Breath of the Wild #38: Salmon Meuniere

 Ingredients: Hearty Salmon, Tabantha Wheat, Goat Butter

Description: "The crispy skin of this fried hearty salmon puts its texture in a class all its own."

This one's clear! Salmon it is. Same as last times with the flour and butter and the leftover butter-sauce mix, and rocket and tomato to garnish.

This one, i wonder if we can bend it into shape to make it look like the slice in the picture... maybe not... I know there's two fillets but im just going to have one I think. That big monkfish slice last time was overkill.

Speaking of last time, ive made sure the pan is nice and clean and ill try and cook it faster to avoid the butter and flour burning... its still a lot thicker than those hake fillets though.

Once its done, i turn the flame off and just quickly melt the butter sauce with the parsley and capers.

****

(i bent it in half to try and look more like the graphic, but... looks more like i broke it on accident) Obviously with the flavour of salmon, a fish that works quite well even on its own, it was bound to be better than the last one! But, i still struggled not to blacken the flour a bit... Overall I see why sole meuniere is the traditional choice, the thin white fish that cooks fast and absorbs lots of lemon juice is a clear winner. Oh also my raw tomato to everything else ratio was getting out of hand. 

Breath of the Wild #37: Porgy Meuniere

 Ingredients: Armored Porgy or Mighty Porgy, Tabantha Wheat, Goat Butter

Description: "Popular among residents of coastal regions, this juicy porgy is a delish dish."

I guess a porgy is a real fish, but... I thought it would be fun to go for something a bit more distinct from the regular whitefish fillets I used last time. I found a monkfish tail on sale! Then we have the leftover meuniere "sauce" from last time and more wheat flour and butter.

I've never cooked monkfish before, i think ive heard its texturally kinda different. Taking it out I realise it still has bones in! I can feel a massive great bone  in the middle. Well, we've had many a bone-in fish before its probably fine. Once its floured up like last time ill fry it in the pan with plenty of butter.

It feels so much thicker and denser, so im trying to cook it slower and lower... but I think im starting to burn the flour and butter and make gritty charred bits in the pan, ugh. 

Yeah it doesn't look as good as last time but i think its cooked all the way through. Also does it... not have smaller bones throughout it? It has just one big cartillage bone? Well thats something. Lastly we will quickly heat up some of that butter sauce and pour it over.

**

Wow yep that meat really is different. Maybe I just cooked it poorly, but its a little rubbery and more bland. Just doesn't go with the flavours as well. And it didn't crisp up as well, its too wet. I think my frugal attempts to upcycle the ingredients have backfired, it just isn't looking as fresh, is it? You get a lot of meat in a fillet I'll give it that. I think maybe some other recipes would use monkfish well, like i dunno..  green curry? battered nuggets? But this ain't it.

Breath of the Wild #36: Seafood Meuniere

 Ingredients: Any Seafood excluding Hearty Salmon and Porgy, Tabantha Wheat, Goat Butter

Description: "Rich butter flanks fresh seafood. The secret ingredient is lots and lots of love."

Another 3-tier recipe, so I'll start with a pretty cheap and typical white fish fillet. I had to look up a recipe because i'm not familliar with meuniere (i was even calling it meniuere for a while) seems like the wheat takes the form of flour for coating and then the butter is the sauce! Then I got lemon juice, fresh parsley and capers. And a tiny bit of salad stuff for garnish.

I'll get the chopping out of the way and then i can use the chopping board for a bit of "dredging"

There's actually 4 small fillets in this pack, wow value! I think i'll try and use 2 stuck together for some nice volume. I'll pat them dry with some paper towel first....

How's my dredging? Hakers gonna hake.

Now i'll just fry it in the pan with a bit of that butter until the fish is all cooked through, try not to destroy it... 

Once thats on the plate we make the sauce! I'm adding a bunch more butter, capers, and lemon juice. This is what they mean by flanking it with butter.

