senshiscookbook

[senshiscookbook]

progress update #2

made a BIG DINNER tonight full of dungeon meshi foods. will probably post them in one big post rather than separately! for convenience's sake, but also will link back to them in a separate masterpost of every dish or something like that.

a few weeks ago while I was traveling I actually happened upon grilled horse, so I tried it in lieu of having to buy my own goddamn horse meat to yakiniku. I think I'm going to take this approach for things I'm more hesitant to try/are more difficult to justify making for myself (the grilled parasite, which is basically just unagi, which I also had storebought last week). (there is no point to buying unagi and grilling it yourself, they already sell it with the sauce and everything.) I'll upload the pictures and my review at some point! to at least let people know what it tastes like (especially the horse I guess).

[senshiscookbook]

Giant Scorpion and Walking Mushroom Hotpot

So a few weeks before I decided I was going to attempt this recipe, I actually obtained a hotpot from my local Asian grocery for entirely separate hotpot reasons (hence the hotpot you see in the photo). It works! It’s great!

For ingredient replacements, I made the following substitutions:

Giant scorpion — Lobster tail, which I got from my local supermarket. I realised halfway through cooking them that cutting them in half with a knife was going to be really hard, so I actually used kitchen scissors to slice the shell open before using the knife to crack them lengthwise. If lobster is inaccessible for you, use shrimp.

Invertatoes — Small potatoes (babyish), if you’re going to attempt this i recommend peeling them before putting them in the hotpot because it makes them melt into the stock in a way that’s really nice. These will be cooked when you can poke a fork through without resistance.

Walking Mushroom — King Oyster Mushrooms, cut up the stem and slice it vertically so you end up with these 1-2 inch mushroom slices in squareish shapes. You can keep the caps whole for the look but honestly if you’re not taking photos, the texture is nicer when sliced through lol.

Dried Slime — Konnyaku/Konjac noodles, I also found these at my local Asian grocery. I like the texture of them a lot and they’re really yummy because they’re basically made for hotpot.

Algae — I rehydrated a bunch of wakame seaweed before placing it inside the hotpot. IF YOU ARE GOING TO DO THIS I recommend NOT using a hotpot stock with a lot of particles. There are also other types of Japanese seaweeds which are meant for soup that look closer to the real deal, but they are not as easily available to me.

Hotpot stock — I know it says water and salt in the manga but frankly I wanted spicy food, so I used HaiDiLao mala hotpot stock. You can use whatever stock you want to be honest, the downside of the stock I used is that while it was extremely tasty, the peppercorns and chillis did get lost in the seaweed so I kept biting into peppercorns by accident. Honestly, that’s my bad for being way too eager to eat spicy food. Anyway use something you won’t regret as much, like mushroom stock or chicken stock or something.

It’s possible to make this meal fully pescatarian and gluten-free (the konnyaku noodles AFAIK do not have any gluten in them). I added a little bit of noncanonical chicken to my hotpot because I was trying to eat up ingredients in my fridge before travelling, but you are of course not obligated to do this.

You can also see from the photos that I laid out the ingredients in the pot before I poured the stock in, which is generally counterintuitive for hotpot, but I did it to get the layout. So whatever. Bring everything to a rolling boil. If you’ve put everything in at the same time, everything cooks fairly quickly except the potatoes which will finish cooking last (see above for the sign that they’re done). Since this is hotpot, feel free to begin picking at it in order of doneness, beginning with the seaweed and noodles (neither needs much cooking) and then heading over to the proteins.

Yay, cooking!

[senshiscookbook]

progress update #1

marked out some recipe plans in goodnotes and annotated dishes. adaptation honestly looks like it won't be too difficult but there are some parts with difficult to obtain ingredients

i think there's an overall benefit to studying japanese (and more broadly asian) cooking techniques from this

when we get to the balut it's going to be a pain in the ass to acquire here

bought lobster tails for giant scorpion hotpot today :]

[senshiscookbook]

Heyhey this is Senshi's Cookbook, a sideblog of @scalematey's dedicated to adapting Dungeon Meshi recipes for common use (that is, substituting the monster ingredients).

Some rules I've set for myself:

Dishes must be based off ones from DM. This includes ones in the manga and will primarily focus on the ones with monster parts because it's not difficult to find a recipe for regular pork stew.

Dishes do not need to be perfectly plated. It is the spirit that counts.

Where possible dishes should include fruits or vegetables of some kind.

Substitutions do not need to be exact but justification must be given for why the substitution was made (this will be particularly relevant in the case of Treasure Bug Jam. I have plans).

Don't cook anything I won't eat and will end up wasting. This is probably mainly to do with the Living Armour, which one would normally substitute with mollusks, but I don't like them very much. We'll figure something out.

There is no ordered posting schedule because I am currently a student. I'd like to think I'm good at cooking but I'm also nowhere near a professional level, and I also have some sensory issues around food. So we'll see how it goes! Maybe this will flop and I'll forget about it in a month. Hopefully not.

[senshiscookbook]

thank you mr senshi for my life