30 Gourmet Sandwiches #15: Croissant with Herbed Goat Cheese and Spinach

 I kinda hate goat cheese it tastes like armpits, so im gonna get some sort of feta-like instead.

We have the croissant, some sort of feta-like, thyme and oregano from my windowsill planter, spinach, roasted peppers, and the "optional" turkey slices.

Good croissant from the bakery, I almost accidentally bought a sweet almond one!

I will just chop/crumble as much of the cheese as I need. I think its a non-traditional cow milk cheese in a feta style, cheap and i prefer it tbh. Sorry greeks. I mix in the fresh thyme and oregano leaves too.

Also sorry greeks, I HATE olives, but this recipe also suggested roasted red peppers as an alternative.

They had a big ol' jar of them at the store. They're vinegary as well so I think that should make it a nice flavourful olive replacement.

a single wafer of this turkey is plenty, now we top with spinach and its ready! Nice quick one.

****

Bit of a choose your own adventure type one. But I think i chose well for my tastes. The croissant is dense and delicious and the filling is herby, cheesy and sour. Nice and easy to prepare, too.

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.

Super Paper Mario: Saffron & Dyllis Super Show #92: Heavy Meal

 Heavy Meal is made from HONEY JAR and HONEY CANDY

So double honey, and it just looks like a layered pile of wiggly drippy.... yes ive got it! Baclava!

Ive got all sorts of nuts in my cupboard: pistachios, walnuts, and a mixed bag with more walnuts, cashews and hazelnuts. I'm taking a handful of each and chopping them up into nice little crumbs!

Now to get that wiggly edge i'm going to attempt to cut this store bought filo pastry with a cookie cutter- easier said than done as it is NOT made for this, the pastry is extremely paper-like.

it says to butter in between every other thin layer of the pastry? is that necessary for pre-made stuff? I dunno but we'll find out, its a heavy meal anyway. I have some butter i melted in the microwave for a few seconds.

we layer in lots of filo sheets and nuts and a drizzle of honey in each nut layer... the sheet cutting is very rough but honestly? it wont matter that much as it just has to look all wobbly slobbly

then we put them in the oven to bake! it says 20min on high and 30min on low or something, ill just take them out when they look brown and crispy. Meanwhile we need MORE syrup to drizzle on top after cooking. Normally in baclava you make a typical middle-eastern sweet flavour with orange blossom, cardamom etc but i happen to have some gingerbread syrup (for drinks) handy, so i mix the remainder of the honey with the rest of the melted butter and water it down with the gingerbread syrup!

It's brown and crispy! On goes the syrup and then we let it cool, and HOPEFULLY in spite of being mega sticky, itll come out of this silicone muffin mould just fine...?

spoiler: it did! and heres a nice cross-section because i think its turned out rather well.

*****

I made a big baclava! This stuff is normally meant to be in smaller pieces so what ive done is made... a real heavy meal!! The gingerbread syrup worked great adding that complexity of flavour, while being slightly different from the traditional recipe. Really like this, i think it tastes fresher than store-bought too.

Cooking Mama's Cooking Challenge #50: Fried Gyoza

 GUESS WHAT SUCKAS I actually froze half the gyozas i made back in recipe #6 since they were the same fillings. Get ready for some RECYCLED FOOTAGE so as to keep in with my format I guess.

Slice!

deja vu

Chop up!

only 90s kids will remember chopping garlic

Add the ingredients!

What was it again...? beef mince, cabbage, garlic, sesame oil, salt and pepper.

Knead!

Ah man remember when I made all those flipping gyoza wrappers by hand, my bones have only just recovered.

Fold the dumplings!

TIME SKIP!!! here they are defrosted out the freezer.

Deep fry!

Lookin' crispy as

Finish!

****

They get kind of a hard crunchy shell, especially since my homemade pastry was thick but idk i really liked it. The filling tastes really nice and goes great with a soy sauce + vinegar dip.

Cooking Mama's Cooking Challenge #40: Meat Pie

 Meat pies!!! I'm british so I should be able to nail this one no problem. easy as.. as a.. 

Slice an onion!

gonna do 2 onions because they're kinda small and i always have too many onions in my kitchen

Slice!

its your favourite! the ol' 3 parter.

Chop up!

on second thoughts maybe this is a lot of onion..

Saute!

We sautee some beef&pork mince, all them onions, and mix with tomato passata and white wine. Just enough to flavour it i guess without making it too saucy.

Pan fry some more!

No other seasonings!!! No salt, no pepper, no garlic... Mama why are you like this?

Add the ingredients!

Ok decided to look up the proportions because i'm not in the mood to ruin pastry. We're adding 200g flour, 100g butter, and just a splash of water.

Knead!

knead for speed: hot pocket pursuit

Roll out the dough!

surprisingly, its going alright

Cut shape!

this is the smallest circular cutty thing ive got... might be a bit too small really, do i really want to spend my whole evening making micropasties?

Fold the pie crust!

goddamn you know what these are too small to roll, so i went back and rolled them out even flatter/thinner to about 1.5x the size and im having more luck.

Set the timer!

Here they are ready for the oven, I guess these are more like... empanadas than british style pasties?

Finish!

****

Dare I say, for once, mine look even more like an actual shape than Mamas?? These came out well, the mixed meat and extra onions helped make up for a lack of seasoning. Even better with a tangy chilli sauce dip. Good cause i made like a billion of them again.