Delicious in Dungeon #40: Potato and Rabbit Soup

Last of the Golden Country trio, and its a simple soupy side, with a gamey twist..

I didn't see any rabbits at the farm but here's some adorable guinea fowl. They were being very rowdy!

I managed to get some legit rabbit meat. Look at this weird sausage-packaging! And we're keeping it dead simple, with potatoes and I decided it should be cream-based for some reason. This creams a little out of date though... (well not AS out of date as it seems, i made this a several days before its posted) so we are gonna do the sniff test before we start......... yeah it smells fine.

It arrived earlier today so ive only managed to partially defrost it... but we're making a soup so we can just cook it low and slow in some water for a while!

chopping up the potatoes into a nice bite size. I was gonna do 4, but i think maybe 3 is plenty.

In they go! the rabbit is starting to separate. It's a bunch of boneless fillets so thats cool.

Even though im gonna keep it simple and try and use the flavours of rabbit and potato... it'd be a crime to not season it at all. I'm adding celery salt, pepper, thyme, a bay leaf, and a splash of white wine.

Once the rabbit is cooked through I can take it out and chop it up into bite size chunks like the potatoes. Hmm, there's so much meat! it's quite good value... there's so much here that maybe ill just steal a handful to the side for later, and have it with some instant noodles in a later lunch...

The meats back in and simmers for a while... its starting to look all soupy and stuff. Time to add the cream! I'll just dump the whole pot in, cook it a bit longer and serve. I also have some dried onion I can sprinkle on for garnish.

***

Oop! I don't know what happened but it really thickened up to the max! I'm not sure if it was all the potato, the cream being a bit expired and losing its texture, or me cooking it way too long... It now has the consistency of macaroni cheese sauce... I kind of want to have it with pasta... The rabbit meat tastes a lot like chicken thigh, with just the slightest hint of bacon which makes it a perfect match with cream and potato. The harmonious spices stop it from being bland, but I held back a lot after all so its pretty unadventurous for what you can do with a creamy meat soup.

Delicious in Dungeon #39: Beef Rib Steak

We're still in the golden country, time for a delectable minotaur main!

Look at this grumpy gal! I promise I didn't eat her. 

I got some beef short ribs... are those the right cut? Well it's all I can find. And since its the GOLDEN country I got some instant GOLDEN rice to serve them on.

I guess I will try slow-cooking in the oven. Since its described as bland and it looks fairly dry, I guess I will try and keep the flavourings simple and homely. So I'm seasoning it with olive oil, celery salt, ginger & chilli mix, and dried oregano.

Wrapping these up and sticking them in the oven on a lower temperature for... 6 hours!? That feels illegal. Should I turn my central heating off to compensate?

Half the day has passed... these have shrunk a bit but they look and smell rich and beefy and they seem tender.

Just 2 minutes for the rice and then that's it!

****

I'm really happy with the beef, it's all tender and stringy. Perhaps I should get a slow-cooker someday. Maybe its because im getting over a nasty virus but the rice has a slightly weird taste? Is it because of added stabilisers? It's nice enough though and adds a pleasant texture. Maybe I should have added a touch of sugar to the beef. The dish overall would have benefited from being slathered in BBQ sauce.

Delicious in Dungeon #38: Vegetables in Slime Aspic & Blade Fish Loaf

The golden country! A slice of immortal farm paradise. I will illustrate this with some proof that I do get outside sometimes.

This large meal has 3 fairly big dishes, so I decided I wanted to split them up. There's not much guidelines to making them so I'll just go for it, yknow.

I've chosen to start with the weirdest one. Blog-willing this is the closest I ever get to those cursed looking 1970s gelatine salad dishes. We've got bladefish, vegetables, gelling slime, and a bit of stuff to flavour it all with.

First i'm just going to thaw/part-cook the fish in my steamer, I think this way itll break down into flakes and we can mash it into a meatloafy thing. A terrine?

Then i'm adding an egg, some breadcrumbs, crushes garlic, salt&pepper, and also I found some sauce in my fridge that I think will be perfect. A swedish condiment that's like mustard, mayo and dill.

We can pop that all in there and just mash it up like we're making a hamburger patty.

Now we can't just chill this yet, its got raw egg in it... so im going to bake it in the oven for a while and put the jelly part on top. The foil lining will make the shape a bit rougher, but... hopefully it'll come out easily at the end, I dunno.

That's baked into a firm patty terrine loaf thing! Perfect! And it smells kinda nice.

Chopped the carrots up into small chunks and portioned out the frozen peas and corn. We'll bring them to a boil to hopefully cook the carrots a little bit, then put in the other ingredients as its cooling.

