Mythril Fork

Spring/Summer were busy, but good to me. I traveled a lot for work, my family visited, my in-laws visited, my husband and I started working out 6 days a week/eating healthy...the latter caused a sharp decline in cooking tasty foods and ramped up time spent in the outdoors.

(The blackberries are from a half-hearted attempt to pickle blackberries, the first two photos are from one of our last camping trips in Virginia, and the above photo is from Trinity Alps Wilderness).

I recently learned how to make crunchy granola without oil. A Google search will tell you the empirical formula is 3 cups of dry components + 1/2 cup of a liquid sweetener. Easy enough, and it yields granola with tons of clusters (the best part). I like to add extra fixings once the granola has baked and cooled, which makes it a great trail snack or hearty breakfast.

Granola with fixings

2 cups oatmeal (not quick cooking)

1 cup dried millet

~2 tbsp sesame seeds

a pinch of salt

1/2 tsp cinnamon

2/3 cup orange juice (or ~3 tbsp OJ concentrate)

1/2 cup maple syrup (or other liquid sweetener)

1/2 cup dried currants

1/2 cup dried sour cherries

1/2 cup slivered almonds

1/2 cup dried coconut flakes

1. Reduce the OJ down in a small saucepan over medium high heat until it has thickened, and you’re left with about 1/4 cup of juice. Alternatively, use a few tablespoons of concentrated OJ. Set aside and let it cool.

2. Preheat oven to 375 F. In a large bowl, toss together the oatmeal, millet, salt, and cinnamon.

3. Once the OJ has cooled, add it to the oat mixture along with the maple syrup (maple syrup works really well for super cluster-y granola, but feel free to use honey or any other liquid sweetener).

4. Mix well. Spread the mixture out  in a solid rectangle, about 1/4 inch thick, on a baking sheet lined with parchment or a silicone mat (really compact it together).

5. Bake for 10 minutes, or until the edges start to brown (mine took about 15 minutes). DO NOT STIR WHILE IT’S HOT. Remove from the oven, and let it cool for at least 30 mins before breaking it up.

6. After the granola has cooled, break it up into chunks. Add it to a bowl with any other fixings you like. I used the dried fruit, almonds, and dried coconut, but you could certainly enjoy the granola plain.

I like fancy cakes and tarts just fine, but sometimes I want a snack that’s a little simpler - fruit & whole grain. It certainly sets the mood when I’m trekking terrain that reminds me of The Shire. 

Brought to you by my iphone

It’s been a long couple of weeks, friends. I started working overtime, and I spent my weekends soaking up some early spring.

Every time I go hiking, I feel like I’m in an MMORPG. So here, have some more MMORPG food!

I took the cheese souffle from FFXIV as a version of Japanese souffle cheesecake. It’s crustless and much lighter than NY style cheesecake. Nonetheless, it’s very tasty.

Sidenote, this is the first time I’ve ever seen fresh currants in a grocery store! 

Ingredients (adapted from Just One Cookbook/Cookpad)

Base

60 g butter (room temperature)

400 g cream cheese (room temp)

60 g sugar

6 egg yolks (room temp)

3/4 c heavy cream (room temp)

juice from a lemon

1 tsp vanilla extract

80 g flour

Powdered sugar to dust springform pan

Meringue

6 egg whites (cold)

100 g sugar

Glaze

2 tbl apricot jam

~2 tsp water

Equipment

9-inch springform pan

large roasting pan or baking dish

parchment paper round for bottom of springform pan + strip of parchment ~4 inches high to go around inside of springform pan

pastry brush for spreading glaze

Directions

Prep your pan! Butter the pan all over the bottom and sides. Line the bottom with a round of parchment paper cut to fit. Line the inside with a strip of parchment paper. Butter the parchment paper with some softened butter + pastry brush and coat with powdered sugar. Knock away the excess sugar. 

Put some heavy duty foil around the base of the pan. It will go into a water bath, so you don’t want water seeping into the bottom of the pan. You want the foil to come up at least half way.

Prepare the base. Cream the butter, cream cheese, and 60 g sugar until light and fluffy. Mix in egg yolks and heavy cream. Add the lemon juice and vanilla and beat until incorporated and smooth. Scrape down the sides and beat some more. Add the flour (you can sift if if you want an ultra smooth base) and beat until incorporated. 

