#clear party

Papanashi, aka Papanași, aka Stormblood era healer food. Marked as medium difficulty, though given the use of boiling oil in the cooking I can see this one being intimidating. It also involves ricotta cheese, and optionally rum, which are fairly acquired tastes.

That said, as a lover of fried baked goods (and because the sweet sauce and the jam was a nice red/white combo for Christmas) I decided to make this the first thing I cooked from the book. With that said, lets begin!

First things first, a confession- I didn't make the jam myself. I used a jar of jam because, as said above, I was making this as a Christmas dinner dessert with my family, was misinformed of the date people would be coming over, and I needed to get it done while everyone was eating dinner so, no time to really make the jam. I also didn't use rum.

That said! A very easy recipe to prepare. The sour cream sauce came together perfectly, and tasted deliciously sweet with just a zap of lemon to it that really tied it all together. The dough itself was initially fairly chunky, and did not seem to come together right, in a way that can intimidate newer culinarians or those with high anxiety (me). Diligence and trusting the strat helps here, it'll come together, it just takes a bit.

I did successfully make 8 of them, as the yield said I would, though I believe I maaay have made them a bit too big. I'd probably have been able to make more if I'd reduced the size, or made the hole in the middle bigger, but ultimately I think this was the best.

Then, came the deep-frying. So, some word of advice for you culinarians out there; make sure you have metal tongs to use in deep frying BEFORE you have a pot of boiling oil with doughnuts frying in them. I could have swore we did but OOPS, only plastic, so I had to end up flipping these bad-boys with a fork. Not ideal.

I also... probably almost caused myself severe injury because I used the pot we use for vegetable steaming to hold the oil. A pot that is thinner than regular pots. It's unlikely it would have broken the pot and poured boiling oil all over the oven and me, but it was a concern in the aftermath of things! Additionally, to avoid allergies for my aunt I used vegetable oil instead of peanut oil- this gives the resulting doughnut a darker crust, but does not overly impact the cooking.

All these completely normal mistakes aside, stay careful and cautious. Deep-frying is a scary thing, and while it is dangerous it's easier than you think. Stay cool and calm, and keep some water nearby (for you, not the oil if it starts catching on fire!). They'll flip easy, especially with the correct tool, and will form quite well in the oil, though note they will puff up a bit so only fry two at a time.

Finally, the serving. Due to the size I made mine, they were... quite a bit rounder than the recipe anticipated. This did provide some level of difficulty with the plating, and eating, but is not detrimental to the dish/

This meal had the most tasters I'm likely to have, since it was a Christmas party. All involved were not told what it was beyond "a deep-fried desert" because I felt the sour cream sauce might initially put them off of it.

The end result? Extreme success from all eaters- my mother and sister are not one for eating for various reasons, and both quickly ate it and wished they could have more. My aunt's son, who is the pickiest eater on the planet (and a wildly refined palette, he prefers shrimp to hot-dogs) loved it. My dad, who hates lemon, enjoyed it despite the lemony zing to the sauce.

I would strongly recommend this dish, though will note that it's likely a little expensive. You basically use an entire container of ricotta cheese for this, and that stuff isn't necessarily cheap. That said, everything else is fairly cheap, and if you're willing to tango with the liquid that hates you, give it a shot. You won't regret it, until you realize you want more and have to make more yourself.

You're probably looking at this title and wondering what I'm on about. Well, the thing is: I love to cook, and I love Final Fantasy XIV, and so when they released the Eorzea cookbook, I basically had to jump on that.

Then there were wildfires, and transitional surgery, and my gallbladder exploding, and recovering from all of that since it all happened in roughly the same month. You know, the usual.

But ultimately, I have managed to cook things from it... and that'll be what this is, going over the dishes I make, my experience with them, and advice I'd give to the budding culinarian that wants to tackle these dishes. Some of them are difficult, but all of them are rewarding- probably, there's some stuff in here I'm not overly fond of but we'll see how it goes.

The bane of newbie players, the get-rich-quick scheme of a dozen old-heads. The favored snack of a frustrating finale to the Ivalice raid series. Today, we're baking bacon. Near I'm aware there's no cultural stuff attached to this, so lets dive right in.

Another medium difficulty one, though let me just say straight away that I don't, necessarily, think this one is all that difficult at all. The most trouble you're likely to encounter is using the scissors, boiling the bacon, and the fact that you forgot to do math and didn't realize this would take nearly three hours and thus forgot to each lunch.

