Stay Gold

Spider emojis commissioned by @the-felix-mcscouty​! These are free to use, please do not reupload for monetary gain.  Spider Kiss two part for Discord use:

This request from @midasesquivel has given me the run around for far too long. I spent a while trying to find the right flavor mixture, starting to add more and more unnecessary ingredients. But one night I sat down and looked at everything again my epiphany came down to this: nothing beats roasted garlic (the only addition I decided worth keeping) and caramelized onions for feel-good flavors in a soup. And I’m glad I took my own advice because I can finally present Skyrim’s Potage Le Magnifique!

~Ingredients~

2 cups Chicken Broth

2 cups Beef Broth

1 small White Onion

1 bulb of Garlic

2 cups diced Carrots

4 tbsp. Butter, separated in half

2 tbsp. Flour or Cornstarch

Spices to taste: Black Pepper, Herbs de Provence or a mixture of rosemary, thyme, sage, and parsley.

Olive Oil, as needed

Prep Time: Up to 1 hr. | Total Cook Time: 30 - 40 min.

Serves: ~4 cups of soup

~Instructions~

Preparing the Roast Garlic

Step 1.) Preheat your oven to 400°F. Take the bulb of garlic and remove the outermost layers of the bulb (A few layers will come off easily in your hands. The result should be a bulb with fewer outer layers, but that is still in one piece) 

Step 2.) Cut the top 1-2 inches of the bulb so that the sliced tops of the garlic cloves are showing. 

Step 3.) Place aluminum on a baking sheet an put the garlic bulb in the center. Drizzle the bulb with a spoonful of olive oil and then seal the foil around the bulb. Bake for 40 minutes, then open the foil and allow to bake for 10 min. increments until the cloves are fork tender and their color is browned to your liking. Set aside to cool for at least 10 min. before handling.

Step 4.) When you go to remove the garlic, they are soft and should easily come out. You can either pull the cloves off and peel the casings open, or squeeze the cloves out of the bulb like a tube of toothpaste. Set aside.

Preparing the Soup

Step 1.) Take the onion and cut it into long, thin pieces. Melt 2 tbsp. of butter in the soup pot and add in the onions. Allow to cook over a medium heat for 10-15 min. or until the onions are soft and browned.

Step 2.) Once the onions are almost fully caramelized, add in the roast garlic and the spices and stir the mixture together.

Step 3.) Lower the heat and push the mixture to one side of the pot. Place the other 2 tbsp. of butter into the pot and allow it to melt. Add in the flour.cornstarch. Whisk the butter and flour together while slowly raising the heat back up to medium until you get a fully mixed roux. 

Step 4.) Once you have the roux mixed, add in the chopped carrots and mix everything that is in the pot together. Slowly begin stirring in the chicken and beef broth. Allow everything to come to a bowl and then simmer until the carrots are soft. Taste the soup and adjust the spices as necessary.

Step 5.) As the soup has been simmering and then begins to cool, it will continue to thicken. If it does not seem thick enough for your potage, you can add another tbsp. of flour/cornstarch. At this point, you can serve the soup with the carrots still in cubes, or you can take a blender to the soup to make it completely smooth. Serve with bread of your choice! Enjoy!

~Results~

The roast garlic and caramelized onions bring a powerful base flavor to this soup, and I’ve begun to use it as a base for a lot of my soups, not just the potage! I recommend for any garlic lover, and those who aren’t feeling good and need a hot soup as a pick-me-up!

Salmon Cream Stew from Shirokuma Cafe - requested

(Or also known as AARGH I FORGOT THE PEAS - stew)

This was the very first request (something from shirokuma cafe) I ever got… (*hides face*)……………………………. 2 years ago. Actually @hungryleow also got it which is why she challenged me to a shokugeki but we never decided how it was going to happen, and it just fell by the wayside with all the other nice food we wanted to eat. :P This is a meal that Polar Bear cooked for Grizzly Bear when they were kids because Grizzly Bear’s refrigerator was full of only salmon.

About ‘Cream Stew’… it’s a yoshoku ‘Japanese Western Food’ that isn’t really found in the west. It entered the Japanese cooking vernacular when the government was trying to make people drink more milk to make them stronger in the Meiji Period.

I used a Bruno Cooking pot to cook it because I could turn the heat to just ‘warm’ if the Little Bottomless Pit started to fuss halfway and it wouldn’t burn, unlike cooking over a fire like I normally do. On a side note, the Little Bottomless Pit loves the third opening song of the anime - You & Me.