Put the base in another bowl and set aside. If you’re using a stand mixer, clean the bowl and make sure no trace of fat remains. 

Make the meringue. Beat the egg whites until foamy. Slowly add the 100 g sugar until all of it is incorporated. Beat on high for ~10 mins, but check for stiff peaks periodically. You don’t want to overbeat the meringue. 

Preheat your oven to 325F (racks in the middle and bottom) and get some water boiling. 

Put ~1/3 of your meringue into the base mixture. Mix it up until it’s incorporated. Don’t worry about deflating the meringue yet.

Pour the base into the meringue. FOLD the mixture until everything is incorporated to avoid deflating the meringue. 

Pour mixture into the springform pan and tap onto the counter a couple of times to remove big air pockets.

Place the pan into the roasting dish or baking pan and pour ~1 inch of boiling water in the pan.

Place the pan into the oven on the middle rack. Bake for about 20ish minutes until the top is lightly golden brown. If the top starts to crack a bit, don’t worry. If the cracks aren’t too bad, they’ll shrink when the souffle cools.

After 20 mins, turn the oven down to 300F and bake for another 30 mins until a toothpick comes out clean.

Turn the oven off and prop the oven door open. Leave the souffle in the oven for 15 minutes before removing from water bath and cooling completely on a wire rack.

While the souffle is cooling, heat the apricot jam with a little water in the microwave. Stir and brush onto the top of the souffle. Let cool completely before removing from sides of springform pan/taking off the parchment.

I apologize for the lack of variety...FFXIV recipes are pretty easy to do with stuff I have on hand. And I can’t say no to a fruit tart. I know the in-game recipe doesn’t call for almonds, but frangipane is so good. You could even use the same pastry cream that I used in the snurbleberry tart. Or you could fill it with apple sauce...It’s your call. The almonds go really well with the apples and butter. I downplayed the cinnamon because I didn’t want it tasting like an apple pie.

I mostly used the pear + almond tart recipe from Pastry Affair as a template, with the addition of unsweetened apple sauce and apples, of course.

Ingredients (adapted from Pastry Affair)

Tart shell

150g all purpose flour

66g sugar

113g cubed, cold butter

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

1/4 tsp salt

Filling

50g softened butter

100g sugar

160g almond meal

1/2 tsp almond extract

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 eggs

~12 oz unsweetened apple sauce

2 medium apples, peeled, cored, and sliced thinly (I used aurora apples)

~1 tbl butter

~1 tbl cinnamon sugar (1 tbl sugar + 1 tsp cinnamon ish)

Glaze: ~2 tbl apricot jelly

Directions

Tart shell

In a food processor, or with your hands, combine the flour, salt, sugar and cold butter until you get a coarse mixture with a sand-like texture. 

Add the egg and the vanilla. Pulse or mix a few times until combined.

Pour contents onto a sheet of plastic wrap. Bring up the ends of the plastic wrap to form a ball of dough. Press the ball down into a disk. Chill dough for ~1 hr.

Roll dough out into a circle large enough to press into a tart pan. Remove excess. 

Bake dough at 350F for about 25 mins until golden. You might need to use pie weights to keep the sides from melting down.

Filling

While the tart shell is baking, make the frangipane.

Combine the butter and sugar and mix until light and fluffy.

Add in the vanilla and almond extract and the eggs. Beat until combined.

Add the almond meal. Beat until combined. 

Pour into baked tart shell.

Pour the apple sauce on top of the frangipane and smooth out.

Arrange the apples around the tart. Sprinkle the top of the apples with cinnamon sugar.

Cut the 1 tbl butter into pieces and scatter over the top of the tart.

Bake at 350F for about an hour until filling is done and apples are browned slightly.

Let tart cool.

Warm the apricot jelly in a microwave or stovetop with a little water to thin it out. Brush onto top of cooled tart and let it set for a few minutes.

I don’t have a lot to say about this recipe, just to say nothing makes you feel more accomplished than making your own bread AND butter. It’s a lot of work and patience, but the pay off is pretty damn sweet (bread, butter, and buttermilk for future pancakes, maybe?!).