Once the butters browned a bit I take it off the heat and mix in the chopped parsley. I've tried to make a good amount so that I can save the rest and use it for the next 2 recipes... I might need to add more butter though by the looks of it.

*****

Delish! The simple but strong flavours of the lemon, parsley and capers go so well with the fish, which was juicy but with the light crispyness of the coating. Its quite quick to make as well, i'll definitely remember this, I feel like its a nice easy one to impress friends visiting for really cheap. I don't think the secret ingredient was lots of love though, I think its butter.

Breath of the Wild #24: Gourmet Meat and Seafood Fry

 Ingredients: Raw Gourmet Meat or Raw Whole Bird, Any Seafood

Description: "A marriage of the choicest cuts of meat and seafood. As delicious as it is filling!"

Omg they're getting married!!! For the gourmet version of this dish I thought beef and tuna steak and some fancy steak sauce would be gourmet enough? So I bought some pre-made peppercorn sauce made with fresh beef jus and brandy and some other stuff.

We can fry them both in butter with a pinch of salt, and then while that's cooking I can heat up the sauce as well.

For some reason I bought shallotts as well, so i'll slice a couple of them thin and fry them up.

Once the shallots are brown and the meat is almost done, I throw in the sauce and just heat it up and mix it together.

The steaks already done, ill give the tuna just a touch more frying and sear the tomatoes as well.

With the sauce heated we can just assemble!

*****

It's so flavourful! And honestly a lot of meat.... an unnecessary amount. But yeah a nice combo of flavours, the thick sauce was sour and peppery and buttery, the tomatoes and rocket pair well with the rich meats, nothing clashed really. I guess this is gourmet!

Delicious in Dungeon #48: Hamburg Steak With Changeling Sauce

Is it me... or are dungeon mushrooms getting bigger these days?

The popular japan-german dish is back! It's a dungeon twist on the HANBAGU or Hamburg Steak which we seem to have visited quite a few times in other challenges.

This time we've got the monstrous ingredients of mixed leftover griffin/hippogriff (im using a beef&pork mince mix) and a changeling-based sauce with a bit of mandrake and frog skin.

Big load of mince, nice. And then i'm adding onion chopped as finely as I can manage, breadcrumbs, and an egg.

It says I can add whatever seasoning I want, so im adding my trusty paprika salt, pepper, mild chilli powder and ginger powder.

Now for the messy part... theres no way around it i have to knead it with my hands. Its cold and getting pork fat off your hands is SO WEIRDLY DIFFICULT. The mince seemed slightly dry and crumbly so I decided to add another egg as I went.

Now I can bust out my new MEGA ULTRA DELUXE FRYING PAN!! I could make paella in this someday.. hmm.. anyway, throw in a slightly generous portion of butter because we'll use the rest for the sauce.

These brown quite fast, so we might have to turn my overpowered hob off and on again to cook it slower. I'm not taking any chances with pork mince.

For the mandrake... in the past its been parsnips or ginger... its really whatever root vegetable we need? but i saw some whimsical looking radishes that I thought would be perfect. they come in 2 kinds!

What a nice pink and purple, very changeling.

For the changelings, I got a mix with 2 types of mushroom: shiitake and oyster, and can chop them up roughly.

For the "frog skin".. well, i don't have frog skin. but I was wondering... whats it there for? Is it to add brothy, collagen-y flavours and thicken up the sauce maybe? So I thought a good substitute would be a concentrated chicken stock.

These are getting somewhere, a bit longer and then I take the patties out and use all that oily meat juice as the sauce base..

Adding in the mushrooms and stock.

It says I can use whatever seasonings I want... so as a nod to the hanbagu recipes i've done in the past, im adding a bit of sake and soy sauce.

At the end I sprinkle in the grated radish as well. I was hoping it might add a pink sparkle, but it just looks brown and oily.

*****

Delicious! I think this came out perfectly. The mushrooms go really well with the beef and pork, and the oilyness of the sauce balances out the dryness of the mince. It's hearty and satisfying.

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.