Delicious & Dragons

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I felt very fancy today, so I decided to make some crossover between Ravioli and Kasnudeln with a bit of a twist. Whole egg pasta dough. A filling made out of mashed potato, enriched with steeped potato skin liquid to amp up the potato flavor, onions lightly sautéed in butter, seasoned with sherry vinegar and parmesan. The shaping was terribly nerve-wracking with just how delicate the egg yolks were, but I kinda pulled it off in the end. Served on spinach.
Egg yolk is pretty rich as a sauce, so is brown butter, but both in the same dish? Hoo boy that’s an experience.

There, it has happened, I’ve discovered pies and am now tumbling down the rabbit hole of stuffing whatever ingredients and leftovers I can find into a 5 inch pastry shell and baking it. This time it’s turkey meat in gravy, mixed with a bit of rice.The hot water dough actually benefits from working it as little as possible, makes for a flakier crust.

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When you’re out and about doing questionable things like investigating fiery visions, it’s really important to bring good food along that is easy to transport and hard to spoil. Queue the staple food of many an adventurer, pies. Well seasoned beef and veggies in a buttery hot water crust, brushed with egg, baked until well done and golden brown. Show some patience and let it cool, presto, a complete meal in compact form. I couldn’t help myself and ate one harf (*glug*) already, the rest I’ll save up. But I’m happy with the results.

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Hmmm, it’s been a while since I had lasagna, but you gotta love pasta stacked on sauce and baked until it melds into a wonderfully layered dish. A little bit undercooked this time though.

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It’s a rainy day, I needed something hearty and down to earth. The sauce was a bit unorthodox, cumin, star anise and cocoa powder made it more like a beef chili rather than what you’d usually put in a shepherd’s pie, but the basics stay the same. Some veggies, topped with mashed potatoes, a hint of cheese, baked until you get a nice crust. Serve hot, sit in front of a hearth and warm yourself.

Well, when it comes to attempting pizza, this is a marked improvement, but what you don’t see here is the 5 minute wrestling match with the pizza peel complete with panicked arm flailing and minor burns that preceded it. Worst of it all, the longer you take, the more the pizza sticks and the more you start to draw from a colorful treasure trove of curse words that do nothing to help.

One fine day I was overcome by the thought that maybe I should use my baking steel a bit more. So I mixed a dough, undeterred by the fact that I didn’t have enough yeast, a long proof should do the trick. The steps were memorized, my imagination was already painting a vivid picture of a nice round pizza pie with a bubbly crust, and then the reality of shaping the damn thing slapped me in the face like Einarr’s open right hand. What was I thinking? I can shape a country loaf, I can shape a rectangular sandwich loaf, but pizza? It proved to be a battle to hard for my amateurish hands and I ended up with more like a pide, pizza’s distant cousin. And to top it off I didn’t use enough flour so the thing stuck to the peel. What a mess, albeit a still pretty edible one. Time will tell if the second ball of dough I still have will fare better.

The vegetarian option? Why yes of course. Roasted broccoli, tangy goat cheese and regular cheese melted into it and a spicy tahini, mayo, ketchup sauce. *Scrunch*, certainly easier to hunt a head of broccoli than say a wild boar.

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Get bored with regular potatoes sitting around in a stew? Grate ’em, press ’em, mix with breadcrumbs, onions (didn’t have them so scallions it was) and egg, and fry them until golden brown. Could’ve used less egg, but the crispy crust was sublime. Hm, I should try the ones I have left with some smoked salmon.

Update: Yup, smoked salmon unsurprisingly works as well. served with some spinach and a spicy dill mayo.

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If you can’t go on vacation you gotta bring the vacation to you. Continuing my streak of frying things I decided to tackle a staple of far away sunny lands, croquetas with chorizo. Trickier than I thought. Harf of them turned out well, harf of them started falling apart. All of them were very tasty though. To make amends for the harf/harf outcome and to complete the picture, I poured myself a glass of iced Patxaran. Cheers.
Crispy on the outside, creamy on the inside, whoever invented those deserves a high five.