I’m not a huge fan of chunks of stuff in my bread, so I used ground, toasted walnuts to make this soft, sweet, heavenly-smelling bread. Texture probably isn’t so much a huge deal, but definitely toast your walnuts if you want the most flavor.

This is just a modified Hokkaido milk roll recipe. The tangzhong starter pretty much guarantees you a soft, airy texture. Plus, it’s a fun technique to add to your skill book.

Ingredients

Walnut bread (Adapted from King Arthur Flour)

Starter

14g bread flour

43g water

43g milk

Bread

348g bread flour

50g sugar

1 tsp salt

1 tbl instant yeast (if you use instant, you don’t need to proof it)

113g scalded (& slightly cooled milk)

2 eggs

57g melted butter

156g finely ground, toasted walnuts

egg wash: 1 egg yolk + 1 tbl milk or heavy cream

Fermented butter

4 cups heavy cream

1/3 c whole milk plain yogurt

salt

Directions

Walnut bread

*This recipe makes 1 big loaf or 2 little loaves.

To make the starter, place the 14g flour, 43g water, and 43g milk in a saucepan and heat while whisking until thick. Remove from heat and cool.

Mix together the dry ingredients. Add the tangzhong starter, eggs, melted butter, and milk. Using a dough hook and stand mixer, mix for ~10 ish minutes. The dough will still be pretty sticky. 

Smooth the dough into a ball and place in a buttered glass/metal bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Let the dough rise in a warm spot for ~1-2 hrs until doubled in bulk.

After the initial rise, gently smoosh the dough down into a rectangle (it shouldn’t be so sticky anymore) and fold into thirds, letter style. Place in a buttered loaf pan, seam side down. Cover with plastic wrap and let the dough rise for another hour or so.

Preheat oven to 375F.

Just before baking, brush the egg wash on the top of the loaf.

(I had my oven racks placed in the top and bottom third of my oven). Bake the bread on the lower third rack of the oven for ~30 mins until the top is dark golden brown and a thermometer reads 190F in the center of the loaf.

Let the loaf cool in the pan for ~20 mins and remove. Let cool on a rack. 

To slice, turn the loaf upside down and cut from the bottom to the top to avoid smooshing the loaf.

Fermented butter

*This recipe takes 12-60 hrs to make butter, so plan accordingly.

In a large jar, place the cream and yogurt. Stir to combine. 

Cover the jar with a clean dish towel and secure with a rubber band. Place the jar in a warmish spot (70-80F) for at least 12 hrs until the mixture has thickened like sour cream or yogurt. This can take up to 60 hrs (Mine took ~40 hrs). It won’t smell bad or anything, at least it shouldn’t.

Once the mixture is thickened, place in the fridge until it reaches 60F.

Place a large bowl or pitcher of ice water in your fridge. You’re gonna need it.

Put the mixture in a bowl and mix (with a stand mixer...otherwise it gets messy with buttermilk sloshing around) on high for ~10 mins. (I covered my stand mixer with plastic wrap to ward off the splashing buttermilk.)

After about 10 mins, you should see the clumps of butter hanging out in the buttermilk/covering the whisk. Strain the mixture into a mesh sieve lined with cheesecloth over a bowl to catch the butter milk. Save the buttermilk for something!

Squeeze as much buttermilk as you can out of the butter. Once you’ve done that, place the butter into a clean bowl and pour some ice water over it. The water will become cloudy due to the residual buttermilk. You want to get rid of all the buttermilk or else the butter will go rancid.

Knead the butter in the ice water and discard the water when it becomes cloudy. Repeat until the water is clear.

Once the water is clear, knead some salt into your butter.

Okay, I took some creative liberties with this one.

I’ve had Fallout 4 since it was released, but I haven’t had time to really play it. It doesn’t help that my computer freaks out every time I try to play. You know what my favorite Fallout game was? Fallout: New Vegas (Ok, maybe it was Fallout 3, but I’m biased since I lived in Northern VA). I even had an RP blog for one of the characters. 

I’ve been wanting to create a dish that my Courier could make out in the Mojave, but you know, I’m not big on Cram. Or centuries-old salisbury steak.

But InstaMash…The truth is, you can make some bomb-ass gnocchi with instant mashed potatoes. That’s probably not a secret. Instead of blood sausages (found in-game), I opted for spicy chicken sausages and “broc sprouts” aka Brussels sprouts (I imagine they’re both from family Brassicacea, creative liberties, right????). The real secret: use rye whisky (thanks, Cass!) to get awesome flavor and get yourself some Rad-X.

