An Orrian Treat, A Bowl of Poulty Tarragon Pasta

Excelsior!

Spending time away from one's krewe can get pretty stressful at times, and this kitchen commander is no exception. For my krewe, cooking is what got us through the toughest challenges. Burning the midnight oil meant cooking, letting my cats "cook" for me (a prototype they called it, glitch I say!), or going skritt brained. Finding and cooking a moa was our go to solution.

While I hate to admit it, during the Battles for Orr, I felt the need to check up on my krewe from time to time... You know how it is, win a Snaff, and all of a sudden the Inquest want your plans and more.

Our Asura Gate built at Fort Trinity certainly helped, though it got harder the further into Orr we got. While back home getting some golem aid, I killed a few moas and brought quality Metrican poultry back with me.

At the camps, and even moreso at the Fort, we had the basics to work with, and canned pizza if you weren't culinarily inclined. Outside were some of the best herbs and spices you could harvest, quite the feat for a place literally spewing undeath from the ground.

It was here, on the battlefields of Orr, that I made my first Bowl of Tarragon Pasta, with fresh Orrian herbs, poultry that fed on the tastes of home.

First, the base of many a sauces, Roux.

Bowl of Roux

Equal parts

- Bag of Flour

- Stick of Butter

Melt a Stick of Butter (scaled to serving size) in saucepan.

Add flour per butter once melted.

Let cook at a lowmediumish you know by feel temperature (or ask the Master Chef in Rata Sum south of the Accountancy Ward) for about 5-10 minutes

Don't cook it longer than 10 minutes, this is a white sauce, not a dark nutty midnight oil burning sauce.

The flour is going to be key, it is what makes the emulsion work so smoothly, creating a creaminess between the butter and whatever else you put in it. You can make it thicker or thinner, to contrast the thickness of what you are adding to it. For this recipe you want a thicker roux.

Anyways, your roux should look something like this

Bowl of Tarragon Cream Sauce

- That Bowl of Roux you just made

- Bowl of Sour Cream

- Bowl of Herbed Poultry Stock

- Tarragon Leaves

Add the poultry stock, sour cream, and tarragon to roux, stir until texture is smooth. Add water as necessary (water can make the difference between a prototype and a success).

Bowl of Poultry Tarragon Pasta

- Pasta Noodles from the Black Lion Trading Company

- Bowl of Tarragon Cream Sauce

- Slab of Poultry Meat from whatever moa got between you and the Inquest

Cook pasta, plate, add cooked poultry tastefully onto noodles (better than this prototype), and top with sauce. If your attempt is any less than this prototype, consider taking up armorcrafting instead.

And trust me, you don't want to make your own pasta, its a pain without the help of a good golem (I recommend an A551-ST Mk 2 if you have to).

Instead, try pasta purchased through our sponsor, the Black Lion Trading Company!

Don't want to deal with the work yourself? Can't stand working with an A551-ST golem? BLTC has what you need, just ask a representative and they can have you connected to a product or solution in nanoseconds!

Well, here's my Bowl Plate of Poultry Tarragon Pasta, share yours down in the comments

Got a favourite dish? Maybe a kitchen experiment you'd like to see me try? Let me know in the comments, I'd love to hear from you.

See you next week!

Coming Home to a Plate of Berry Cookies

Excelsior!

After a long battle in the Mists, what's better than coming home to a nice plate of cookies? Not much, statistically speaking...

A personal favourite are the berry cookies, the really simple ones, Strawberry Cookies, Blueberry Cookies, and Blackberry Cookies.

While the traditional way of doing these cookies is to make a jam of your berries and top them with that, I just love fresh fruit. Sometimes when I'm back in Metrica Province, I'll pick some blueberries, while I often find strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries on my travels, and my ears are they ever a refreshing way to top a simple cookie!

Here's how I made them:

First, we need a cookie dough, a simple sugar cookie dough will do:

Ball of Cookie Dough

- 1 Egg per
- 1 stick of Butter per
- 0.9 cups of Flour
- 0.4 cups of Sugar
- baking soda in a reasonable quantity scaled to the above


First setup your wet and dry ingredients, and leave your egg to the side. Flour and baking soda in one bowl, mixed to a nice even distribution. In the other bowl, your butter and sugar.

If you are having trouble measuring the quantities, just think roughly a cup and roughly half, but not quite.

