Delicious in Dungeon #14: Giant Parasite from a Giant Kraken

 Avast! A kraken in the lake!

Aghast! It's riddles with parasites!

Bizarrely, the kraken itself never ends up being cooked in a meal, instead they enjoy the giant lamprey-sized parasites living inside the kraken. I imagine they are supposed to be more like eel, but they talk about squid a bunch and eel is very hard to get so i'm going to make it some grilled squid.

These squids are pretty small, but thats fine. I'm going to butterfly them, score the outer skin and then stick them on skewers to grill.

These are grilled two ways, plain and "kabayaki style" (with sauce). For the plain one I'm still going to season it with some salt and pepper so itll be dry but still have some flavour. I'm not going to barbecue them im just gonna grill em on my grill.

And since im more excited for the sauce, im just doing one dry and going to marinate all the others for a little while. Hopefully they'll pick up some flavour although they are very rubbery.

Skewered up and ready to go! Baldur's Gate 3 called, they want their juicy mind flayer genitals back.

Since there's not much to 'em, im gonna enjoy them with a side of seasoned japanese rice.

**

I don't know why I always think squid is interesting, I feel like at best squid is mid. I was surprised at the lack of difference between the two. They were both salty and chewy, like plain bacon on a stick. Having it with the seasoned seaweed rice was a bit of a mistake, because that was also very salty. Maybe I should have done something like mackerel instead, as it would have absorbed the sauce even better with the flaky texture. It was fine though. I liked that the tentacles got kinda crispy.

Delicious in Dungeon #13: Porridge Made From Grain That Was Just Lying Around

Some adventurers have kicked the bucket, again! I wonder what got 'em? oh well..

May as well not let those grains go to waste...

I originally bought crab sticks for this recipe because I didn't think i'd be getting so damn much mimic meat from my special order.. I also managed to source pearl barley, fresh seaweed salad and trout (merman??) roe! Absolutely decadent haul of premium food that probably would have been for broke peasants in the 1800s but whatever.

I'll wash the barley and let it soak for a few mins, its pearl barley though so apparently that means its already husked... good. I've never cooked barley before... or savory porridge, or... man, have I ever even had PORRIDGE!? I don't remember if I have! I was never from a gruel household, would you believe.

You know what else I've got leftover from last recipe? Some of that water I boiled all the crabs in! Now you're thinking with fridges. I empty out the rinse water and i'm gonna cook it in this boiling stock.

Hmm so we have salty crab water, grain... what else? I'm going to add a bay leaf, some dried seaweed and some black pepper. Oh it looks like dirt water now.

While this cooks for half an hour, that should give us a decent amount of time to extract enough crab meat from all these nasty little limbs!

Well the water has cooked off enough, and these seem... I don't know, soft and grainy enough? And i've managed to get a decent amount of crab meat, even though i still have MORE CRAB BITS LEFT somehow. I'll just bowl up a portion and dress it with all those ingredients.

****

Whoa! I didn't know what to expect, seeing as I've never cooked with most of these things before... and I had no idea what I was doing... (Also it sounded pretty drab)... It's salty, its delicately seafoody, its got a bit of a kick from the dressing in the salad and the fish eggs. The barley and seaweed and are satisfyingly firm and chewy, making it seem very filling. Maybe some lemon juice or garlic would punch it up a bit more... but maybe something mild and unique is nice too. This is probably intensely healthy for a hot dish, its all fiber, iodine and fish oils.

Delicious in Dungeon #12: Boiled Mimic

Yo remember when we used to cook monsters? And not just like.. stealing vegetables and meats off other adventurers, or making bug sorbet..? anyway...

Free treasure?? Don't mind if I do...

Bamboozled! A mimic! Bad news FOR THEM.

I defeated them with a deep freeze spell.. but it turns out there was a lot more of them than I expected... in a huge block of ice. I'm going to have to defrost them, and I'm doing so hastily because... I didn't think that far ahead.

Once they are warmed up im disposing of the water it was frozen in. It might be fine but I dunno, I don't trust it.

Adding in some fresh boiling water and a decent sprinkle of salt. I can save this crab stock for future recipes. TBH when I ordered this, I thought I would get like, 2-4 clusters of crab... and theres like... 12.. lol.

Get boiled idiot!!

Once its nearly done i'm going to make a quick dip... some butter, powdered garlic and dried parsley..

In the microwave for just a few seconds, thats all we really need!

