Why is my car insurance so high? Am I going to lose my job? Are my allergies back? Why won’t my Kindle sync up with my library account? Why is my sleep schedule sliding backwards again? What is happ-
So many questions have been occupying my mind lately, and sometimes it just seems overwhelming as these thoughts crowd everything else out. I feel the urge to just not do anything a lot of the time because I just feel so paralyzed by it all. I just try to focus on the good, little things that have been happening lately: I’ve discovered Dr Pepper Blackberry, I have been going on daily walks again, I am starting to read White Sands, and I’ve been working on the Doman Enclave Reconstruction in FINAL FANTASY XIV Online.
It’s just the little, consistent, bright things in life that help to calm everything down 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
The 54th recipe from The Official FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Cookbook, this is my second popotoes dish after the Mashed Popotoes recipe I made a couple weeks ago. With a cooking difficulty of ‘Easy’ and coming straight from Gyr Abania, I was excited to make this dish for Cooking Eorzea. It looks very cheesy and creamy, honestly.
I’ve never actually cooked with goat’s milk before either, and so I am curious to see how it influences the overall dish.
Here is what the dish is supposed to look like in the hands of a professional:
Featured Ingredient of the Week
This week’s Featured Ingredient of the Week is goat’s milk! I actually had never tried it before this week’s Popotoes Au Gratin dish for Cooking Eorzea. While this milk does not need to be homogenized, I was surprised to find out it usually has around 3.5% butterfat. When I tried out a sample of it, I was surprised to find out it was less ‘creamy’ than whole cow milk, and I didn’t hate it. The cream definitely was at the top of the bottle, and I made sure to shake it thoroughly before I used it for this week’s dish!
My Cooking Attempt
This week’s Cooking Eorzea recipe had a lot of ingredients! I spent more time trying to figure out how to position them all for this photo:
First, I minced the garlic. I crushed the bulb with my hand, peeled off the cloves using the TikTok shake container method, and then minced them up with the garlic slicer and then a small knife.
I then peeled the onion, sliced off the ends, sliced it in half, and then sliced the onion into smaller pieces.
Setting all that aside, I turned my attention to making the cream filing for the Popotoes Au Gratin. First, I measured out the all-purpose flour, dried oregano, dried thyme, ground mustard, salt, and pepper. I then blended it all together in a small bowl.
I then heated up a saucepan and melted butter in it. Once that was done, I added in the garlic and cooked it until it was browned, which took around five minutes. I think I accidentally burned it a bit, unfortunately though.
I then added in the dry seasoning mixture and blended it all together before adding in the cream cheese.
When the cream cheese blended in to make a roux, I slowly started to add in the goat’s milk. I would continuously mix it in, and I kept mixing until all the milk I needed to use was gone into the saucepan and the mixture had thickened up. Once that was done, I set it aside.
Pulling out my frying pan, I melted the unsalted butter into the olive oil.
I added in the sliced onions and tossed them to coat them in the oil/butter blend. I let them cook until they turned translucent.
I added in some salt next, tossed the coated onion slices in said salt, and then I lowered the heat and let them caramelize. This took around 40 minutes in total, and I kept stirring it around every so often.
While the onions were caramelizing, I preheated the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit and I sliced the potatoes. I used a mandolin slicer to make sure that they were all a consistent 3 millimeters in thickness.
Once the onions were done, I pulled out my deep baking dish and I spread around one-third of the cream filling mixture along the bottom of the pan.
I then added a layer of potato slices on top before adding in all of the caramelized onions on top of that.
I topped that layer with another layer of the cream filling before adding MORE potato slices on top of that.
I topped it with the rest of the cream filling before wrapping it all up in aluminum foil.
I let the dish cook in the oven for 45 minutes.
While the dish was baking, I shredded the Gruyère cheese. It turns out that one and a half ounces of shredded Gruyère cheese is a LOT of cheese.
I also weighed out the shredded cheddar cheese and the Parmesan cheese.
I then blended the three cheeses together in a small bowl.
I pulled the dish out of the oven when the timer went off, and I added all of the cheese on top of it. I then put it back into the oven to cook, uncovered, this time for another 25 minutes.
Once that new timer went off, I turned on the broiler and let the entire dish broil until the cheese started to brown.
When I pulled the dish out, I saw that there was definitely some grease on top from the cheese. I dabbed the top of the dish with a paper towel to remove it!
And here is the final Popotoes Au Gratin dish!
The layering was a bit thin, but it was incredibly savory and I assume that this was all from the seasonings mixed into the cream filling. It was also really cheesy in a pleasant way. I was surprised at how un-creamy (if that is a word?) it was, considering that it had a bunch of cream cheese and goat’s milk added in.
Overall, I really loved this week’s Cooking Eorzea dish!
Afterword
If I was to make this dish again, I think I would do more layers of potatoes than just the single slices. I was surprised at how many potato slices I had left over from just the two layers, and I think the dish would still have baked through appropriately with that. Other than that, I still definitely need to figure out how to brown and not burn minced garlic. I am pretty sure I burned it again this week, unfortunately.
Sooooo…It’s thank you time! I want to open this section by thanking Victoria Rosenthal for writing The Ultimate FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Cookbook and giving me so many new dishes to try to make each week. I also want to thank the staff over at Insight Editions for giving me permission to use the photos from their book, even when I have to take a break from the series for any various reasons. Furthermore, I owe Brandon Rose a special thanks for creating the logo for Cooking Eorzea on short notice, and you should go see his works over on X.
Lastly, I want to thank both Hiromichi Tanaka and Naoki Yoshida for producing FINAL FANTASY XIV Online in both iterations of the game. It’s hard to believe that we are heading into Patch 7.2, with a new Moogle Treasure Trove event to headline the time remaining until it starts. It seems like it was just yesterday when Dalmund fell, sometimes.
Next Time
Due to other commitments, Cooking Eorzea will return mid-March! So please look forward to it when I am making Ratatouille.
Have I ever made it before? Nope.
But am I excited?
You bet!
Do you ever drink goat’s milk?
What are you currently doing in FINAL FANTASY XIV Online?
Let us know in the comments below!