Mix the butter and sugar until it forms a grainy, yet creamy, consistency. Sugar may be wet, but hydrophilic things don't dissolve in hydrophobic things, so expect it to stay grainy no matter how much you mix. Statistically speaking, you can blame the Inquest if it doesn't stay grainy.

Mix in your eggs, using one per scale of butter and sugar. Its the ratio of butter to sugar to flour that really matters, eggs you can be more flexible with.

Now add dry ingredients to wet bowl, mix till you can't, then work it out with your hands.

The Cookies:

Shape dough into balls, about what would fit into an Asura's hand size wise, and place evenly spaced on cookie sheet.

Press down doughballs with a finger, or a knuckle in a glove if you are a Charr. Fur can be nice, just not in food.

Bake at 463.15 K (190C or 375 F, for my human readers) for roughly 9 minutes, +/- 1 to account for local climate.

On taking the cookies out, use your finger or gloved knuckle to press down again in the center, to ensure that the dimple remains. Don't be afraid of the heat, you want it still hot when you do this, as once its cooled, its too late, and you'll have to start over again.

Instead of a jam, I used a thickened syrup made of my fresh fruits, and since I lost the remainder of my strawberries to the toxic spores in Kessex, I've subbed in raspberries. Any fruit with a same fruit syrup or jam will work, and traditionally it would just be a jam or jelly of the fruit anyways.

See my Tribute to Eevee post for the syrups I used.


Blackberry Cookies:

- Ball of Cookie Dough (you should have already finished the dough into the cookies)

- Blackberry (jam or syrup, and fruit)






Strawberry Cookies:

- Ball of Cookie.. plate of finished cookies
- Strawberries Raspberries prepped








Blueberry Cookies

- Cookies from earlier
- Blueberries, prepped




For each of the above, simply use a dispenser to put just enough syrup/jam/jelly to mostly fill the dimple (or completely if you are from the College of Statics), and add a piece of fresh fruit to the centre (or not)


Serve on a nice plate for all your friends to enjoy! They'll definitely thank you after coming back from a hard fought battle to a plate of fresh fruit cookies

Got a favourite dish you'd like to see a kitchen commander cook up? Post it in the comments below!

Through the Mists - A Tribute to Eevee

I was answering the call of my world last weekend, and found myself in a strange world overrun by humans.

This was a very strange world, fractured by the Mists, with rifts between it and another world being easily opened. The humans of this world would forcibly capture powerful creatures that came through the rifts, and force the, using a handheld magitech device to interact with the creatures.

The rifts themselves never fully opened, the magitech device was required to force it open, and would rip the creature from its world into a weird kind of symbiotic servitude. Humans would fight each other with these creatures, and occasionally an extremely powerful creature would tear open a rift through the Mists and force the humans to fight it.

One particular creature was being ripped through the Mists quite frequently that weekend, Eevee, and while statistically speaking its rather rare to see a silver coloured one, they were quite common.

My ears! It was just like when the Inquest were working with Joko on portal tech, only less evil!

I wonder if the translocater that won my krewe the Snaff Prize was used to make that tech too, I'm fairly sure Joko had the Inquest using it for his antics.

I decided to use my skills as a kitchen commander to make a tribute to these Eevee and their alternate forms:

Lemonade Eevee

- Juice of 1 Lemon per
- Zest of 1 Lemon per
- Cup of Sugar
- Drop of Orange Dye

Make a simple syrup using the sugar and lemon juice, simmer off excess liquid, add JUST ONE drop of Orange Dye. Scale recipe as needed.

Add syrup to a glass of water for instant Eevee lemonade.


Lemonade Vaporeon

- Cup of Lemonade Eevee syrup (minus the dye)
- Blueberries
- Drop of Blue Dye

Absolutely do not add the Orange Dye if you want to make Lemonade Vaporeon.

Extract the blueberries into the Lemonade Eevee syrup during simmering, add 5-10 drops of Blue Dye.

Add to water to taste.


Lemonade Flareon

- Cup of Lemonade Eevee (if you included the dye already, it will work, but I'd start over anyways)
- Raspberries
- Drop of Red Dye

While simmering, add raspberries and extract.

That Eevee dye is neither here nor there, just add the Drop of Red Dye (3-7 total).

Add to water to taste.


Lemonade Jolteon

- Same as above
- Juice of 1 Lime per
- Zest of 1 Lime per
- Drop of Lime Dye

Like the others, add zest and lime juice while simmering. If you added the Orange Dye, start over and omit it.

