was somewhat torn between seeing if I could actually get a proper Eisbein pork knuckle, or if I should salt "preserve" some turkey meat instead, since cockatrice is all... poultry-ish.

The universe made that decision for me because I missed my chance to get the pork on alpen week at my local store. Turkey it is!

So, I lack the equipment, expertise and desire to actually properly try and salt cure some meat.  Instead what i'm going to do is essentially more like a marinade, im just going to kinda pickle the meat in very salty water for a day instead. I've also added a few things for flavour: spiced coconut vinegar, dried chillies, fennel seeds and a bay leaf. Not sure how effective that is but it feels right. We can swish it around a bit.

Alright its now the evening, we've got our... waterlogged cockatrice, dryad bud and depetrification herb.

Senshi says we boil the meat... Not my typical method for poultry but I guess maybe itll leech some of the salt back out... As you can see its already turned kind of white from the vinegar or something, but don't be deceived we need to heat this through.

The herbs are grilled, so im gonna season them with a bit of paprika salt & pepper, a spritz of oil and put them in the oven.

Now to really make the germans cry... sorry but im a big hater of fermented vegetables, and so is my stomach...its very vocal about it..  so instead of getting sauerkraut im just gonna be mixing some raw grated cabbage with vinegar and hoping for the best.

And making a big mess again...

Oops this came out less like shredded cabbage and more like cabbage flour. Well, maybe the more broken down the better?

I thought itd be nice to flavour this up some, so im adding cider vinegar, salt, pepper, sugar, and german mustard. And mixing it all up.

And its going into a jar... well a jug. A jur.

Meat check, sliced it into smaller bits and it looks cooked through. It looks unseasoned but it actually smells quite aromatic.

The herbs are done, ready to plate up! I should probably pair this something not fizzy or sour to drink.. Um.. coffee??

****

Tasty! It's very cooling and sour (and didn't taste like seawater!), like a light lunch you could put in a sandwich or salad. Despite being as wet as humanly possible, the cockatrice seemed sort of dry in a way...? I guess from a lack of fat. Feels like a needlessly inefficient use of extra salt and its hardly authentic. But I like the flavours, I'd probably do similar combo with the mustardy cabbage again someday, maybe in a sandwich.