Now, like with our previous entry, we had to make some substitutions that may have affected the end result, among other issues encountered through the process, but I've got stuff to say regarding that at the end of this whole thing, so lets save that for. Instead, lets talk about those substitutions first!

So, the recipe calls for a mix of all-purpose flour and whole-wheat flour. I suspect this is in part a health thing and a flavor profile thing, as well as ensuring it is easier to pull apart when eaten. Unfortunately we are lacking in whole-wheat flour, so I just used more flour. Additionally, we don't got no crushed mustard-seed, so I used regular French prepared mustard. This will, also, strongly change at least the aesthetic of the dish, and perhaps the taste.

Finally (beyond some preferential choices like replacing the flaky sea salt with garlic salt) is the actual bacon... we only had four strips of bacon, so we're lacking on that department. So, that's a thing.

With that all being said, lets continue to the first major step of this actually quite massive endeavor- putting it all together!

So here's the thing. I've never been... good, at getting my yeast to blossom. Part of this is because the thermometer we have is more for stabbing into things so I'm never 100% sure if I'm using it right when judging liquids. Part of this is because I live in the frozen north of Canada and thus do not have a proper frame of reference for what is warm, hot, cold, etc etc. Part of this is because God hates me and the devil aint to fond neither.

That being said, the dough came together quite well. Do be cautious when putting the pan-heated milk-water-yeast mix into the bowl, because you're gonna be hand mixing that sucker and hey guess what That Shit's Hot. Not, scalding, but like... just be careful yo. This snuck up on me somehow so I'm pointing it out. As well, the initial mixing will look a bit flaky, but don't panic- the ten minute timer to knead this bad boy into an orb is true and clear.

Then comes the rising... and my further problems. Since my little bread larva up there expanded maybe an inch or two, not the DOUBLE it was supposed to. However, my wonderful and perfect girlfriend, who is a bread doctor, helped me find a way to at least help triage the patient. We'll see how this goes...

There's four of them now.

I was initially concerned about the rolling pin section, in part because I worry I'm just powerfully destructive and will ruin it... but somehow, despite not really expanding (even with Qwerty's indispensable advice about using a slightly warm oven to proof bread) it rolled out basically perfect? It stuck to the pin a bit, but came away without any damage, and ended up neatly and perfectly taking the exact correct shape they needed for the bacon... if I had the right amount of bacon, of course.

As you can see, the yellow of the prepared mustard strikes a... less than ideal look, but this is the pupae stage so it's fine. As with many things that form a shell about themselves you've gotta help'em out, so this is the part where you use scissors to start cutting the "leaf" areas, where the bread will (hopefully) expand into easily tearble chunks of meat, mustard, and bread. My main advice for these? Don't be afraid of cutting too deep- it is harder to cut these babies in half than you'd think, and it's for the best.

It's at this point that we've finally, finally, hit the part where we get to baking.

And we encounter problem number like, five thousand. We only got one baking rack in the house. No idea where the other has gone, whether it has absconded to mother's never to return, or was sent to a farm up state. Regardless, the end result of this is that I had to do something probably super dangerous that I don't encourage you to do! I just... put the baking bowl with a cup of water in it, on the pan with them! I also forgot to sprinkle water on them till they'd been in for like two minutes which I also don't recommend doing but don't do that first one!

So. You might have noticed... I had a lot of problems with this dish. Some of them due to known issues with ingredients, some of them due to execution error, some due to flat-out dropped rotations and having to god damn wing it.

But here's the thing. Cooking is, despite all evidence to the contrary, a rather difficult thing. But TRYING to cook, taking those tools in your hands and making something? That's always worth doing. The bit of advice that has helped me the most when cooking (again, delivered by the incomparable Qwerty) is to just... move with confidence. It you make something that tastes good, then you've succeeded, no matter what it looks like or how scuffed the process was.

Take this to hard, fellow culinarians. I may have messed up at every single stage in some way or the other, but the end result? The outer shell is a little harder than expected, tearing it is a little tricker, the oven being a fickle dragon so it's a little burned on the bottom. But you know what?

It tastes great. Absolutely savoury, with a nice proper crunch to the crust and a soft, tender inside. The mustard gives it a fascinating tinge of flavor, the bacon breaks up the bread taste expertly. It's pretty damn good, if I do say so myself, and I highly recommend cooking it yourself. And don't fret if you don't do everything right the first time- if you clear, you clear.