Add strictly 1 Drop of Lime Dye, any more and you'll have to start over.

Add to water to taste.

Steak and Eggs Drottot

Today we're making an American style breakfast, something I learned of when heading through the Mists.

A typical American classic breakfast would be something involving eggs, a meat, and some bread. We could do a number of things for this, but I'm thinking some simple Buttered Toast using freshly made bread, with Drottot's Poached Egg, and a Spicy Lime Steak.

In honor of Drottot Lashtail, I'll name this battlefield hearty breakfast Steak and Eggs Drottot. Drottot, this one's for you, and all the hard work you do with those devourer eggs!

For the bread, since all this will be made in a pan, why not fry the bread too?

Bread:

- water (scale to serving size)
- yeast (flour is usually covered in this friendly fungus, but feel free to use other sources)
- salt (pinch)
- flour (scale to serving size)
- cooking oil

Even though we are making this bread by frying, you'll want your pan on low heat, so it can cook all the way through, creating a balance between fluffy and dense.

Proof the yeast in a small amount of water, a pinch of sugar helps feed the yeast, but if you are using baking powder/soda, this is unnecessary. Once proofed, mix in flour.

Between the water and the flour, what you are aiming for is a mixture with a consistency that is almost kneadable, and able to be spread by hand so it is around 1- cm in thickness, ideally round. If using yeast, let this sit for a while before tossing it into the pan, not making a loaf, just look for the dough to have visibly risen.

One dough is risen (if using baking powder, skip that), toss into a pan with oil hot enough to fry, but low enough that it will take a long time to do so.

Flip once bottom is nicely browned, then cook till finished (it should be browned nicely on both sides, using low heat here is key to ensuring the centre fully cooks). Cut as desired, and serve!

I'd like to try making this with Cassava Flour sometime, but its not an ingredient I've yet seen. Comment if you know where I might be able to find some in South Western Ontario!

Sorry, I'm not the greatest at bringing recipes from my head to paper, I kinda just eyeball everything. Please leave suggestions and personal variations in the comments!

Drottot's Poached Eggs:


- eggs (1 per round)
- water (for poaching)
- chili (pinch)
- oil

Typically you would either vortex the water in a pot and drop the egg in, cook till yolk thickens but is still runny.

That won't capture the beauty of the yolk that you see in Drottot's Poached Eggs though, so we're going to use a different method.

Ideally indirect heat is best, but I'll be using very low heat, and silicone egg rounds in a pan.

Grease the rounds, place on pan. Add whole egg to egg round. Add pinch of chili (I'm using cayenne and lime zest, to match the meat) Pour boiling water into heated pan and on top of egg. Try to keep covered, but check often, as different setups will take different timeframes.

Remove from heat once yolk has started to cook, but is still runny. Serve on buttered toast.

Spicy Lime Steak:

- Slab of Red Meat
- Salt (not much)
- Pepper (not much)
- Lime (a spritz, and zest from a single lime for topping)
- Chili (for seasoning and topping)

Get a ziplock bag large enough for your slab of red meat, and put meat inside.

Add to bag your crushed or powdered chilis, I used cayenne, enough lime juice that the slab of meat is well covered when bag is closed, and I added a bit of smoked paprika for flavour. Seal bag.

Let the steak marinate, come back, and grill till desired doneness. I pan fried mine till medium-rare, adding the salt and pepper after having flipped the steak.

Garnish with lime zest and and chili.


And for the finished battlefield hearty breakfast, Steak and Eggs Drottot, something a Charr would kill for!

Sneak Peak for August

Mitsu here!

Been thinking about where I should start... Its quite hard, the flavours of Tyria are so diverse and amazing, everything's good, and it makes choosing things kinda hard...

There's some people in my life who could use some love right now, and I thought, ya know, what better way to spread the love than with some cookies?

Another day, another adventure. Heard from the front lines they needed some help in the Mist Wars, and well... Its not hard to get lost in the Mists! Mistakes were made, and I discovered something they call the "classic American breakfast." High energy, high protein, high sugar, great way to start the day before marching into battle.

Gotta bring the snacks though, something to keep you going when your tower is under siege, and so we come back to cookies. And bread, bread is great, so many things you can do with it, infinite possibilities! Statistically speaking, there's a bread for every situation!