Delicious in Dungeon #2: Man-Eating Plant Tart

 Oh no! a man has been man-eaten by this man-eating plant!

Don't worry Richter Belmont i'll avenge you, you sexy idiot.

I'm going to just dry roast the squash baraselia in its shell to soften it up...

When it had a headstart i put the aubergine betan in too. They'll be easier to work with and I wont have to worry about how evenly they cook in the middle of the tart.

Plan A was to see if the squash shell would make for a decent tart crust, but im not really feeling it, so fortunately I had a plan B

A bunch of easy-peel clementines! The crust is supposed to not be edible, and this will hopefully infuse the tart with a bit of pleasant citrus flavour.

hmm... I didnt think I really need to get it water tight, but is this really better than nothing...? I'm sorry I can't be senshi.

Some of the fruity-veg gets cubed, and then a bunch of the squash will go in the blender

Why not add a cheeky bit of extra clementine! and some water to help it mix.

This has blended thoroughly, its thick as hell which is nice. (Like our boy richter)

Now for the tart magic! I didn't actually have any scorpion broth leftover, so we'll use a vegetable stock cube, and for the power of slime gelatine, im trying a sachet of vegetarian gelatine. I'll plan to bake it in the oven and cool and just hope it solidifies somehow. I have never tested or tried anything like this before.

That blended baraselia (squash) gets mixed in with the hot vegetable jelly water..

It's poured recklessly over the way too loose peel, and topped with all the vegetables, including the tomatoes meeroak! But lets also season this with salt and pepper at this stage. Its going back in the oven for like 20mins and then gonna cool for a few hours... good thing i started this after lunch.

*

It's failed to set, maybe vege-gel wasnt the way to go... but thats not even the biggest problem. The cooked clementine peel is massively overpowering, and has made everything super bitter and marmalade-y, not pairing at all well with the vegetable stock. I'm going to scrape the rest of the vegetables out and cook them into something else like a curry. Oh well, you're not a brave adventurer unless you try something stupid once in a while....

Stardew Valley #45: Stuffing

Ingredients: Bread, Cranberries, Hazelnut

Item Description: Ahh... the smell of warm bread and sage.

Alright I'm ready! I've got some bread slices I left to go stale, cranberries (dried this time! much more sweet and fun), hazelnuts (roasted), onions, garlic, celery, sage and butter. I've never made stuffing this way before, and I wanted a recipe that assured me I can use dried cranberries, so im following a betty crocker recipe I found on the American Internet. (the regular internet)

First we chop the stale bread into little crouton cubes, and only some of them explode into crumbs and fly all across my kitchen. Is this the american way?

Bowl of bread, get.

Next I dice up the onion, celery and garlic... the recipe says to fry it (well, skillet cook). Won't it get cooked in the oven...? Oh well, we do like a good frying.

And using a very generous amount of butter! After all, I think we want the hot butter to moisten up the rest of the dry mix as well surely.

While that fries up I can sprinkle on the dried cranberries and find a way to smash up the hazelnuts... I chose violence. A bag and a meat tenderizer, to be precise.

I realise so far we've only got sage and garlic for herbs, and thats cool, but stuffing is all about the christmas herbs so lets get some dried thyme in there too, and some salt and pepper.

Makes sense to throw them in with the vegetables. Time to pre-heat the oven as well.

Once thats looking cooked and lightly browned, we can throw our hots in with the colds. This still seems.... so dry. Like theres no chicken broth or anything. Its like a museli... will this really work? To be safe and delicious im going to drizzle just a bit of olive oil on it too. I might have been stingy with the butter.

*****

Wow this is great!! Out of shot i sneakily made a chunky pan-fried chicken breast to go with it...

And its such a delicious combo! You could definitely take it to another level with some gravy, but just on its own I ended up not needing any extra sauce, it was like eating a super crunchy caesar salad, with extra fruity herby nutty savoury flavours. I was very unsure about the hazelnuts, when I first put them in they seemed overpowering with that dessert-like smell.. but in the end they balanced really well with the strong flavours of sage and cranberry. I've never had stuffing like this before, ive always had it more like a sorta... herby.. oaty... sausagemeat falafel... Is this... "American Style Stuffing"?

Cooking Mama's Cooking Challenge #10: Pork Curry and Rice

This should be a nice straightforward one. The recipe just has you using the Japanese style instant roux which I've done before. It doesn't mention making the rice but we already know how thanks to RECIPE #1

Peel!

I used 2x fairly big potatoes and carrots cause that seemed like a good amount. No I did not arrange them to look like a weenus on purpose. hehe though. 

Slice up!

Chopped these up into big ol' chunks. Also cut 2 (smallish) brown onions to the same size.

Cut!

I bought one of those weird long PORK FILLETS because I thought that might be a nice cut to use. Have some leaner meat chunks rather than chewy fatty bits. And it's weirdly cheap.

Saute!

In the gameplay these always seemed to take about the same amount of time to cook so i've just tossed them in together. Took ages to brown a bit but eh no worries. They'll have more time to cook fully in the stewing part.

Measure and add!

The curry roux I am using has instructions on how much water to use, so we are doing just that!

Stew!

