This week’s Cooking Eorzea column proved to have more prep work behind the scenes since than the Pan-Fried Mahi-Mahi dish two years ago. Every time I have made a deep-fried dish for this column, my place fills up with smoke and my fire alarm goes off.
After the last time when I had to haul the whole thing outside to stop the smoke, I decided to finally just buy a deep-fryer. I wanted a good quality one that would be able to reach the temperature I needed, is compatible with peanut oil, and would be large enough to fit doughnuts in while also not being overly complicated.
This proved to be difficult, and I spent more time than I want to admit researching and looking into what deep fryer I wanted to use and work with. I finally settled on one, and unfortunately…I discovered after this week’s Cooking Eorzea column that it leaks. That is super frustrating, and I am just glad I did it outside instead of it leaking all over my kitchen.
In short: I hate deep frying, even if I end up loving the end dish 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
Papanași is a medium-difficulty dish from the Othard region, and it is the 63rd recipe in The Official FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Cookbook.
I am curious how the sour cream sauce and the rolanberry jam will work together, and if the ricotta cheese and rum will work well together. It seems like a mish-mash of flavors and I am not quite sure on how it will all work out. That and how round my doughnuts will turn out as I make them by hand. I purposefully picked out fresh oil for this recipe so it won’t carry any other flavors into the final dish!
Featured Ingredient of the Week
Raspberries are roses. At least, they come from the rose family. They are usually planted in the wintertime, and the flowers are used by honeybees and others for nectar. Raspberries are also invasive as the roots and shoots grow underground and can pop up far away from the original plant. When the fruit has turned a deep red color, that is when it is ripe and sweet.
I have only ever just randomly eaten raspberries, and I have never used them in a recipe before. I have also never actually taken the time to research them before, and so it was a natural fit for the Featured Ingredient of the Week!
My Cooking Attempt
Here are all of the ingredients I used to make Papanași for this week’s Cooking Eorzea dish:
I first made the sour cream sauce. I added together sour cream, vanilla extract, lemon juice, and powdered sugar in a bowl.
I then mixed all of those ingredients together until the sauce was smooth, and I filled up an airtight container before placing it into the refrigerator to chill.
I then turned my attention to the rolanberry jam. I first hulled out the strawberries with a metal straw before I chopped them up.
I chopped up a half-cup of raspberries before I measured out three-quarters of a cup of frozen cherries. I am used to only eating fresh cherries, and so frozen cherries was a whole new thing for me. I ended up eating quite a few of them as a snack, too.
I added the hulled and chopped strawberries, the chopped raspberries, the frozen cherries, the sugar, and the lemon juice all together in a pot before blending it together.
I brought all of those ingredients up to a boil and I began to smash the fruit once I could tell the sugar was dissolved into it. Once the ingredients were mashed together, I brought it down to a simmer and I let it thicken for about 25 minutes.
Once it was done, I pulled it off the heat, let it cool down, and then placed it into yet another airtight container to cool down for a few hours in the refrigerator.
In another bowl, I added all-purpose flour, sugar, salt, and baking powder together to start making the doughnuts.
In my large glass bowl, I added together the ricotta cheese, vanilla, rum, and I cracked two eggs into it.
I then combined all of those wet ingredients by hand.
Afterwards, I started to add the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients and blended all of that together into a dough. It was incredibly sticky, and it stuck to my fingers! I added some more all-purpose flour in, but I don’t think it was ultimately enough.
Once the dough was made, I set the bowl aside for a bit and prepped my dough mat. I generously scattered all-purpose flour all over it before adding the dough ball onto it and separating it into eight roughly equal pieces.
I took the dough pieces, one by one, and I rolled them into a ball. I then pinched a hole in the middle to make it into a doughnut. This was a lot more difficult than expected, as it proved to be harder than you’d think to punch through the dough and make a hole while also not losing the integrity of the shape elsewhere.
I then turned to what would be easily the most difficult aspect of making Papanași: the deep frying. Long time readers of Cooking Eorzea know that I have had a difficult time with deep frying, and the reason this column took so long to be made was because I decided to buy a deep fryer that would 1) work with peanut oil and 2) be usable at the temperature I needed it to be. I also set it up outside so that my home would not smell of oil, and if it started to smoke, I wouldn’t have to deal with it setting off my fire alarm.
Anyway, I set up the deep fryer, added oil in, and set it for roughly 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
I added a doughnut into the oil once it was ready. It sizzled and deep fried the dough. I let it deep fry for four minutes before pulling it out.
Once the timer went off, I pulled the basket up, shook the excess oil out, turned the doughnut over, and then put it back in for another two minutes.
I then removed it and placed it on a plate covered in two layers of paper towels. I then went to the next doughnut and repeated the process until all eight were deep fried. Here is what the overall pile of doughnuts looks like:
Finally, I topped the doughnuts with the sour cream sauce and the rolanberry jam. They were both cold coming out of the refrigerator, and I had to really spread them on with the spoon.
And here is the final Papanași dish for this week’s Cooking Eorzea!
This dish was surprisingly good. The doughnuts were warm (I finished the dish shortly after all the doughnuts were deep fried), and you could really taste the cheesiness in them. Even though rum was in the recipe, I wouldn’t have known if I didn’t add it in myself. The sour cream and the rolanberry jam worked amazingly together. It had a sour/sweet and savory flavor to it, and the berries and cherries really all melded together well. I was positive I had burned the doughnuts with how dark they were, but I think it was just the peanut oil.
In short, this is an amazing dessert, and one that I would absolutely make for other people!
The autographed Dawntrail album was part of the SQUARE ENIX Tokyo Game Show lottery for this year, and I was lucky enough to find a copy to import for myself.
Afterword
If I was to make Papanași again, I would definitely use more all-purpose flour when I was making the dough. It is supposed to be sticky, but not THAT sticky. I think. Especially since the dough ended up being rolled all over in the scattered flour used on my dough mat, and so the portions I used in the recipe was clearly just the minimal amount to be used. Personally, I would make the jam alone again – it was that delicious.
Time to start with the thank you’s! I need to thank Victoria Rosenthal for writing The Ultimate FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Cookbook, and I have to thank the staff over at Insight Editions for giving me permission to use the photos from the cookbook and always being supportive of Cooking Eorzea. It is truly important to show that even someone with cooking skills that come from YouTube can make something that looks somewhat like what a professional chef can do. I owe Brandon Rose a seriously special thank you for creating the logo for Cooking Eorzea 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. As we approach FINAL FANTASY XIV FAN FESTIVAL 2026, we will see just what the game that they both put so much of themselves into will have in store next for the Warriors of Light all over the world!
Next Time
Thanks to prior commitments and the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, Cooking Eorzea will return in December with the Princess Pudding recipe from La Noscea!
It looks to be delicious, and I cannot wait to make it. I hope that you’ll all come back to check it out then!
What kind of deep-frying recipes do you like to make?
What are you hoping will be announced at FINAL FANTASY XIV FAN FESTIVAL 2026?
Let us know in the comments below!
