Tentacles With Vinegar

 How's it going, Dungeon Meshi Maniacs?  It's been a long time since I rapped at ya (two weeks) but I spent that time productively!  I managed to run 26.2 miles in a single go for the fifth time. Fun! Unfortunately that left me unable to cook for you, what with being very sore and exhausted.  For that I'm sorry.  Don't worry, I'm back and I'm bringing you the goods!  What are said goods? Only the strangle master themselves. Tentacles!

I know, I know, DMMs.  You were expecting something squiggly and maybe a little naughty?  Get that head out of the gutter.  "But wait, you sevelt, slippery slime. This isn't the next chapter in Dungeon Meshi!" I can hear you screaming into your bathroom piping.  And you are correct.  The next actual chapter is Raspberries.

 Raspberries are fantastic fruits!  I love eating them and cooking/baking with them.  But that's the problem.  They don't really cook with raspberries in this chapter. They just eat them raw.

 Nothing wrong with just popping handfuls of raspberries into your mouth and calling it a day.  Great way to spend an afternoon, not so much an interesting blog.  Why would a manga about eating monsters spend an entire chapter not eating monsters?  Simple.  The chapter is critical plot wise because it's the beginning of the Farcille ship.

The panel that launched a thousand works of fanart!  If that wasn't enough, DMMs, I'm also skipping the chapter after this one as well! "WHY!?!" I can hear you shout as you fall onto your fainting couches.  That's a little more complicated since they do eat an actual monster this time. Which is the problem. That monster in question is the Kelpie!

Look, I'm not doing this one because I cannot eat horse.  As the four of my loyal readers know, I live in the Horse Capital of the World.  I see horses every single day.  I watch them grow up and am reminded how smelly they can be whenever I go for a run (I live near a horse farm).  I drive by this statue constantly since it's in the center of a roundabout!

I once saw people cleaning it with blowtorches!  At least I think they were cleaning it. Needless to say it's not a cut of meat that I'm going to be able to eat.  This is not a judgement on others, however!  I'm not one to climb up on my high...um...some sort of four legged beast of burden when it comes to food.  I know many cultures eat horse with on problem.  My motto with food is always "you do you."  Eat what you want and don't judge others on what they do or do not eat.  So in this blog horse is back off the menu, boys!  The other much larger problem is they grill the kelpie meat and I don't own a grill.

Which brings us to the current cooking experiment, the mighty tentacle!  In the Dungeon Meshi world  the tentacle is more of a sentient root system, not a naughty appendage from beyond the moon. How do they work? They do attack from above!

They come down from the ceiling and YOINK!

Gross!  Thankfully we've eaten worse, haven't we?  It looks like the tentacle is a root?  What exactly are we eating here?  Let's take a look the preparation.

                                      

Almost banana like but starchier?  A little more oomph?  There's only one thing it could be is the world's best frying fruit. The plantain!

Plantains are an amazing staple in so many cuisines!  And today we are going to cook them in the easiest way possible.  Frying!  Yes, I know you can read the title, DMMs.  It says "With Vinegar" not "Fried".  But there's nothing saying we can't first fry the plantains before we add a little vinegar.  It's more fun that way!  The problem is my plantains aren't ripe enough to fry.  You want way less green and a lot more brown.  The best way to ripen is just wait and let oxygen do the work.  Need to speed things up?  Put the plantains in a paper bag.  Even that takes days and I don't have days.  A trick I found online is to bake the plantains at 300 degrees for 20 minutes.  It's not perfect but it's better than nothing!

Wow...they are looking something.  At least they look okay once I peeled them.

Okay, you can't judge a plantain by its cover.  These are looking pretty good!  The baking tip seems to have worked.  Now you just need to slice them and fry them.  Half a cup of vegetable oil at medium heat will do it.

What you want is a crispy exterior with a creamy interior.  These fry fast, DMMs!  I mean two to three minutes on each side period.  Quick flip is the name of the game and as you can see I'm not a quick flip!

Just a little bit of burning there which is to be expected seeing how it's the first time I ever done this!  They still look good in my opinion.  Just move them from the oil onto the greatest resting place for fried foods...the mighty paper towel!  

Let them cool and what happens next is up to you.  You can dress them with a little vinegar or maybe brown sugar?  You could also shake on some spicy seasonings.  The plantain is unbelievably versatile!  They can work with just about everything.  Keen eyed DMMs will notice that I only fried up two of the plantains.  The two that I baked were good but I can't say they were very sweet.  Not like a fully ripe plantain.  So I pulled one aside to wait for it to fully ripen and try frying it.  I'm hoping to give you an update on that next week!  Stay hungry, DMMs.  There's more plantain goodness to come!