Ingredients

75g butter

1 big yellow onion, diced

4 tablespoons flour

5-8 potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks

1 big carrot, cut into chunks

Stock (vegetable or chicken) 2 cups

~ 300 g salmon (2 fillets)

¼ cup peas (which I forgot)

1 cup milk

Salt and pepper to taste

Butter Rolls/Dinner Rolls to serve with the stew

Method

1. Melt the butter in the pan and put in the onions to saute till transparent.

2. Getting a spatula/shallow ladle ready, slowly stir in the flour to make white ‘roux’.

3. Put in the potatoes and carrots and cover on low heat.

4. Meanwhile, cut the salmon into bite sized chunks. You can remove the skin if you want, but I opted to keep it in for the added omega 3 oils.

5. When the potatoes and carrots are soft, add in the salmon, and stir. (And the peas here, if you didn’t forget)

6. When the salmon turns pale pink, add in the stock and salt to taste and heat to a simmer.

7. Leave stew for as long as you like on very low heat.

8. Just before serving, heat to a simmer again and turn the heat off. Then slowly mix in the cup of milk.

9. Garnish with pepper and serve with butter/dinner rolls!

++++++

For more fan recipes, follow me @onionchoppingninja!

And check out my: Recipe Archive | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

cleaning or wipe your bare feet

breaking off a piece of bread and handing it to someone

putting the weight of a basket on your hip or head

eating nuts or berries while hunched over close to the ground

seeing something startling just out of your line of sight and very quickly stepping or leaping on to a larger object to get a better view

cupping your hands into running water to wash your face

the unanimous protection of a baby or child in a public space where women are present

Touching someone’s face with the back of your hand to see if they have a fever

Stopping to watch animals moving in groups (geese, fish, horses, butterflies, bees)

huddling together for warmth when it’s cold

marveling at sunlight through leaves

wonderment at the brightness of a full moon

CW: animal death

howdy!

- the exact one in the video multiple times

-a little old lady who literally followed me for two blocks excitedly babbling about how she had never seen anyone with such big boobs in her entire life and did not think anything over a d cup was actually a thing that existed and did all Americans have big boobs? And if so how did we find bras that fit? I was of course uncomfortable talking about my boobs with an absolute stranger so I did my best to pretend I didn’t understand Japanese very well. This only encouraged her to start MIMING her words while she spoke.

- a cultist who explained to me in broken English that George Washington had secretly been a member of her cult and that’s why I should totally join it (the cult in question was founded less than forty years ago and believes this one lady in Korea is the second coming of Jesus)

-a man who absolutely lost it and went positively giddy with excitement when he found out I was from Texas, proceeded to ask me many questions about Texas in surprisingly good English

-a fellow student who, upon hearing me mention that I had tried natto and enjoyed it, immediately assumed I didn’t have a very good grasp of Japanese and patiently explained to me that “suki” was not in fact the word for “hate”

-a lady who got excited and started talking to me way above my comprehension level in Japanese when she saw I had been reading the information plaques in a local museum with few problems. I managed to communicate to her that I was an exchange student but honestly I did not catch most of that conversation

*A cashier who, despite me speaking to her in perfect Japanese, decided that I couldnt understand enough Japanese to figure out that she wanted to ask if I wanted a bag for my food. So she made a ton of hand gestures and used google translate.

*A man who caught me on my lunch break to ask me a bunch of stereotype-based questions like "have you been to prison?", "can you rap?", "do you like fried chicken?" Because he honestly thought this was a good way to connect with black americans.

*Me, writing in what little kanji I know (i focus on hiragana and katakana) and schoolchildren thinking I made it up because they had not learned those kanji in school yet.

*Me singing Gurenge (kimetsu no yaiba opening) and a bunch of kids asking if I was half Japanese, despite not looking Japanese.

*Roughly 25% of Japanese people that I eat with being absolutely floored that a non-asian like myself knew how to eat with chopsticks.

*Catching people who assume I cant understand them, mocking me in Japanese for...being a foreigner.

*A Japanese man in a cowboy hat, spurs, and just complete stereotypical cowboy attire (but having never been to the US) running up to me and squealing because I was the first american he had ever met.

*Explaining to a neighbor that violent gangs still exist in the US, and that most of them weren't like The Godfather.

*Explaining that the US is not just one big Texas, New York City, or Las Vegas. I was legitimately called a liar by people who had only been to one of these places and no where else in the US.

*People absolutely speechless at my great Japanese pronunciation skills. And even more disbelief because I got a ton of it from anime.