Once it's off the boil i'm adding lime juice, chopped parsley, 2 sachets of gelatine, and a little bit of salt & pepper. The manga recipe remarks about how unseasoned and flavourless it is... but I have a policy not to try and make things bad on purpose. I will just try and keep it simple.

That's so much vegetable jelly... I hope its not horrible. It's ready to go in the fridge overnight!

It's set! We have a loaf! I'm going to plate it up on my brand new leaf plate I got for christmas... i friggin love it, look forward to seeing it plenty in the future...

****

I dunno I think it might actually be pretty good. Would I make this on purpose? I don't know... but the parsley and lime was a great choice, it tastes fresh and gardeny, like a spring vegetable soup. The fish loaf tasted very... well, swedish-y, like somewhere between gravlax and herring salad. Making a good flavour profile together for a cold and slimy meal. I think I made the best of it.

Delicious in Dungeon #37: Soul Eggs Benedict

Ah, the indispensable egg. It's a lot like a human soul, is it?

When it breaks...... bad. When it hot... nice.

We're musing and we're making a variant of eggs benedict with harpy eggs. And barometz is included somehow. I'm not sure, that was both a plant and an imitation lamb. i thought it'd be cool to honour the imitation meat by adding some plant-based ham slices. Also looking at this now I realise I'd forgot the lemon juice. 

This is all terribly quick to prepare, so I'll start with just frying the asparagus, I trimmed the base and rinsed them and cooked them with a bit of butter.

For eggs benedict it's traditional to use english muffins, but this used some sort of funny shaped thick sourdough loaf, so I thought it might be cool and delicious to use some square ciabatta buns. I'm also just gonna lightly toast them, im a toast fiend.

I've never poached an egg before. It always seemed intimidating. I think I know what to do, you just sort of... drop the egg in boiling water but you have to keep it together by making a water vortex, or surely just using a big ladle?

Here we gooo

Ah shit crabs I fucked it up... i thought it looked done already so i tried putting it onto sandwich and it slid right off and it looks raw still at that. Oh well, sometimes with eggs and souls you get to scrape the obliterated remains off the floor and try again with a forbidden resurrection spell. 5 second rule and that.

I think i have something useable now. Next, half of the recipe is to make the hollandaise sauce from scratch too, but I didn't want to. It's hard enough to finish a jar of this stuff, let alone a homemade one with zero preservatives. So im just going with the jar. Also it said to add spices, so we're sprinkling on my go-to seasoning for eggs, japanese spice mix. Now we just add the asparagus and garnish: barometz fruit...?

****

Umm wow tasty! I thought it would be offputtingly soggy with all that wet egg and sauce that I didn't know how to make drier... but the ciabatta was the perfect choice of bread, its very oily and drying. I think the eggs still might have been a bit rough and waterlogged though, the sandwich does a good job of hiding how unprofessional my poached egg really is. The vegetable sides were really fresh and full-flavoured.

Delicious in Dungeon #36: Barometz Balut (Or Barometz Chops)

Barometz is a weird one... a plant that grows a lamb-like fruit. An unusually peaceful monster, but its a little unsettling somehow.

So this recipes another misleadingly named one. It's only "balut" in the sense that its meant to be a kind of embrionic lamb... really what this dish is, is lamb chops in tomato sauce.

Since its actually a plant with the appearance of a beast, I thought it be cool to source some imitation lamb made from plants! Big tesco had just what I needed, I guess this country aint so bad sometimes... Anyway for the sprouts garnish we also got some bean sprouts, for the fruit innards we have chopped tomatoes, and then we've got garlic, wine, and salt & pepper seasonings.

First im frying up the lamb steaks and sprouts... they were in the freezer so we're gonna need to thaw them then cook off all that excess water. Im also gonna cook the in this lime & avocado oil, add a little bit more flavour to the sprouts especially.

Meanwhile, since I bought tinned tomatoes theres not really much other work to do! Just peel some cloves of garlic to crush.

While its cooking i can add some salt and pepper, and then ill add a bit more to the tomato sauce as well.

That's looking nicely browned and dry! We can put these to one side and cook the rest of the stuff.

In goes the chopped tomatoes, garlic and red wine.

And then we cook it until... I dunno really? I guess its just a bit thicker and the tomato and garlic smells cooked?

****

I liked how easy it was to make... Did the barometz taste like crab? No! It tasted more like... soy mince with mint and parsley, the real reason why its been labelled as imitation lamb! But the minty herb flavourings do go well with the tomato and garlic, giving it a vaguely moroccan/greek style flavour. It tasted good, but not quite peak, maybe a more enhanced tomato sauce with more complexity would have added more?