Delicious in Dungeon #25: Jack-O'-Lantern Potage and Dryad Bud Sauté With Cheese Sauce

 Bloody dryads, get out of my swamp.

What the hell is this? Horrible. Also I forgot to take a horizontal photo. Lets eat it.

We got a good vegetable haul from the dryads domain. Dryad fruit, dryad buds, mandrakes, mushrooms, and I have some cheese as well, I don't remember how.

We should be able to just cut into the pumpkin like this and lift the top off..

Voila! That went pretty smooth. Now, instead of trying to carve into it while its still tough, and risk slipping and making holes into it, im going to roast the whole thing. It'll become soft enough to scoop out with a spoon!

Don't look at me like that!

Oops! I guess its getting a bit scorched in there so I'll take it out. It smells amazing and its so tender inside. I'll scoop the seeds out first and then start collecting the flesh to use for the soup.

Aah noo! Disaster! My structural integrity! I guess maybe roasting it wasn't the smart move after all.. The inside got nice and soft but the outside got a lot softer than I expected too.

I'll keep it together in a bowl while i continue scooping, maybe we can gently get it out of the bowl and stick it back together when its cooled down.. Also, getting LOTS of delicious pumpkin flesh that smells amazing. I'm going to use half of it now and stick a tub of the other half in the freezer for future recipes.

The stuff we are using I stuck in the blender and it easily turned into the most amazing looking paste. I LOVE pumpkin. It's so bright, so smooth, aromatic, sweet and savoury. It's MAJESTIC.

What else goes in the soup? You can add a soup stock if you want or wahtever, but I'm going to add a bit of miso paste, pickled garlic, grated ginger, salt, pepper, and single cream.

Then we'll need to add some hot water cause its like a concentrated paste and stir it all up, you can add as much as you want really based on your preferred soup consistency! I like it pretty thick.

As for the mandrake root... I decided to do something a bit fun for myself, since the soup had a kind of lumpy texture in the manga, I thought i'd dice into small cubes and sautee the mandrake separately (like with the omelette!) and then stir them back in at the end.

Meanwhile the pumpkin cooled down so I thought i could see if we can transfer it back to a plate or a clear tub...? NEVERMIND ABORT ABORT, ITS FALLING TO PIECES, I GUESS IT STAYS IN THE BOWL. Damn. I screwed this one up, annoying. I could have sworn ive done this before with a roasted pumpkin and it didnt collapse like this, but whatever.

Agh now I burned the mandrakes while I was trying to reassemble the pumpkin! Its all going to shit right now.

Oh well, on to the next. Now for the dryad buds, it would maybe make more sense to do something all layer-y like an onion or a napa cabbage... but, well, the scoop on me is that my stomachs been kinda sensitive to cabbage and allium types and i've already had a lot this week... so my first idea that sounded good was celeriac root...but they didn't have that, instead they had a big ol' bunch of swede turnips in season. So... swedes it is!

I'm frying them in plenty of butter, and once they've had a head start a couple of those mushrooms sliced can go in as well.

Now we need that cheese sauce!! It's getting hectic as hell in here, heres some grated cheese.

I'm mixing it with some more of that cream. 

And adding my go-to cheese sauce seasonings as well.. nutmeg and black pepper! Now to collect all these tortured components and assemble them into.. well, something.

****

It tastes fucking phenomenal damn it. I am definitely making roast pumpkin soup and turnips with cheese and mushrooms again. But... rrgh, i'm still giving it 4/5 because I messed up so many things. The pumpkins been shredded, and I also should have roasted the turnip slices instead of sautee'd them, because they are very al dente in the middle. Which is fine, you can literally eat them raw, but if they were all tender with that cheese sauce it would have been sublime, peak even. The recipe is top tier, but my execution... lacking.

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...

Stardew Valley #45: Stuffing

Ingredients: Bread, Cranberries, Hazelnut

Item Description: Ahh... the smell of warm bread and sage.

Alright I'm ready! I've got some bread slices I left to go stale, cranberries (dried this time! much more sweet and fun), hazelnuts (roasted), onions, garlic, celery, sage and butter. I've never made stuffing this way before, and I wanted a recipe that assured me I can use dried cranberries, so im following a betty crocker recipe I found on the American Internet. (the regular internet)

First we chop the stale bread into little crouton cubes, and only some of them explode into crumbs and fly all across my kitchen. Is this the american way?

Bowl of bread, get.

Next I dice up the onion, celery and garlic... the recipe says to fry it (well, skillet cook). Won't it get cooked in the oven...? Oh well, we do like a good frying.

And using a very generous amount of butter! After all, I think we want the hot butter to moisten up the rest of the dry mix as well surely.

While that fries up I can sprinkle on the dried cranberries and find a way to smash up the hazelnuts... I chose violence. A bag and a meat tenderizer, to be precise.

I realise so far we've only got sage and garlic for herbs, and thats cool, but stuffing is all about the christmas herbs so lets get some dried thyme in there too, and some salt and pepper.

Makes sense to throw them in with the vegetables. Time to pre-heat the oven as well.

Once thats looking cooked and lightly browned, we can throw our hots in with the colds. This still seems.... so dry. Like theres no chicken broth or anything. Its like a museli... will this really work? To be safe and delicious im going to drizzle just a bit of olive oil on it too. I might have been stingy with the butter.

*****

Wow this is great!! Out of shot i sneakily made a chunky pan-fried chicken breast to go with it...

And its such a delicious combo! You could definitely take it to another level with some gravy, but just on its own I ended up not needing any extra sauce, it was like eating a super crunchy caesar salad, with extra fruity herby nutty savoury flavours. I was very unsure about the hazelnuts, when I first put them in they seemed overpowering with that dessert-like smell.. but in the end they balanced really well with the strong flavours of sage and cranberry. I've never had stuffing like this before, ive always had it more like a sorta... herby.. oaty... sausagemeat falafel... Is this... "American Style Stuffing"?