Ingredients

InstaMash Gnocchi (adapted from King Arthur Flour)

1 1/3 cups instant mashed potato flakes

1 ½ cups hot water

1 tsp salt

2 eggs

241 g (~2 cups) flour + more for rolling 

The Other Stuff

1 lb chicken sausage (or whatever sausage, choose your own adventure)

Vegetables (I picked Brussels sprouts, and they were the shit)

Spices (I used garlic powder, onion powder, salt, pepper)

Liquids (I used a splash of chicken stock and a splash of apple cider vinegar)

2 shots of rye whisky, or more, or none!

Directions

InstaMash Gnocchi

Make the mashed potatoes. Let it cool! If it seems too dry, resist the urge to add more water.

Mix together your flour, salt, and cooled potatoes. Add the eggs and stir. I found it easier to mix with a rubber spatula and fold the dough on itself.

Knead the dough a few times and shape it into a disk. Cut into 8 wedges.

Roll each wedge into a long snake.

Use scissors to snip off 0.75 inch pieces of each snake of dough.

Roll each piece in some flour. The next part is kind of tricky. Use the back of a fork to put the ridges in the gnocchi. Hold the fork backwards with the tines facing downwards. Roll each piece down the tines. You want to kind of drag the piece of dough down the tines so that one end kind of curls off while you’re still dragging the dough downwards. You ultimately want one side to have impressions from the tines and the other side to be kind of a hollow cup. It might take some practice, but you can totally skip this step if you want.

Once all of your gnocchi is ready, drop them (in batches) into a pot of boiling, salted water. Since I pan fried them later, I stopped boiling them as soon as they floated to the top. Let the gnocchi dry before pan frying.

The Other Stuff

In a skillet, fry your sausages until they’re done (165F internal temp for chicken sausages btw)

I roasted my Brussels sprouts separately (bc idk what I was thinking) in the over at 425F, tossed in olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic powder for ~20  mins, but you can pan roast them too with your sausages.

Move your sausages out of the way, add a little oil or butter, and fry up the gnocchi until they’re golden brown. Add a little chicken stock or something to get all of the stuff off the bottom of the pan and add your other spices. 

Add your sausages and Brussels sprouts and the whisky. Cook for another few minutes until the liquid is absorbed.

“The Other Stuff” is pretty vague, because honestly, it depends on your inventory. Gnocchi will go with everything. Seriously. And just like in the Mojave wasteland, you better eat whatever you’ve got to stay alive. If you wanna use Cram, go for it. If you’re like me and hoard every jalapeno pepper in the desert, roast that shit up and throw it in there.

You want cheese??? Blamco has nothing on InstaMash gnocchi mac and cheese.

I got some kick ass strawberries from the farmer’s market this weekend. It kind of makes me glad that I live in California, but I still miss Virginia, sometimes. Mostly because late spring/summer in Virginia = strawberries, and the rainy season in California is getting kind of depressing.

I digress.

I chose to forego the gelatin in this recipe, hoping the jam would retain its consistency, but it ended up a bit runny when I cut a slice. I would recommend freezing or chilling the tart for a few hours before cutting.

Ingredients

Tart shell (from NYTimes)

145 g flour

1 stick of unsalted butter, cut into cubes

1/2 tsp salt

3-4 tbl ice water

Pastry cream filling (from Mastering the Art of French Cooking)

*This recipe makes enough custard for two tarts. Save the rest by freezing, or cut recipe in half.

2 cups milk

212 g (~1 cup) sugar 

5 egg yolks

72g (~1/2 cup) flour

1 tbl butter

1.5 tbl vanilla extract

Strawberry topping/glaze

1 13 oz jar strawberry preserves (I used Bonne Maman)

juice from a lemon

~2 pints of strawberries, cut in half

Directions

Tart shell

In a food processor, add your cold, cubed butter, flour, and salt. Pulse until the texture looks like sand.

Add 3 tbl ice water and pulse a few times. If it comes together, stop. If you squeeze it in your hand, and it still feels dry, add another tbl of ice water.

Dump the mixture out on a piece of plastic wrap.

