I wasn’t expecting to go on a months-long hiatus again.
At the end of March, I got seriously injured and I ended up not being able to walk or live independently for months.
While I spent a lot of my recovery in Eorzea, I found myself being drawn into spending as much time as possible in the world of FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth. I had tickets to see the orchestra performance in Los Angeles for the North American premiere, and then again to see the show in Munich, Germany a month-ish later, and I thought that I should play the game first.
A large part of why I wanted to see the concert in two places as far flung apart as they were is because I wanted to thank both Hamauzu-san and Suzuki-san for helping me discover my love for the piano through the wonderful music they created for the SQUARE ENIX game Lightning Returns: FINAL FANTASY XIII. I talked a little bit about how amazing the soundtrack was earlier this year for the game’s tenth anniversary, and I wanted to take the time to thank them both in person for helping create my real love for music. It’s hard to explain how important music can be to me now, especially since I listened to so little of it in high school.
The fact that I wanted to thank both of them is a large part of why I pushed myself so hard through my rehab. If I couldn’t function independently, then I wouldn’t be able to make it out to Los Angeles – let alone Munich – to see them both.
I even got both of them, and both Mr. Arnie Roth and Mr. Eric Roth, to sign my FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth program – and you can see that in my final dish image for this week’s Cooking Eorzea.
You can check out my full concert review here. If you get a chance, you should really see the concert live and play the game. I promise you that you won’t regret it, and you can still even get tickets.
What about this column going forward?
I am definitely going to try to get back to doing this column weekly again when I can. I love cooking and Cooking Eorzea has been with me through so much of my life in California. It helped me handle my breakup after I moved here, and it gave me something to look forward to after the apartment fire I had. I can’t imagine not finishing this cookbook out: especially when there are simply so many amazing dishes left to try out!
If you’ve missed an installment of Cooking Eorzea, you can check out all the prior recipes here.
Recipe of the Week
The 49th recipe in The Official FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Cookbook and hailing from the Hingashi region of Eorzea…is Chawan-Mushi! With a hard difficulty rating, this Cooking Eorzea dish is one that looks deceptively easy to make, but in fact can be quite hard to create if you leave air in the custard or you overcook it on the stove top. This is also the start of the Sides section of the cookbook! It is crazy to think about how much I’ve made so far, and honestly…how much more I still need to create.
Chawan-Mushi also has a lot of different meat options in it, and it reminded me a bit of the Bouillabaisse I made way back in Week 27 because of that.
Anyway, 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 is mitsuba.
It is also probably the second hardest ingredient I’ve had to find for Cooking Eorzea since I started writing it, right behind the mahi-mahi that I had to end up ordering in another state and cooking at a friend’s place. I spent my weekend searching every Asia grocery within a two-hour drive of my phone, and I could not find it anywhere. It turns out that while Italian parsley is quite common…mitsuba is not.
I ended up having to order it online and having it delivered to my home. It was either doing that or do a day trip down to Los Angeles to try to get my hands on some.
Mitsuba, also known as Japanese parsley, is known for its three leaves and for having a slightly bitter flavor.
Honestly, it was because of the sheer difficulty of obtaining it that it stuck out in my mind so much. I didn’t want to compromise on Cooking Eorzea by leaving this ingredient, even if it really is just garnish, out.
My Cooking Attempt
For my first installment in the Sides section of Cooking Eorzea, here are all the ingredients that I ended up using:
I first sliced up the chicken into bite-sized pieces.
I then removed the tails from the shrimp and cut them in half.
Finally, I quartered the scallops.
Once all the meats were set aside, I sliced up the shiitake mushrooms and thinly sliced the kamaboko.
After setting all of those cut ingredients aside, I made the dashi stock. First, I added water to a pot, added a dashi stock packet to the pot, and then brought it to a boil for three minutes.
Once the timer was up, I pulled the packet out and then poured the dashi stock into a measuring cup.
Setting the dashi stock aside, I placed the cut chicken into a small bowl, measured out sake and soy sauce into it.
I then let the chicken marinade for about 10 minutes.
During the 10 minutes, I cleaned the small pot I made the dashi stock in, and then added water to it, inserted a steamer basket into the pot, and then heated it up.
I then started to make the custard. First, I cracked three eggs and then added the dashi stock to the bowl.
I then added the salt, sake, and soy sauce to the custard. I then whisked it all together inside the bowl. I had to be careful to only whisk it just enough to make sure that the ingredients were blended together, but not so much that the custard had too much air and bubbles in it.
Once it was all blended together, I started to filter the custard mix from pot to bowl and back through a fine-mesh strainer so I could remove as much of the bubbles as possible.
At this point, I started to assemble the chawan-mushi dishes. First, I put a layer of chicken pieces down and then topped it with the shrimp layer.
I then added a layer of scallops on top and then a lawyer of shiitake mushrooms.
Finally, I added a layer of kamaboko on top.
I then poured the liquid custard on top of the multiple layers until it was just barely away from the top of the chawan-mushi cup. I also used a toothpick to pop any bubbles that rose in the liquid custard so that it wouldn’t interfere with the custard setting.
Once the bubbles were all popped, I added the lids to the chawan-mushi cups and then added them into the steamer basket. It turned out I could only fit three into the pot at a time, and so I had to cook the fourth one later on.
After replacing the pot’s lid, I let the whole thing steam cook for 20 minutes.
After the timer was up, I removed the chawan-mushi lids and saw that the custard had set.
I then removed the cups from the steaming basket, and then added a layer of ikura and a stem of mitsuba to each one to finish off the dish!
And here is the final dish for this week’s Cooking Eorzea!
The overall dish was incredibly savory, and I was surprised that the custard really worked well with the mixture of chicken and seafood. I couldn’t really taste the soy sauce or the sake, and the ikura definitely reminded me of boba bubbles while I was eating the dish. Unfortunately, the custard didn’t fully cook through, and so it was a bit watery at the end. The fourth cup, the one that I made after these three, I cooked for around 6-7 minutes longer, and that one cooked through.
Overall, it was a very unique and enjoyable dish, and one that I wouldn’t mind making for other people…if I could find mitsuba a little easier again.
Afterword
If I was to make chawan-mushi again, I would definitely let it cook for more than twenty minutes. I had no issues with the custard itself, other than I didn’t let it cook long enough. It was quite enjoyable, and I could see it being a fun side dish for people to enjoy.
This is where I start with the ‘thank yous’…Even if it has been awhile! I want start off by thanking 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 X.
Finally, I want to thank both Hiromichi Tanaka and Naoki Yoshida for producing FINAL FANTASY XIV Online in both iterations of the game. When I wasn’t spending my recovery playing FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth, I spent a lot of it in Eorzea.
Next Week
Assuming I don’t get injured again, next week’s dish is Thanalan’s Cheese Risotto!
As I am sure you won’t be surprised by…I haven’t made this dish before either, and so it will be a brand-new experience for me to explore!
Please tune in to see how it goes!
Have you made chawan-mushi before?
Have you been to the FINAL FANTASY VII Rebirth Orchestra World Tour?
Let us know in the comments below!
