Stardew Valley #33: Sashimi

Ingredients: Any Fish

Item Description: Raw fish sliced into thin pieces.

First of all, we've gotta do this right. I mean we've GOTTA do this right, I don't want parasites. I ordered some proper sashimi grade salmon, and carefully defrosted it in the fridge for a day.

Simplest recipe yet? I've just gotta take a knife to this thing. We'll use the rest for the next sushi recipe.

Hang on, wait...this needs a little somethn'. Let me just... 

*****

Yeah that's more like it! Yeah im a bit of a japanese food fan. I've got extra fancy soy sauce, sweet pickled ginger and wasabi. Anyway, the sashimi was amazing. So smooth and meaty.

Stardew Valley #32: Spicy Eel

Ingredients: Eel, Hot Pepper

Item Description: It's really spicy! Be careful.

Mackerel again! MackerEel. I had a lot of options for this one, i had some spicy hot pot base or stir fry sauce or ground chillis, but i thought id crack open this jar of crispy chilli oil mix and try that out.

Thats about it really, a very quick and lazy one for a cold busy evening. Bit of coriander to garnish.

***

Its not really that spicy, my bad. Should have used a bit of the hot pot base. I quite like the flavour though, goes well with the mack. I also should have put on the chilli bits nearer the end as the tofu chunks got a bit overdone. Nice, easy thing that would work really well as a rice bowl or salad topper.

Stardew Valley #31: Fried Eel

Ingredients: Eel, Oil

Item Description: Greasy but flavorful.

I don't have Eel! That shits rare. But mackerel is nice and common, and i'm no eel expert but i think its the best substitute? its a very oily and meaty fish. For oil im gonna pan fry it with some vegetable oil.

Just frying up a fillet with a few big leaves of pak choi. Gonna keep it simple with some basic seasoning and then a big squeeze of lemon juice.

Non stick pan is doing its thing, cooking nice and clean like.

***

Maybe im just craving a stronger flavour because its cold lately, but its a little bland and boring. The lemon juice makes it quite bitter, so maybe a sweeter glaze would have made it pop. Not bad though.

Stardew Valley #30: Spaghetti

Ingredients: Wheat Flour, Tomato

Item Description: An old favorite.

Spaghetti time! I'm going to be real with you boo, "spaghetti" isnt very specific. Since its got tomato, you could probably interperet it as just pomodoro/tomato sauce. But to me, a classic spaghetti is a tomatoey beef bolognese. And I have the ingredients for that so i'm gonna make it.

Haven't used my veg chopper in a while! Saves a bit of time in dicing things, plus you gotta slam it dramatically.

Got a lot of pink onion (maybe too much?), garlic, and carrot.

Then we can throw in the beef and cook it dry till its brown.

Now the beauty of Spag Bol, you can just throw in whatever you feel like as long as its roughly along the lines of meat, tomato, wine, umami, sugar, italian herbs, and tomato. I have way too much stuff in my kitchen so we're taking full advantage. I've got celery salt, pepper, worcestershire sauce, soy sauce, tomato concentrate, red wine, balsamic vinegar, jalapeno sauce, basil and oregano.

Its looking brown and sauced up, now we can add the tinned tomatoes and leave it to simmer for a while.

I could have also bought some fresh tomatoes to really lean in to the tomato aspect, but i didn't.

Don't forget the spaghetti! You can't spell spaghetti without... get it

When the spaghetti is done the rest should be... good enough for a weeknight yknow.

*****

I dunno if im just hungry but this is one of my better bologneses! i mean its still a pretty standard, "classic" spagbol but ive had ones that came out slightly blander or less well balanced in previous challenges. Perhaps the lesson is 2 large onions is the right amount?

Stardew Valley #29: Cookie

Ingredients: Wheat Flour, Sugar, Egg

Item Description: Very chewy.

Cookies! We like those. The description says very chewy, and I think I usually make quite soft buttery ones, so im going to google for a chewy recipe and just use the first one that comes up.

It's cold so my butter hard like my feelings, maybe we should melt it gently in a bain-marie? (like my feelings)

The recipe says half white and half brown sugar, I have the most delicious malty brown sugar, as we learned in the pie recipe, it smells so good. Might be a bit intense for choc chip cookies, but we'll find out.

Once it's melty enough we can whip it all together

Once thats mixed we add some wets, we've got an egg, a teaspoon of vanilla, and a whole teaspoon of salt!? Ok you're the boss recipe.

Crikey that makes a difference doesn't it. The power of egg!

Now for the flour, and a teaspoon of baking soda. I feel like the ratio of flour to sugar is kinda low on this one, I guess that will make the cookies more chewy.

Now we fold in the flour instead of power-whisk it. It's that something something gluten structures again. I don't know I'm not a bread scientist.

Now we bust in a load of chocolate chunks! I prefer bar chocolate to chips, as they typically need less stabilising agents so theyll be less waxy. I normally put dark chocolate in cookies, but for some reason I feel like Evelyn, (the canonical recipe keeper in stardew valley's world) seems like a milk chocolate kinda gal to me.

The recipe actually says to chill them 30mins-10hours if possible. I want em for tonight so they've had about 3 hours to chill, then we scoop em out onto baking paper and cook them in the oven for 15mins.

****

Oops I kinda overcooked these. I should have been more on the ball really, my oven is nice and powerful. They're dry and crunchy on the outer rim but on the inside they are indeed very chewy. They melted a lot and came out very flat. They're nice, but I'm pretty sure ive made better. They are a bit oily and sugary to me, I think next time I would use more flour and less sugar, and i'd use more white/golden sugar rather than the dark stuff. And I would definitely keep an eye on them and take them out sooner.

Stardew Valley #28: Rhubarb Pie

Ingredients: Rhubarb, Wheat Flour, Sugar

Item Description: Mmm, tangy and sweet!

I was gonna wait ages for rhubarb to be in season, but then I saw this! Tinned rhubarb! Convenience can't escape me!

Store bought rolled pastry again, I've carefully tried to cut the base into the tin, hopefully we'll have enough leftover to make a lid, I'll gather it together and hand-roll that I suppose.

I looked at a couple recipes and they often recommend adding flour or starch to mitigate the extreme wetness of the rhubarb. I liked this idea of lining the base with a layer of it.

...And then i'm also gonna add a bit of dark brown sugar. The tinned rhubarb should be somewhat sweetened already, but maybe not enough for a pie filling..?

Now to actually reveal what we're working with here... Probably should have done this earlier... oh thats quite wet and quite... not red.

I've drained the bulk of the syrup-water but its still very saturated. Guess we'll see how our thickening measures work out. Also added a little bit of butter on top. Butter and vegetables are a match made in heaven. I won't do anything about the fact that it's grey, its a bit late to mix in food colouring and its natural, its fine.

Luckily the sprite appears to have a little butthole so I will copy that, it will allow lots of steam to escape and help even more unwettening.

Now lets do a cool egg wash on the lid to make it all crispy

Oh thats so moist. The egg wont stay moist tho. Now its ready to go in the oven for like an HOUR.

Looks alright yeah. Egg wash has done wonders.

Not too liquidy! Might not win any prizes for fresh rhubarb colour though.

*****

Oops this is really good! What the heck? I'm pretty meh on rhubarb, pretty meh on pies, but I'm just really feeling this. The rhubarb is distinctive but mellow and soft. The brown sugar really adds somethn', feels like kind of a cheat for making all pies good. The egg wash also makes the shortcrust pastry extra crisp. Does it have a soggy bottom? I dunno maybe, too late I ate it.