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.

Stardew Valley #67: Poppyseed Muffin

Ingredients: Poppy, Wheat Flour, Sugar

Item Description: It has a soothing effect.

Muffins! I looked up a typical recipe and im copying that prettymuch. We got our poppyseeds, we got flour and sugar, we got all that other.. cake stuff.

gotta sieve the flour, are you even baking if you havent lightly dusted the whole kitchen?

All the dry stuff together: flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, a hint of salt, and im adding slightly more poppyseeds than the recipe recommends, because what else am I going to do with this bag of poppyseeds? Lets make the poppyseediest muffin we can. I want to fail a drug test for opiates.

In go the wets... to me a muffin means vegetable oil whereas cupcakes are butter. Did I make that up? This recipe had butter and milk, but im cutting the butter with 1/2 oil. in goes that melted butter and oil and milk, and 1 egg.

Lastly, most people tend to add a secondary flavour, and its typically lemon. Sounds good! I'm adding in both some lemon juice and some grated zest as well.

Batters all mixed up, looks good.

Got some cute cupcake liners for extra swag.

First batch goes in the oven for like 15min. Good thing I definitely... remembered... to heat the oven...

This first batch looks promising, but they're actually kind of small, I should put more batter in the next ones so that they can puff up out of the case. Like a mushroom that actually tastes good.

****

Nice! Light and zesty. I don't really know if poppy seeds alter the flavour much or if that's just the lemon zest... I don't make plain lemon muffins very much. These had a nice crispy outer layer and a fluffy inside. Now I have like 2 dozen of these fuckers.

Stardew Valley #62: Blackberry Cobbler

Ingredients: Blackberry, Sugar, Wheat Flour

Item Description: There's nothing quite like it.

What's the difference between a pie and a cobbler? Nothing actually, I looked it up. Most people think a cobbler has like a batter drop topping, but thats not definitively a cobbler apparantly. Anyway the sprite for this has a kind of weird stripey half-lattice, and I have a bunch of leftover pastry, so you see where this is going.

Bought another pastry base. It's just so much better than what I can do. Look at that machine precision.

Gotta weed out the mouldy berries unfortunately. Guess i should have done this earlier in the week.

Now its probably good to turn this into a bit more of a pie filling... recipes seem to recommend adding milk for some reason... sugar for extra sweetness, flour to stop it being too wet, and I'm adding some orange essence to add a little secondary flavour.

I tried to learn my lesson from that blueberry pie, but perhaps we've gone a bit far in the opposite direction? Should we have done more milk and flour? Ah well, I don't really want to.

Right here's our leftover pastry. Its probably still good.

Alright this is what the sprite looks like, you think im just too lazy to make a proper lattice? Don't judge me. Anyway time to bake it.

****

OK judge me a little bit I let this pie look so bare. But you know what?

Bit of ice cream, and it's perfect. Perfect!! I love the tart blackberries with the orange essence coming through and the sweet crust. I had a scoop of sesame and honey flavoured ice cream btw. Granted anything fruity tastes good on a hot day like today. Great combination, would use more filling next time.

Stardew Valley #59: Pumpkin Pie

Ingredients: Pumpkin, Wheat Flour, Milk, Sugar

Item Description: Silky pumpkin cream in a flakey crust.

I've made pumpkin pie before, and I know a really easy simple recipe for it as well! Even if pumpkin wasn't out of season, I highly recommend finding a tin of "american style" pureed pumpkin, its the perfect consistency and concentration for pie filling. For the wheat flour I just bought pre-made pastry again (it was 24p!) and for the milk & sugar i've streamlined it into a can of sweetened condensed milk. Then we've got eggs, and classic pumpkin spices.

Oh noo! I accidentally broke my big pyrex when I was getting out a baking dish. :( RIP to a real one. This is the dark side of cooking blog.

Here's the pre-rolled pastry shaped into a dish. It's kinda moist from being hastily defrosted. Reminds me of sliced cheese.

Fortunately we have some other big bowls to mix in. Im not even going to use my mixer because its literally so easy to mix. Just 3 different kinds of sludge: The tinned pumpkin, the condensed milk, and 2 eggs.

And then the spices go in. its like a teaspoon of cinnamon, 1/2 tsp of ginger and nutmeg, and a pinch of salt.

Mix it up until you have THE SLUDGE. Until you have Clayface from batman.

And then its ready to go in the oven for like 40mins. ITS REALLY THAT SIMPLE

*****

This was kind of a foregone conclusion because I already knew how to cook this AND pumpkin pie is probably my favourite pie of all time. And look how easy it is! Are you going to try making pumpkin pie now? Are you??