Cockatrice Stone Baked Mother And Child Dish With Starchy Sauce

 What's the best part of cooking, Dungeon Meshi Maniacs?  Feeding yourself?  Sure.  Feeding others? You bet that's a real treat.  Frying bacon for breakfast only to quickly be reminded that you forgot to put a shirt on after waking up?  Oh-ho-ho, you better believe that's a great part of cooking.  But no.  While those are all excellent I find the best part of cooking is trying to solve a weird problem.  What do I mean by that, DMMs?  Well this week's project is a great example of out of the box thinking that sometimes comes with cooking.  Are you ready to get weird, DMMs?  Of course you are!  Let's try and fix some Cockatrice Stone Baked Mother and Child Dish With Starchy Sauce.

What's so weird about this week?  Looking at the title these are all ingredients that we've already used before.  That's pretty straight forward. No, the weird part comes from something the gang manages to find as they are trying to hide from the Lunatic Magician's monsters.

They fall through the wall, DMMs, as if it was liquid!  And in this case I'm sure some of it was liquid.  You see, that wasn't actually a wall.  At least not yet.  The dungeon was "repairing" itself with the help of Cleaners.

That wasn't any liquid, DMMs.  It was secretions of a monster!  Eww!  This group just keeps going through the weirdest parts of every monster they eventually eat.  I really like this monster however gross it may be.  Any D&D playing DMMs will know of the Gelatinous Cube, a monster that is as described. Huge cube made of gelatine that digests anything that they move over.  Lore says they may have been created by a crazy wizard who was looking for a hands off way to clean their tower.  And I'm guessing some got out into the wild?  The crazy wizard may have flushed some down into the sewer.  The Cleaners in this dungeon are far smaller and only seem to bother actual trash and damage to the dungeon. Far more efficient than a giant Cube monster!  Back to the gange eventually it gets to be dinner time so Senshi does what he does best.

I love that Senshi wastes nothing, DMMs, by using what's on hand. Being an expert fridge cook is a key to eventually becoming a great chef.   At this point it's a fairly straight forward meal; barley, cockatrice and eggs.  Nothing too special.  But Laios does something odd this time.

HE EATS THE BOWL!  Yes, yes, edible bowls are a thing but you normally know that before taking a bite!  Senshi makes a bowl to cook the food in.  What a cool idea, DMMs!  But this leaves me with a difficult problem.  How can I possibly do this in "the real world"?  I don't know of any dishes that I can cook in a bread bowl.  And a bread bowl itself is kinda boring.  After all, we've already made bread.  And if there's one thing I know about my readers is they do not want to see repeat dishes!  I thought and I thought and I believe I came up with a possible idea.  Pita!  Also known as Pocket Bread.  I don't think we'll be able to cook in the pita bowl but it will make an interesting "brick".  So where do we start?  Pita is still a bread so we start with the basics!

Good old yeast, flour, sugar, and salt!  So many baking wonders humbly begin here.  Our goal is to make a shaggy dough but we start with waking up the yeast.  Do you remember how to do that, DMMs?  Water at 105, two teaspoons of yeast, a half teaspoon of sugar, and a half cup of flour.  Wisk these together in a bowl and put somewhere warm for 15 minutes.  If it's any time other than Winter you can just keep this out in your kitchen.

It's our old friend, DMMs. The Waiting!  15 minutes is nothing after the hours and days that we've done in other recipes.  Once that time is up the yeast should have burped enough to make your mixture expand and get foamy.

Looking foamy! Now time to add a teaspoon of salt, two tablespoons of olive oil and a cup and a half of flour.  Just bring this together with a wooden spoon until it looks like it's all shredded shaggy.

I know you, DMMs.  You can't wait to get your hands on this mess. Which is great because it's time to dump this out onto a lightly floured surface and knead!  Unlike other breads you don't have to work this overtime.  Just make it nice and smooth.

