Delicious in Dungeon #60: Mysterious Bavarois And Some Kind Of Tea

The canaries are over for an important business brunch!

But when the gang gets together, the gangs gotta have a little treat.

This certainly is a bit mysterious, since bavarois are meant to be made with cream and not milk. Will it even set properly with milk? I guess we will find out. I have "that one milk", slime (gelatine), an egg, and for the "plant nectar" i happen to have both golden syrup AND maple syrup. 

I guess its just milk and a raw egg straight in a pan to heat... this feels so wrong. So illegal. Poaching an egg in milk.

To sweeten it we just have "plant nectar", im adding a couple tablespoons of the regular syrup in this mix, and ill use the maple syrup at the end for the garnish, since that has a stronger and more distinctive flavour.

Once its whisked and been heated to not-quite-boiling for a bit, ill mix half a pack of gelatine in let it start to cool.

Poured it in to some moulds... will this work? is the egg cooked? it feels as opaque as this pudding right now. Once its cooled I put it in the fridge and leave it overnight! 

Good morning! Time for a cup of SOME KIND OF TEA and a MYSTERIOUS BAVAROIS. Im making an earl grey tea, its floral and fragrant flavour i think will go well with a sweet dessert.

Hmm, has it set properly? well it didnt pour out when i tipped it upside down, so thats a good start. Moment of truth! (also topping with that maple syrup at the end)

****

Wow! Yes!! It has a smooth creamy texture and a sweet brown-sugar-y flavour. If its not made with cream though, is it really a bavarois? or is it a crème caramel? Also I didn't whisk it well enough (or maybe i should have strained it), it had some lumps of gelatine and egg that had floated to the top. If you're very picky about textures it might bother you. But if you haven't noticed by now, I'm not very picky about a lot of things.

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 #35: Ice Golem Savory Egg Custard And Cooked Fish (From In The Golem)

 'Tis the season.. ice golem season.

I don't like the cold, so lets deal with this quickly.

Wow! How did I do that? Well my freezer needed some defrosting as well... I thought about putting these in my steamer but actually they are dirty and we shouldnt contaminate my steam with dirty freezer runoff! Plus it would waste extra energy to not just use water.

We've got a random fish from the golem, the leftover nightmares and nightmare-broth, harpy eggs, mushrooms, mandrake leaves and... shapeshifter meat!?

I'm going to pan fry the meat and mushrooms ahead of time, partially because they are frozen but also because I think they will be nicer than half-cooked steamed meat.

Don't be alarmed by the appearance of the broth, it's because we cooked those nightmares in wine and butter, so the butter has cooled into little grease blobs. I added some eggs, and some soy sauce (i ran out of the cheap stuff so im using my fancy stuff!) and then decided to add an extra egg because the dark soy sauce is turning it all brown.

Giving it a good whisk. Well not that good, im just using a fork. Its gonna be lumpy anyway.

The mushrooms are cooking way faster than the meat so ill add those in and the leftover nightmares. I wonder if they'll all just sink to the bottom when it cooks though..?

Adding the bacon and pouring it into the mugs, and finally those mandrake leaves on top. Those seem to change every time I do a recipe, hm..? To be whatever herb i feel like? TBH i used basil because its the only one im growing indoors and I dont wanna go out, its stormy today.

Its ready to get steamed! Now we can do the fish.

It's a boneless mackerel fillet and im gonna just pan fry it. 

**

It's ok. With so much stuff in it, its hard to say if i made a custard properly... and not like, fried fillings with some scrambled egg in between. The egg really has the texture of silken tofu though! I didn't expect to be that into it, and i'm not. I dont really like the fried mushroom flavour in it, the texture is wet and smooth, with chunks of wet and chewy, but everything goes together inoffensively. I just think i'd rather be having clam chowder.

Stardew Valley #78: Poi

Ingredients: Taro Root

Item Description: A traditional food with a delicate, sweet flavor when eaten fresh.

I have no idea where to get a reasonably priced fresh taro root (or powder) in the uk but GUESS WHAT i did find in some grocery store?? YES BOI its some taro flavoured jelly. I've never had anything like this before and its taro flavoured, so I think it will have to do.

All we needs to do is simply follow the instructions on the back.

The powder looked off-white at first, but as soon as it hits the hot water that distinctive purpleish colour appears!

We just gotta stir and stir until all the lumps are dissolved, which is hard to see because its opaque.

Then its going in bowls, cooling at room temperature and then going in the fridge overnight. 

*****

I love it! I know this isn't real Poi, but if it's anything like this I get the appeal. It's got this playful, cookie-ish flavour with a sort of medicinal aftertaste like a root beer. I'm that one british freak who actually likes root beer. It's also smooth, creamy and sweet.

Stardew Valley #77: Mango Sticky Rice

Ingredients: Mango, Coconut, Rice

Item Description: Sweet mango and coconut transforms this rice into something very special.

We've got em all, mango, coconut 2 ways (cream and dried) and rice.

I should probably be using some sort of thai sticky rice, but I already have all this leftover pudding rice from the rice pudding WHICH I DIDNT EVEN LIKE but its basically just short grain rice, and might not be nice if cooked normal style and not in milk for 2 hours. On that note, i'm cooking it for 30mins in water and with the desiccated coconut.

Obviously the coconut creates a weird layer on the top that we can just mix back into the rice. If you don't like extra textures don't bother with the dried coconut i guess, but i like it just fine.

Oh! I just realised if this is meant to be a dessert, we haven't really added extra sweetness yet. I probably should have added that earlier, but whatever. Just adding a couple tablespoons of sugar, and a pinch of salt too. We don't want it sweeter than the mango, probably.

Now adding the coconut cream! It's so goopy and glossy. And just gently mix that all together.

Once its mixed and looking nice and sticky, im shoving it in a plastic tub so I can make a little tidy dome of rice. Well, a cylinder.

Pat that with the back of the spoon to compact it.

Now, to prepare the mango!

I feel like this is the impression the sprite gives me, but.. im gonna have to take it back off to separate the bits from the skin later.

Let's see how our cylinder game out... yeah nice!

****

Well, you can't really see the rice now... but anyway! Yes this tastes way way better than rice pudding. It's sweet and refreshing, and very filling too. I can only eat half of this for now... i need to stop eating rice-based desserts after a regular dinner.