Stewing it in the water and adding the curry roux halfway through. Stir it a lot to make sure it's all dissolved and just let it do its thing really. Just left it on low heat for like 40 mins.

Finish

*****

This recipe is SO straightforward and so satisfying. The pork tasted great and you're making like 4-6 meals worth at a time. I highly recommend adding this to your repertoire if you need more simple, cheap recipes to feed a family or meal prep. (And if you're vegan you can easily skip the meat or add mushrooms)

Cooking Mama's Cooking Challenge #9: Fried Fish

Lightly Fried Fish Fillets

Coat!

Similar to the karaage recipe, it's not full on batter or breadcrumb it's just a coating of flour.

Melt the butter!

Two fillets two butters. Well actually I just sliced the butter real thin.

Pan-fry!

This seemed to be going well, but on the second flip the pan had dried the hell out and I crumbled most of the fish. Alas. Abass. Cod damn it.

Arrange the plate!

So the classic thing to serve in UK with fish and chips is good ol' peas (garden or mushy). But in the games options you had a different array of vegetables. Was gonna do green beans but grocery store was out!! So I went with sweetcorn. Oh and I still added chip seasoning and generous amounts of cider vinegar. I'm not a monster.

Finish

***

It's no beer battered deep fried fish & chips from your favourite gastro pub, but it's pretty agreeable.

Cooking Mama's Cooking Challenge #6: Grilled Gyoza

 Grilled...? Gyoza?

Slice up!/Chop up!

Grabbed just a handful of cabbage from the freezer and diced it up. Trying to coordinate having the right fresh ingredients with minimal waste is a whole thing I'm up to.

Chop up!

1 clove of garlic. I have a garlic press, but it says to chop it so eh, why not.

Add the ingredients!

Grabbed about 200g-ish of minced beef, the cabbage and garlic, drizzle of sesame oil and a sprinkle of salt and pepper.

Knead!

smush it all together

Fold the dumplings!

OK so not pictured was a whole ordeal right. I couldn't easily find gyoza wraps so I figured I'd actually just make some myself. So I prepared the worlds driest simple flour + water pastry, rolled it out till all the bones in my hands hurt, cut circles with a big cookie cutter, and voila! This is actually kinda... working?

Cook amount told!

I'm not sure Mama knows what grilling is. This is steaming/frying gyoza in a shallow pan of water. 

Finish

****

Thought this was going to be a disaster. Every time I make pastry I remember that I hate pastry so much. Then the gyoza were sticking to the pan and I was worried they were all gonna eat shit. Couple of them did but as you can see they're largely intact, and they cooked through just fine. Made a simple dip of sesame oil, soy sauce, vinegar and worcestershire sauce to go with which I recommend. Maybe I'm not better than Mama but at least I know what a grill is.

Pre-Halloween Party, aka Halloweenween

Mode: Party Game!
Hardware: Everything.
Accessories: Black vodka cocktails.

Green Sage and I had some CRAZY idea that we'd have a little party this weekend that involved us making loads of halloween themed treats. See, halloween is prettymuch the only time in an entire year that you can actually purchase pumpkin, and thus make pumpkin pie or ravioli or both. We enlisted the assistance of 2 other specialist warriors, who need to give me code names later and I'll probably amend this if I don't forget.

Don't 'boo' me! I'd like to see you do a better job!

Here's the basic spread, minus the sausages cause they were still in the oven. Turns out I didn't really have many informative pics of the process, so I'll have to just show you the finished products. Most of this is vegetarian, with the exception of the bits that had meat on them.

Pumpkin Pie

The pumpkin pie was a bit of an arse, because while I though I had a food processor gathering dust in the corner, apparently it is a non-functioning food processor that does not switch on. So the pie was very, um... fibrous and chunky, however, the double cream and spices made it taste great, and making the pastry and the mix ourselves we were able to make it egg free, for one of our party members is allergic to eggs.

Severed Fingers and Pomegranate

Cut the crusts off a slice of bread, add jam, rolled up, pinch one end carefully and stick an almond slice on it, and spread jam on the base of the other end.

Black Spider Pizza

Patrick offered to make us full on pizza-bases for our pizzas, with big thick dough that tasted fantastic! I arranged mozzarella slices in the shape of a cobweb, and used black olives for the spiders, slicing some of the olives into slivers to make the legs. I'm really happy with how this one came out, the spiders are hella creepy!

Red Spider Pizza

And for the meatatarians and olive-haters (like me!) I made a red-spider alternative using pepperoni and red pepper slices.

Eyeballs and Coffins

Eyeballs in a jar are made with lychees stuffed with black cherries, 'pickled' in ginger ale. The coffins are mini mars bars with the edges cleverly trimmed.

Pumpkin Ravioli

Pumpkin and sage butter ravioli made by Green Sage, a very thick and meaty alternative to meat.

Fried Beetroot and Carrots

A side-dish that I thought it would look kinda halloweeny.

Monster Faces

Egg-free banana cupcakes by Sage and Ned. Some creepy monster faces going on, I thought the gold teeth were a real nice touch!

Sausage Roll Mummies

I got this idea from somewhere on the internets, bought some chilled puff pastry, cut it into strips and wound it around sausages to make some adorable mummies!

The 'Decor'

And these are our... um... pumpkin... carvings. Ahem. Yeah.