Shortly after I got back from New York City, I developed a bad pain in the left side of my face. I went to the dentist, who told me that I had infections behind both of my left side wisdom teeth and that I had a badly cracked bottom left molar. The dentist explained to me that I should get all four wisdom teeth out, and then once I was sufficiently recovered from that, I could get my cracked tooth crowned. Being in my mid-30s, this was quite distressing to me because I live alone and I had almost no one to assist me with it. I ended up having to recruit a friend’s daughter to ferry me home from oral surgery, and I spent the next few days off work and recovering.
It was during that time that I finally decided to start NieR Replicant Ver. 1.22474487139… on my Xbox Series X, since I was attending NieR: Orchestra Concert 12024 [the end of data] in 2024, and I have never played any of the games before. I hate the fact that I often do not start particular video games until there is an unmovable event in my near future that forces me to play that particular game next, and the NieR franchise was the latest example of this.
It was about 10 hours in that I realized the absolute madness and genius of YOKO TARO, and the insane, amazing, wonderful world that he creates in his games. I ended up playing through this game to unlock all five endings and I did all of the different side quests throughout. I am currently playing SINoALICE on my phone before the servers go down, and then I am going to dive into NieR: Automata [Game of the YoHRa Edition] before I see the concert.
It’s honestly amazing to me how there are simply so many good games out there on my shelf that I have yet to start, especially when there is a gem like the NieR series out there. If you haven’t had a chance to play something by YOKO TARO, then do yourself a favor and do so. It helped me get through my wisdom teeth and crowning processes, especially until this week when it was all done, and I could finally start making dishes for Cooking Eorzea again with Love, Eorzean Style.
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 dish is the 40th recipe in The Official FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Cookbook, and it comes out of the Coerthas Region with a cooking difficulty of ‘Medium.’
I was really nervous (and what turned out to be justifiably so) working with peanut oil again, as I did not want to risk burning my home since I was going to try to not make this dish on the stove like I did the Battered Fish recipe previously.
Here is what the Deep-Fried Okeanis is supposed to look like:
Featured Ingredient of the Week
Red potatoes are a unique food that contains 10% of the recommended daily Vitamin B6 amount, are naturally gluten free, and the skin is loaded with fiber, iron, B vitamins, and potassium. I was shocked when researching red potatoes just how healthy they were and how easily I could integrate them into my own daily diet without much issue. I grew up on russet potatoes, and so this kind of potato never really entered my attention until I started eating them at restaurants as an adult. To be completely honest though, I never thought about cooking with them until this week’s Cooking Eorzea column. It is because of all the wonderful nutrients inside of red potatoes that I made them this week’s Featured Ingredient!
My Cooking Attempt
This week’s Cooking Eorzea shared a lot of similarities with Week 7’s Crab Croquette recipe:
First, I preheated both the oven and a pot of water.
While both of those were getting ready, I got out the boneless pork chops and I flatted them out with the meat hammer. I had to use a lot of strength to break down the meat and flatten it out, and I was afraid of bothering the neighbors with how loudly the banging was.
After I put the hammered pork chops into the refrigerator, I peeled and chunked the red potatoes.
After the potatoes were sliced up, I blended together the olive oil, rosemary, oregano, garlic powder, and onion powder together into a seasoning blend.
As I started to lay the potatoes out into the tray, it was then that I realized that I skipped a step: I forgot to put the sliced red potatoes into the pot to cook. So, I put the seasoned raw potatoes into the refrigerator, and I did the process again with more red potatoes.
After slicing the red potatoes up, I placed them into the boiling pot of water to cook for eight minutes.
While the potatoes were cooking, I made another seasoning blend for the potatoes.
When the timer was up, I scooped out the cooked potatoes and blended them in with the seasoning. The potatoes were incredibly soft, and I had to take great care not to accidentally mash them.
I layered the baking tray with the potatoes, and then I covered the seasoned red potatoes with both salt and pepper.
I then placed the potatoes into the pre-heated over for 20 minutes to bake.
After the timer went off, I pulled the potatoes out, turned them over, and then put them back in for another 15 minutes.
While the potatoes were cooking some more, I added the peanut oil into a large pot and I started to heat it up.
On a separate plate, I added together garlic powder and all-purpose flour and blended them together.
In a bowl, I added together fish sauce and two eggs before whisking them together.
At this point, the red potatoes were done and so I pulled them out of the oven and set them aside on top of the warm stove to keep warm.
On a second and final plate, I scatted out two cups of panko onto it.
Here is what the three dip stations looked like all together.
With the dipping stations prepared, I then got the boneless pork chops out of the refrigerator and coated them all with salt and pepper.
Once the peanut oil was at the proper temperature, I dipped the boneless pork chop first in the flour/garlic mixture…
…I then dipped it into the wet mixture and shook off the extra back into the bowl…
…And finally coated it entirely with panko.
I then put it into the pot of oil…And the entire thing immediately started to smoke up badly enough that it ended up setting off my fire alarm. I immediately hauled the pot to the concrete outside and threw open all of my windows and my doors to air out the apartment. To say that I was freaked out was an understatement.
I was supposed to let the meat deep fry for only four minutes in total, while flipping it midway through. Somehow, I did manage to pull the entire thing out after four minutes, and it was completely black. It turned out that the panko had burned, unfortunately. I am not quite sure why, since the thermometer had displayed the correct oil temperature.
I then laid it on a bowl covered with paper towels to drain the oil onto.
After most of the smoke had left my apartment, I sliced the lemon into quarters as the final step.
And here is the final Deep-Fried Okeanis dish for this week’s Cooking Eorzea!
Aside from the completely burned panko coating, the Deep-Fried Okeanis itself was absolutely delicious. Somehow, the meat itself was perfectly juicy and cooked, as you can see in this photograph below – especially after I squeezed out the lemon slice onto it. I was really, really surprised that it was edible at all with how blackened the outside was.
The seasoned red potatoes had a real restaurant-quality to them. The seasoning was perfect – especially the rosemary – and I loved just how crispy and well-cooked they were. I ended up eating all of them in one sitting while sitting on my porch outside. I cannot overstate how good they were, and that is a side dish that anyone can make easily.
Afterword
Obviously, burning the panko was not the way to go. I still am not quite sure why so much smoke appeared after I added the coated boneless pork chop to the pot. I ended up making the rest of the boneless pork chops on a skillet, though that was obviously not ideal for the recipe. Overall, if I was to do this recipe again, I would definitely do it on top of the grill like I did Week 36’s Battered Fish recipe, just to avoid the smoke issue again.
Soooo…’thank yous’! First up, 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…because the blackened result I had this week was obviously not ideal. I also 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 X. Next, I want to thank YOKO TARO for the crazy wonderfulness that is the games that he keeps coming up with and for integrating those characters and worlds into FINAL FANTASY XIV Online. You can check him out on X and on Instagram.
Finally, I want to thank both Hiromichi Tanaka and Naoki Yoshida for producing FINAL FANTASY XIV Online in both iterations of the game. None of this would be possible without both of them putting their hearts into creating Eorzea for us all to experience.
Two Weeks From Now
While there will be no Cooking Eorzea next week, there will be Cooking Eorzea the week after! This next dish will be Mole Loaf from the Thanalan Region, so please look forward to it!
Have you ever successfully deep-fried pork before?
What do you think of the NieR franchise?
Let us know in the comments below!
