Last Sunday, I participated in my first-ever Curling tournament game. Yes, the Olympic sport that involves those round stones that are slid across the ice towards a circular target as other players sweep in front of it with brooms. I was awful, I was freezing…and I had a lot of fun.
One of the things that I’ve been trying to do since things started to fall apart for me was to try out all sorts of new activities that I couldn’t do where I used to live. As a result, I picked up both kendo and curling. Two times a week (at least until the practices got suspended this week due to COVID), I pick up my shinai (bamboo sword) and I learn how to use it in kendo. One day a week, I try to step out onto the ice and curl stones.
And when I’m not doing either, I am recipe planning and ingredient shopping and actually cooking for Cooking Eorzea.
It would be so, so easy to just stay home and not do anything. It is tempting to just grind out 428: Shibuya Scramble or Conker’s Bad Fur Day after work every day and not interact with anyone or do anything. Sometimes, I have to push myself to put on my shoes, throw on a jacket, and just get out the door when I am absolutely not feeling like it.
I really am working on making the best of everything here and writing this column every week has become an incredibly important part of my life. Simply put, I am not always feeling the Love, Eorzean Style for everything in my life. But I am trying.
If you’ve missed an installment of Cooking Eorzea, you can check out all the prior recipes here.
Recipe of the Week
This week’s Cooking Eorzea recipe is the seventh recipe of The Ultimate FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Cookbook, Nutrient-Rich Porridge. This ‘Easy’ difficulty-rated dish is from the Gyr Abania region of Eorzea and is a single serving dish that has to refrigerate overnight in order to properly set. This dish is probably the easiest dish I have made for Cooking Eorzea, as I was able to easily find all of the ingredients that I needed in three stores and because it was essentially a dump/shake/chill recipe.
Here is what the recipe is supposed to look like:
Featured Ingredient of the Week
This week’s featured ingredient is Cardamom. I had never heard of it before this recipe, and I managed to find a single bottle of it in Wal~Mart when I was buying my ingredients for this week’s Cooking Eorzea column. It has SUCH a strong and intense scent and flavor. I actually tried out a small bit of this spice after I put the porridge in the fridge to cool overnight, and I was shocked at just how strong it was.
My Cooking Attempt
As always, here is a photograph of all the ingredients that I used this week. The beet sugar from last week did make a return! I was glad that I got so much of it when I bought it through Amazon.
The first thing I did was I pulled out my gram scale, and I measured out the correct amount of dried cherries.
I then got out my airtight container, and I dumped in first the rolled oats and second the cardamom.
Next up was the allspice and then the cinnamon.
I added in the ginger and chia seeds next. The chia seeds were surprisingly difficult to scoop up since they kept all wanting to escape from my measuring cup.
Next up? The salt and flaxseed meal.
Next up was the dried fruit. I kept eating the remaining dried cherries and golden raisins out of their respective containers this morning, even after I had finished the recipe!
I then set it all aside for a moment so I could tear open more packets of beet sugar to fill up my tablespoon. Even after two recipes, I still had one unopened bag and quite a few packets remaining in the other bag to use in the future for other dishes!
I then added the beet sugar into the container, and I set it aside temporarily. This is what the full dry ingredients mixture looked like.
I then poured the milk into a separate bowl.
I then had to add in the greek yogurt. I had the ‘bright’ idea to scoop out the proper amount with a tablespoon scoop…and it turned out that it was really thick and stuck on the measuring spoon. I kept having to shake it loose into the bowl with milk in it, and I ended up splattering it some on my kitchen wall as well. That was definitely not intended, obviously.
I then whisked the milk and greek yogurt together until it was all well blended.
I then poured the wet mixture into the dry ingredients.
I then snapped the lid onto the container and shook it up for a good few minutes.
It was pretty liquidy (is that even a word?) after I finished shaking it. After gently shaking the container to try to get the final mixture off of the sides, I placed it in the fridge overnight.
The next day, I pulled the porridge out of my refrigerator. I was pleasantly surprised at how thick and consolidated that it had gotten overnight when I dipped my spoon into it.
Here is the final dish for Week 5 of Cooking Eorzea!
After taking this photo, I pulled out a spoon and tried the porridge. It was a dish that I recognized was really, really good on an intellectual level. That said, I didn’t care for it- it turns out that I did not like all the spices being mixed together. I kept eating away at it for about fifteen minutes, and I kept having to just set the last fourth aside due to the spices being a little too much for me to enjoy ultimately.
This was also definitely a good breakfast dish, as it absolutely curbed my morning hunger.
Afterword
The dish’s portion size was clearly meant for one person, and if I was to make it again, I would absolutely cut down on the spice amounts. I also have lots of dried fruit left over, and I have been snacking on that all day today (and while writing this!).
As always, I want to thank Victoria Rosenthal for writing The Ultimate FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Cookbook. I also want to thank the staff over at Insight Editions for giving me permission to use the photos from their book to show how these recipes are actually supposed to look. Furthermore, I owe Brandon Rose a special thanks for creating the logo for this series on short notice. You should check him and his works out over on Twitter.
Finally, I want to thank both Hiromichi Tanaka and Naoki Yoshida for producing FINAL FANTASY XIV Online in both iterations of the game.
Next Week
Next week, we will conclude (for now!) the Breakfast portion of Cooking Eorzea with the Wildwood Scrambled Eggs. I am excited to be working with mushrooms again, and I am looking forward to see how they turn out with feta cheese on top of them!
Please look forward to it!
Have you used Cardamom before? What do you think of dried fruit as a snack?
Let us know in the comments below!