Bring the ends of the plastic wrap together to form the mixture into a disk of dough. You want it to be ~1 inch thick. Place in the fridge or freezer to chill for a few hours.

When you’re ready to roll the pastry, it needs to be soft enough to roll without cracking. That means you want to leave it out on the counter for ~15 mins if you took it out of the fridge, or let it thaw for a few hours if you took it out of the freezer.

Once it’s at a workable temperature, roll the pastry on a lightly floured surface until it’s ~13 inches in diameter. If it wants to shrink back every time you roll it out, cover it and let the pastry rest for a few minutes.

Gently place the pastry in a tart pan, and even out the bottom and work your way up to the sides of the tart pan. Roll and excess over onto the inside of the tart pan, to thicken the sides. Pierce the bottom a few times with a fork.

Freeze for ~30 mins. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 375F.

Take tart pan out of the freezer and place directly in the oven. Bake for ~25 mins, until golden brown. The bottom may puff up a bit, but take the back of a measuring cup and flatten it down.

Let the tart shell cool completely before use.

Pastry cream

Whisk the egg yolks and sugar together until it’s a light yellow color and it falls in ribbons if you lift the whisk up.

While you’re whisking, you want to heat up the milk. Don’t let it burn, you want it heated just until it starts to boil.

When the egg yolks and sugar are ready, whisk in the flour. 

Slowly pour some of the milk into the mixture, in a stream while whisking.

As the mixture heats up from the milk, you can add slightly more milk at a time, until all of the milk is added.

Pour the mixture into a large saucepan over medium-high heat and whisk the shit out of it. You don’t want it to start sticking to the bottom.

The mixture will thicken as it approaches a boil; cook it for 2-3 minutes once it starts boiling and remove it from the heat while continuously whisking.

Add the butter and the vanilla. Whisk to combine.

If you want a really smooth pastry cream, strain it through a mesh sieve to catch any bits of cooked egg. 

Chill the pastry cream overnight or until completely chilled with a piece of plastic wrap touching the surface of the cream.

Strawberry topping/glaze

In a small saucepan, add the strawberry preserves and lemon juice. Heat until it starts boiling vigorously. Reserve ~3/4 of it and let it cool until it’s not super hot, but still has a bit of fluidity to it.

The glaze will get heated up again during assembly, so you can set it aside.

Assembly

Pour about half of the pastry cream into the tart shell and smooth it out.

Pour on the cooled, reserved strawberry preserves. I chilled mine for about an hour at this point.

Once your tarts is chilled, arrange your strawberries on top.

Heat the remaining strawberry preserves until it bubbles. Let it cool for a minute, then use a pastry brush to brush onto the fruit.

Chill the tart for a few hours before cutting.

This dish is inspired by the fish-inhabited town of Barrelbottom in Alice: Madness Returns. I suppose it includes some elements of the Mysterious East level as well. 

Alice: Madness Returns is a really pretty game; I loved it despite the repetitive puzzles and clunky controls. The art styles vary depending on each level of the game, but as a whole, it’s a bit creepy, fanciful, chaotic…IDK. It’s a combination of many things, and I hope to incorporate more recipes inspired by the game.

My original plan included pickled candy cane beets, but I couldn’t find any. Total bummer.

I also need to work on collecting photo props.

Also, I love colored cellophane for lighting effects.

Ingredients

Salad

1 package seaweed salad mix (I used this brand because there are many types of interesting algae, but you could use wakame)

Whatever you want to dress your salad with. (I like acidic salads, so I used a mixture of rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, a little soy for salt, and honey)

Sesame-crusted shrimp (Adapted from Martha Stewart)

½ lb-ish shrimp (I had about 27 individual shrimp), shelled and deveined.

¾ c sesame seeds

2 tbl flour

1 tbl sugar

1 tsp salt

½ tsp pepper

1 egg 

1 tbl water

vegetable oil

Ginger-lime glaze

~ 5 tbl sugar

1 tbl soy sauce

4 tbl water

juice of 1 lime

1 tsp ginger syrup, or grated, fresh ginger

1 tbl cornstarch + 1 tbl water

Directions

Salad

Soak the seaweed for 7 mins in cold water.

Dry.

Dress salad just before serving.

