Welcome back to another week of recreated recipes from Trinket Studios and Adult Swim Games’ Battle Chef Brigade. Last week I brought on Dwarven/Italian flavors with a recipe for Cezar’s Dragon Shank Meatball with Sunhat Tomato Sauce. This week I’ll be showing off some Orcish Fusion with Thrash’s Spiced Armarock Ribs with Windfruit Mole!
Click here for the recipe for Thrash’s Spiced Armarock Ribs with Windfruit Mole.
The Benevolent Berserker
The Chef of today’s featured today is none other than the loving yet lethal Thrash!
This orcish father of two from the West Ocean Tribe holds an affinity for dishes of spice and fire, becoming one with his carving knife Pahle to take on the dangers and delights of Victusian monsters. According to the game, “his priorities are family, community, and good food.”
From what I’ve seen, Thrash’s cooking style imitates South and Central American food in name and aesthetic, The game says he is an enthusiast of “Orc Fusion” cuisine. I’m not entirely sure what the developers mean by it, but since scenes with his family show mostly Japanese style clothing and hairstyles, I can only guess it’s a mix of Asian and Central/South American flavors. The dishes I found throughout, though, show little evidence of the former in favor of the latter.
One cool detail I find about Victusian orcs is that they all go through a rite of passage to create a weapon/cooking implement out of a monster, and then bond with it an extension of themselves. As Kamin says: “The two share a common desire, a goal, a collective consciousness if you will.” Thrash’s carving knife/sword, Pahle, was a steelfish before his forging. The sword consumes ingredients to awaken Thrash’s “beserker power” where the cook and weapon are one in power and speed. As a cook with a special attachment to her knives, I can relate. I need better names for mine.
The Unyielding Armarock!
So the dish I decided to go with this round is Thrash’s Spiced Armarock Ribs.
An Armarock is a giant, spinning armadillo-like creature found in the Skylands that shoots attackers crystalline spikes from its flesh. Hunting this gyroscopic beast yields a heart, a liver, and a rack of ribs — all of which are blue.
The closest Earth visual equivalent to the Armarock’s ribs we have are lamb ribs. Lamb ribs are not blue. There is no non-toxic natural ingredient and no palatable non-natural ingredient that will turn them blue and won’t make you look like you Ozzy Osborne after a visit to Smurf Village. Please don’t make this recipe blue unless by blue you are referring to the level of doneness.
I know I feature lamb ribs a lot on this blog, but they’re kind of my specialty as they are deceptively easy to cook and adapt. I’m also able to find them super cheap at Costco. Find yourself a good meat thermometer and you’ll roast them perfectly every time.
Taste of a Tempest
Since Thrash serves these ribs in some sort of red sauce, I decided to use my knowledge of Skylands ingredients and chose Windfruit as my base. The Windfruit is found towards the top of the biome and can only be harvested when the wind blows away its leafy wrappings.
From what I can discern from the Windfruit dish game art, it looks like it is either a strawberry or a beet of varying sizes. I chose to use both flavors, to hit it up with some lava (chipotle) pepper, spices, sesame oil, and dark chocolate, and to simmer it all into a smoky mole. A standard mole tends to take forty different ingredients and days to prepare. For the sake of your sanity, schedule, and pocketbook I’m going to simplify the heck out of this.
You’ve seen pumpkin pie spice blends in your local grocery store? Good. Most of those spices are found in a mole (and a good number of other Asian AND Mexican dishes). It’s not purist, but I don’t care. I’m here to develop a recipe you’ll actually cook, and I am more than aware that not everyone has access to my spice arsenal’s inexpensive supplier, Dekalb Farmers’ Market.
Once again you’ll be using three cooking equipment slots – an oven, a stovetop, and a cutting board. I’m counting an immersion blender as a power-up in regards to the game, though you will absolutely need one to make this dish. I don’t care if you already have a blender. Do yourself a favor and get yourself this multifunctional weapon of ingredient destruction. You will thank me for so many of my recipes.
A Contestant Approaches…
So I have a bit of mega-awesome news. I will be a guest on Adult Swim Games’ Twitch stream next Wednesday (February 7, 2018 – 3 pm EST) representing Fandom Foodies, and showing off my and Katharina from Pretty Cake Machine‘s Battle Chef Brigade recipes. I am super stoked and terrified at the same time as I am sure I will kick my own butt attempting to play the game while answering Sean’s questions. Tune into the stream next Wednesday here.
In the meantime why not check out the many other Battle Chef recipes Fandom Foodies has to offer at the #BattleChefBuffet hosted by Pixelated Provisions?
Thanks again for all your support and Vive La Brigade!recipe
A Skylands Delicacy
Thrash's Spiced Armarock Ribs w/ Windfruit Mole
Serves 2-4 people, or one very picky judge who does not want to share
Equipment: Oven, roasting pan with a rack, stovetop, large saucepan, immersion blender, oven-safe thermometer with meat probe.
Ingredients
- 16 oz. fresh strawberries
- 1 large or two beets, peeled and medium diced
- 1 red onion, medium diced
- 1 tablespoon sesame oil
- 4-6 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, seeds removed
- 1 tablespoon and 1 teaspoon ground pumpkin pie spice, divided
- 2 teaspoons ground black pepper
- 1/4 cup Sliced Almonds
- 4 cups Beef or Goat Stock
- 1 lime, quartered
- 2 squares of dark baker’s chocolate
- 1/4 cup masa harina
- 3 tablespoons water
- chopped fresh cilantro
Instructions
- Heat sesame oil in the large saucepan and add the onion and beet when hot. Saute the vegetables until the onions are translucent, then stir in the strawberries and almonds.
- Season the vegetables with a pinch of kosher salt and cook another two minutes. Add the chipotle peppers and pour in the stock.
- Bring the stock to a boil and cover. Simmer on low for 30 minutes. Mix the masa harina and three tablespoons of water in a separate dish with a fork and set aside to absorb.
- Preheat the oven to 450° F while the sauce simmers.
- Mix the pumpkin pie spice and ground black pepper in a small, separate dish.
- Prepare the lamb by coating all of the meat and fat cap in one tablespoon of adobo sauce from the can, then season with 2-3 pinches of kosher salt and a tablespoon of the spice blend.
- Line the roasting pan with foil and place the rack in the pan. Spray the rack with cooking spray and place the lamb ribs onto it.
- Remove the cover from the saucepan and add the prepared masa harina and remaining spice blend. Blend the sauce with the immersion blender until smooth. Let simmer uncovered another 25-30 minutes while the lamb cooks.
- Insert the thermometer probe into the center of the of the meat and cover the bones with foil. Roast the lamb in the oven 20-25 minutes, or until the thermometer registers 140° F.
- Let the lamb rest on a cutting board for 10 minutes before slicing between the ribs.
- Stir the chocolate squares and half the lime wedges’ worth of juice into the mole sauce until the former fully melts.
- Squeeze the other lime wedges onto the lamb ribs. Serve lamb in pools of mole and garnish with fresh cilantro.
