My life has been in massive upheaval this past week, and I am trying to just rebuild my life routines again. Everything from the time I wake up to even how I am doing my lunches is constantly in flux.
I keep thinking about those 13 days that led up to Lightning, Snow, Vanille, and everyone else getting their Focus and how that utterly redirected their lives to be something completely different in FINAL FANTASY XIII as they flee for their lives across Cocoon. Change can be good sometimes, I think. But forced, unexpected change is just scary.
I was a little surprised that I was able to complete this week’s column. As I am writing this, it is late Thursday afternoon, and I ended up staying up far past my bedtime last night to make this dish. I had sworn not to after making Oden, but I had all the ingredients in hand and so I just did it.
Cooking Eorzea will continue. I just have to find a new balance for everything in my life, and somehow make room for everything.
I am just glad that at least I am not marked as a l’Cie who has to interpret their Focus through visions. Although, I do sometimes wonder what it would be like to be turned into crystal…
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 recipe is the 56th recipe from The Official FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Cookbook! It has a difficulty rating of ‘Easy,’ hails from The Black Shroud (there is a run of dishes from there lately, huh?), and it contains a lot of ingredients that I’ve never worked with or tried before.
I am also slightly amused that it is titled ‘Spinach.’ yet it contains Gai Lan…
Anyway, here is what the dish is supposed to look like when your Culinarian is at level 100 in real life:
Featured Ingredient of the Week
Until I saw the ingredients list for this week’s Cooking Eorzea entry, I had never heard of black vinegar before and I didn’t even know vinegar could be black. Black vinegar is made from grains like rice, and it is aged for a period of time. It definitely smells somewhat acidic, and I tried a small bit of it, and it reminded me a bit of earthiness and a little bit like sake when I tried it on its own. It is such a unique flavor compared to balsamic vinegar or the lighter kinds of vinegar that I’ve used before. Ultimately, it was this uniqueness that made me make it into the Featured Ingredient of the Week!
My Cooking Attempt
There were fewer ingredients than usual this week for Spinach Sauté than I am used to:
First, I put a pot of filtered water onto the stovetop, and I left it to boil.
I gathered up a pound of gai lan and then I started to cut the leaves away from the stems with my knife. This was not hard, but just tedious due to how much gai lan there is in a single pound!
Once that was done, the pot of water had started to boil! I placed just the stems into the pot, and I let it simmer for two minutes. Once the timer went off, I pulled them out and set them onto a plate.
I then placed the gai lan leaves into the pot, and I let them simmer for two minutes.
Once the timer went off, I pulled the leaves out. They were definitely full of liquid at this point, and I kept having to shake off the excess fluid each time I picked up more of them.
Once I pulled out all the gai lan leaves from the pot and placed them on top of the stems, I set the plate aside.
I then crushed my garlic bulb, pulled out the cloves, shook them inside of a container to help loosen the papery skin off of them. Once that was done, I sliced six cloves using my slicer.
Setting the sliced garlic aside, I got my fresh ginger. I cut off one of the bulbs, peeled it, and then used my slicer to slice it down. Once it was sliced down, I minced the remaining fresh ginger until I had a tablespoon of it. The fresh ginger smelled AMAZING. It’s a great aromatic!
Using a small pan, I first heated it up and then added a teaspoon of sesame oil and two teaspoons of peanut oil to it before blending them together. The sesame oil and peanut oil was really fragrant as I let it heat up for a minute.
I added in the fresh sliced garlic and fresh minced ginger, and I let them cook in the combined oils for about two minutes. The ginger smell REALLY came through at that point.
Once the timer went off, I added them both to a small bowl before adding in the black vinegar.
I then added in the soy sauce and the honey.
I then whisked the topping for the Spinach Sauté all together into a blended mixture!
Finally, I poured the combined mixture all over the top of the gai lan leaves. I tried to spread it fairly evenly all over, so that the sliced garlic and liquid would get everywhere.
And here is what the final dish for this week’s Cooking Eorzea looks like!
This week’s Cooking Eorzea dish was interesting. The gai lan leaves and stems themselves are fairly bland. What I covered them with was FANTASTIC though. The ginger and the sesame flavors really came through, which surprised me with how I only used a teaspoon of the sesame oil. There was definitely an acid flavor through the soy sauce as well. The garlic, even though it was sliced, simply did not power through the fresh minced ginger like I expected it to. I really think that the sauce is what made the dish, and the gai lan leaves were there just to act as a ‘filling’.
Overall, I quite liked the dish. It definitely felt like I was eating quite healthy as well!
Afterword
If I was to make this dish again, I think I would wait to boil the gai lan stems and leaves until I had all the other ingredients prepped, and I might try to make both the sauce and do the leaves at the same time, so that everything could come up at once. The gai lan leaves and stems weren’t cold by the time I finished, by any means, but they were definitely cooler than I expected. In total, though, this was not a Cooking Eorzea dish that I had trouble making!
As we wrap up the side dishes section of The Official FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Cookbook, I want to first thank Victoria Rosenthal for writing said cookbook and giving me all these new things to try to make. I also want to thank the staff at Insight Editions for giving me permission to use the professional photographs from the cookbook to show how it looks when a professional makes a dish versus when I make it. Furthermore, I owe Brandon Rose a serious thank you for creating the logo for this series, and you can see his other works over on X.
As always: I want to thank both Hiromichi Tanaka and Naoki Yoshida for producing FINAL FANTASY XIV Online. This game changed my life in many ways, including leading me to ultimately learn how to cook! I didn’t expect that to happen.
Coming in May
Cooking Eorzea will be on a brief hiatus until May, but it will be returning with the Desserts section!
First up, I will continue my trip through the Black Shroud region of Eorzea as I make…Apple Strudel. I will be honest: I have never had much luck making desserts before, and I don’t quite know how this will go. At least it can’t go any worse than the time I made Meat Miq’abobs back in Week 12 and caught the meat on fire. (I hope!)
Let us know in the comments below!