Sesame-crusted shrimp

I used skewers because I like the presentation, but this can be done without them. You can also remove the shrimp tails or leave them on. In hindsight, I would take them off if I use skewers next time.

Rinse your shrimp and pat them dry. Skewer them if you want. 

Make your sesame crust by mixing together the flour, sesame seeds, salt, pepper, and sugar. Place on a plate or a flat dish.

Whisk together the egg+1 tbl water in another flat-ish dish.

Dip your shrimp into the egg/water mixture, then press both sides into the crust mixture. You want a really good amount of sesame seeds on both sides. Repeat for each shrimp/skewer. Set aside.

Heat a skillet with the vegetable oil. Place skewers/shrimp in the skillet, but don’t crowd the pan. Cook in batches if you need to. Cook the shrimp until the crust is golden brown (~3 mins per side).

Drain on a paper towel/cooling rack.

Ginger-lime glaze

Put the sugar, water (4 tbl), soy sauce, ginger/ginger syrup, and lime juice in a sauce pan. Heat until it boils.

Mix the cornstarch with 1 tbl water and stream into the glaze.

Stir and boil until the glaze thickens.

I miss Left 4 Dead 2. I played the shit out of that game, especially during my last couple of years of undergrad...you know, back when I could stay up until 4 AM killing zombies. My favorite level is Dark Carnival, where you and your teammates fight your way through a zombie-infested amusement park. 

One of the mascots of the amusement park is Mustachio, an evil pistachio whose likeness taunts you into playing various amusement park games during the level, which inevitably attract the horde.

Good times.

This is the first amusement park food-inspired recipe I plan on posting as a homage to Dark Carnival. I’m actually pretty sure I’m lactose intolerant, but totally stubborn about it. One of the things I absolutely can’t have is rich, delicious ice cream. It’s pretty upsetting. Luckily, dairy-free ice creams can be equally creamy and delicious!

Notes

I use an ice cream maker for this recipe. It’s kind of necessary IMO to get that creamy, churned goodness.

I’ve been trying to work on my photography and rely less on Photoshop lately. The green color comes from green cellophane hung in front of my light source. The fading light worked in my favor, giving me a creepy, weird effect that feels so L4D2.

I used raw pistachios for the ice cream base and added chopped, roasted pistachios during the end of the churning process. You could use all roasted or all raw, but I think the roasted pistachios give the ice cream a nice flavor.

Ingredients

“Magic Shell” chocolate topping/chocolate in the ice cream

1 cup chocolate chips (I used dark chocolate)

2 tbl coconut oil

Dairy-free pistachio ice cream with chocolate chunks

2 cans coconut milk (full fat, you need the fat for creaminess)

1/2 lb raw, unsalted pistachios (I reserved ~3/4 cup to top the ice cream/leave some chunks of pistachio in the ice cream)

160g (3/4 cup) sugar 

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp almond extract

Optional: 1 tsp matcha powder (I wanted to amp the green color, but leave it out if don’t want it)

~1/2 of the magic shell topping

Directions

“Magic Shell” topping/chocolate chunks

Put the chocolate chips and the coconut oil into a heat-safe dish and microwave for 30 seconds. 

Stir everything up and microwave for 15-20 second intervals until the mixture is smooth and everything is melted. 

Let the chocolate cool to room temp before adding it to your ice cream. 

Ice cream

I soaked the pistachios (excluding the 3/4 cup I reserved) for about an hour to get rid of the papery skin on the outside, but you really don’t have to.

In a blender, add the 2 cans of coconut milk, the soaked pistachios, and the matcha (if you want it). Blend until as smooth as possible.

Strain the mixture into a pot/saucepan through a mesh sieve. You want to get rid of the pistachio bits, if you can. It makes for a smoother texture, but if you can’t that’s ok.

Add the sugar to the mixture and boil it for a couple of minutes while stirring. Pour into a heat-proof bowl and add the almond extract and salt. You want to chill this completely.

Meanwhile, if your pistachios were raw, toast the reserved portion and chop coarsely. Set aside.

Once the ice cream base is completely chilled, add it to your ice cream maker. Churn until it’s fairly solid (~20 mins) and stream in ~1/2 of your “Magic Shell” and add your chopped pistachios. Churn for another few minutes, until everything’s incorporated.