**

God, every time I have crab or lobster I manage to cut my finger somewhere in the process. The crab meat was sweet and flavorful but a bit waterlogged from boiling. The breast(?) had a decent chunk of meat but the legs and claws are so fiddly, you're just working so hard to try and get the tiniest little slivers of meat, its just not worth the hassle, even as someone who rather enjoys picking a chicken carcass clean. It took me so long to eat, it had gone cold by the end of the meal. I guess someones gotta do it, but whole crab like this is even more expensive than just buying a tin of the meat. I'm gonna leave it to the professionals.. with the right tools.... like Chilchuck.

Delicious in Dungeon #6: Living Armor Full Course Meal

This one's several meals in one! The living armor is cooked in 4 different ways, but im going to cut it down to 3 because the grilled and steamed ones are effectively the same, with one being better than the other.

Haha idiot, you've been toppled. But its a hollow victory, as there's nothing in this armor...

OR IS THERE!??!

I've never cooked oysters before, and I also got these at an incredible discount close to the sell by date (lucky!) and frozen them so im not going to take any chances, ill probably just grill them all the same way and the incorporate them into the dishes.

After cleaning and defrosting them in warm water they were really easy to open with a butter knife... i thought it was a whole technique I might have to battle with but nah, its just a big clam aint it? Or maybe its harder when they're alive which... i dont want to do.

The recipe says to season them with soy sauce, vinegar and salt. Fancy ingredients so might as well bust out the fancy soy sauce.

Just a little dash of each... soy sauce is already salty, I hope i didn't oversalt them. I hate over-salted seafood. And they're ready to go in the oven while I make all the other stuff.

For the dwarf style stir fry, I've got some medicinal kale from my garden! Which the aphids have really been going to town on, I scrubbed off a lot of bugs... Whatever, we're already eating weird stuff.  For the detox herb ill use brown onion, and for the SPECIAL SAUCE i've got something special in mind! A massive bottle of tamarind sauce i bought on a whim a while back. It's kinda like brown sauce I guess? Sour, spicy and sweet.

Chopped the kale up a bit smaller and I think just half an onion sliced into strips will do.

Adding more ingredients! I want to add a bit of sesame oil to the frying for a cheeky bit of extra stir fry flavour. 

Oh and my secret back up weapon! Since there weren't that many oysters I thought i'd pad out the stir fry with a handful of mussel meat as well.

the onion and mussels can go in first for a bit.

Then add the kale and the special (tamarind) sauce..

It also says to season this with salt and pepper... I used a dash of soy sauce instead of salt.. 

Now for the soup! It says to use more herbs and soy sauce for the soup, but honestly... I dunno... I don't wanna..  So I had a better idea! I have a bunch of instant miso soups to pick from! I've just actually started learning some japanese recently. I think we've got some dried wakame (seaweed) and um... uh... erm... the packets green. Green flavour.

Here's what it looks like before we add boiling water and stir it around.. and thats the soup sorted! That's everything ready and then we just take the oysters out and assemble them!

Living armor dwarf style stir fry!

Living armor soup! (it sank to the bottom when I put it in)

Grilled living armor!

****

Whoa... I... I did a good job...? This was a really nice varied meal! All the different flavours and scents: miso, seaweed, tamarind, vinegar and soy sauce paired really well with the oysters and eachother. You get a nice range of textures with the slippery seafood, the crunchy stir fry, and the...soupy soup. Compared the the mussels in the stir fry, the oyster was a lot less "meaty" and a little more like.. scallop or something I guess. I suppose im still glad this didn't make enough for leftovers and im not rushing out to buy more oysters any time soon... but as a healthy novelty meal i enjoyed this more than I expected.

Delicious in Dungeon #1: Huge Scorpion and Walking Mushroom Hot Pot

Dungeon food. Ah, dungeon food.

It's not hard to find low level critters like this in a dungeon. A giant scorpion, a slime, and a walking mushroom. The mushrooms a little small, but itll have to do.

Once they've been processed they look a bit more appetising! The scorpion sure looks like some fake prawns made from surimi, the mushrooms body and feet are like oyster and shiitake mushrooms, and the slime is dried into konjac noodles, a special type of clear low-calorie noodle.

First we fry up the meat and mush, to get it a bit brown I guess. Meanwhile we can forage for a few more things to make the food more flavourful!

A chopped up invertato (potato) and a couple types of moss (leaves and heart of bok choi)

Im gonna try and sear these cabbagey hearts a bit more, especially since I had stored them in my freezer.

And of course, lets boost the broth with some appropriate seasoning! I have some instant dashi powder, some white miso paste and some cornish seaweed salt.

In that goes with some hot water and noodles.

And now I can laboriously rearrange it to look like the hot pot...

***

It's a pleasant vegetabley flavour. A tiny bit fishy, a tiny bit mushroomy, but mostly cabbage-y. The mixture of textures is nice. A healthy meal in a pinch, but probably very low calorie.