Hello, adventurers! I'm trying to decide on the best formatting for these posts, as there are going to be a lot of them. My apologies if it changes a few times during this process! Before we actually get cooking, let's take a look at our dish. This is the first recipe for The Dungeon Gourmet Guide, and the first recipe to appear in Dungeon Meshi volume 1; the giant scorpion and walking mushroom hotpot. It's pretty clearly based on IRL hotpot dishes, which are a Chinese cooking method popular throughout East Asia.
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| A hotpot with chicken- scoring the caps seems to be the norm for larger mushrooms like shiitake. |
A hotpot involves multiple ingredients being cooked in the same pot, but rather than a homogenized soup or stew the food is removed from the broth and eaten separately; the broth can still be consumed but it seems typical that it's left until the end. In modern culture it's very much a social food, and restaurants will serve hotpot as a simmering broth accompanied by raw ingredients, letting the diners cook components to their liking in a way I've seen compared to a main-course version of fondue. Typical ingredients include a variety of noodles, meats, greens, mushrooms, other vegetables, and various seasonings or condiments.
In order to recreate this recipe, mostly everything needs to be substituted. Luckily, keeping true to the real-world influence for this one will be easy, as the components are mostly just real ingredients with slight tweaking. Giant scorpion is supposed to end up like lobster when cooked, making that part pretty straightforward. The same for mushrooms; although we won't get to chase down any walking ones, they'll look the same in the finished dish! The body of the giant mushroom isn't recognizable as such, but a similar effect can probably be recreated from real mushrooms or tofu. Daikon are used in real hotpots and pretty closely resemble the "reverse tubers" after they've been peeled. As for taste, the only clue is when Chilchuck refers to them as "steamy and good", so we'll have to see whether they'll hold up in that regard. My first thought was to use cassava/yuca, because the way Senshi peels the root looks just like how cassava is prepared, but after further research I think the daikon will better fit the palate of the dish.
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| Senshi prepares the reverse tuber |
The algae weeds are the only ones I'm unsure about. Their taste isn't mentioned, so the substitution has to be made based on appearance, components found in IRL hotpots, and origin of the ingredient in-universe. In the manga, it's a small aquatic weed that looks like a tiny unfurled cabbage. In real hotpots, several greens like cabbage are used, as is the aquatic plant watercress. Watercress is actually in the cabbage family, so the taste might be right, but unfortunately isn't a perfect match for the manga's illustrations. Other options could be a small cabbage, peeled brussel sprouts, or even a carefully arranged bok choy. However, for this component I think I'm going to put appearances behind and go with the watercress, which seems more appropriate for a hotpot as well as being the only weed out of these choices- more accurate that it isn't a domesticated vegetable!
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| Watercress |
The "noodles" in the dish are dried slime cut into strips. I did a bit of brainstorming about this before I learned about glass noodles. These are actually a kind of noodle common in hotpot, but their most distinct quality is that they're transparent- that's right, just like slime noodles would be! Also known as cellophane noodles, these noodles are made from starch- typically mung bean or sweet potato, and are sold dried.
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| Cellophane noodles |
The ingredients for this recipe are pretty simple, which makes sense considering it's the first one the party cooks in the manga. The lobster tail is the most expensive part of this recipe; I'm gonna try to find a good deal on one to make this recipe like the one in the manga, but some other fish or shellfish would probably be just as good. Any protein, honestly, as long as you accommodate for the different cooking time needed! It sounds like the glass noodles and daikon should be available at most Asian markets, and the watercress at some grocery stores with an expansive produce section; they're popular as microgreens.
That's about all there is to know for this dish aside from the recipe itself. Until next time!
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