Now that you have a smooth ball it's time for a longer rest.  Oil up a bowl and put your dough in.  Be sure to coat it in the oil on the bowl and cover with clingwrap.  This gets to rest for an hour.  Yes, a solid hour.  Go watch an episode of Star Trek Voyager during this time.  What?  I have it on in the background as I type this, what do you want from me? 

Whatever you choose to do to pass the time the yeast gets back to work expanding your dough.  Yeast is such a cool thing.  I don't fully understand how it works but I do understand eating a lot and getting super gassy!  Come back after a fun romp with Captain Janeway and your dough should have risen.

Sweet!  Pita is a pocket bread so to make you just pull this apart into smaller balls!  Like a Matryoshka doll!

Who's ready for more resting!  Cover these balls with a towel and let them sit for an easy ten minutes.  During this time preheat the oven to 475.  Having a tandoor oven would be awesome for this but chances are you're like me and don't have access to one.  Just leave your baking sheet in the oven while it preheats to kinda recrete a tandoor.  Hey, it's better than nothing!  Once your ten minutes have passed and your oven preheated roll out your dough into 9 inch disks.

Now for the fun part, DMMs.  Open the oven and throw in two at a time.  Let them bake for two minutes on one side, flip and let them bake for one more minute.  Keep this up until all your bad boys are baked!

Gotta to upfront here, DMMs. I made a huge mistake.  At this point my plan was to cut these in half and line my small loaf pan and recreate a brick like Senshi!  I was going to do this by baking the pita into a toasted chip!  So I go to my shelves and...no loaf pan.  I asked the awesome person who married me "whahappen"?  Simple.  I shattered that pan years ago and forgot.  I DON'T HAVE A LOAF PAN ANYMORE!  I have a square cake pan so I preheated the oven to 350 and tried to use that pan.  I...I really don't think this will work, DMMs.

Yeah this was a huge swing and a miss, DMMs.  The pita were way too salty and this method isn't going to give me the brick I wanted.  But there's no time for regrets, we soldier on.  Senshi made a filling for his bricks and so shall we.  If you look at his recipe it's just barley, eggs and Cockatrice or chicken.  Not too fancy.  But what if we fancied it up, DMMs?  Why not make some fried rice?  "You've finally lost you squishy mind, you sketchy slime." I can hear you flush down the kitchen drain. "Fried RICE doesn't have Barley!"  Oh ye of little faith.  Sure I screwed the brick up but we can easily make fried rice with barley.

What?  Rice is a grain, barley is a grain. This will work, DMMs!  Can I possibly fail twice in the same dish?  Yes.  But I have faith.  Put half cup of the barley in a rice cooker with a cup and a halfish of chicken stock.  Set the cooker to Brown Rice.  This'll take nearly an hour so chop up your veggies in advance.

The classics!  Garlic, green onions and carrots.  These are my triple threats when it comes to fried rice.  When it comes time to fry heat some Sesame Oil in a pan and add the veggies.

You don't need to cook these too heavy. Just get them nice and aromatic.  Add the eggs and chicken at this point.  I will admit that I took an easy way out here, DMMs, and went with canned chicken.

What?  This is fried rice.  This is a refrigerator dive dish.  Normally you make it with day old rice and whatever you have on hand.  It's a great dish to have in your backpocket for that reason. Once the egg looks a little cooked add the barley and give everything a good mix.

I'm going to let you in on a little secret, DMMs.  My spice of choice for fried rice.  If you want to give it a little kick hit it with some Chinese Five Spice!  Love that stuff.  Add it and some soy sauce.  Fry this all up together for a minute or two and you're done!  Even though I knew the pita could not come out of the pan without falling apart I still added this to the "brick."

The barley fried rice was surprisingly good! Some of the best fried rice I've ever made.  I've always wanted to get better at fried rice and it turns out what I needed to change was the rice.  The pita bowl was a bitter defeat, however.  I flew too close to the culinary sun, DMMs.  Which can happen when it comes to matters of the kitchen.  I'm not going to let this get me down.  I'm also not ready to throw in the apron on this one, DMMs.  I have an idea on how to improve the pita brick that I want to try this weekend.  So check back next week and cross your fingers!  This should be fun.