If it’s any indication from my Munchies & Minis live cooking show, I love combining food with Dungeons & Dragons. You would also know that I have no qualms about cooking and eating mythological creatures. Whether eating dragon eggs on a cracker or baking their muscles into meatballs, I cannot deny it. Dragons are delicious.
Where am I going with this? Well, Writer/Illustrator Antonio Demico agrees. Funded in 45 FREAKIN’ MINUTES, Dragon Stew is an entire Dungeons & Dragons-based supplement based on the culinary-minded adventurer.
Click here to fund (or preorder) this supplement.
Click here to skip to the recipe for Green Dragon Caldo Verde.
Demico’s Dragon Stew
Like many of the fantastic folks I know in the Tabletop RPG community, I met Antonio on Twitter. I was doing my Munchies & Minis thing, and he was posting up the most incredible monster food concept art I’ve ever seen. I am flattered that he found me first.
After following him, my Twitter feed brimmed with pictures of dragon wonton soup, magical bakers, and dessert familiars. For weeks I wondered what this was leading to, and then he announced it, a D&D supplement combining magic and food in the most fantastical way.
Dragon Stew promises cooking-themed classes applicable to all D&D classes, familiars formed from baked goods, and even at least one playable adventure acquaint you with all this rich content.
As I type this, the Kickstarter has met NINETEEN STRETCH GOALS. This project is going to be big, folks. They have enough funding for multiple subclasses, a new bardic college, and even another adventure. Not only can I not wait for this to come out. I think I’ve found what game I want to DM on my Twitch channel.
So what are you waiting for? Get thee hence to this Kickstarter and fund the crap out of it! But in the meantime, I imagine that staring at all that mouthwatering concept art kicked up some hunger pangs of your own. Why not try making a recipe inspired by this supplement?
Green Dragon Caldo Verde
When I had asked, Antonio Demico suggested that I help promote Dragon Stew with a recipe for, wait for it…Dragon Stew! The trouble was then, which one? There are so many varieties.
Dragon Stew marries beautiful artwork with tasty food. In that light, I wanted to make something that highlights Demico’s style and the regional flavors of the dish AND also cooks easily at home using limited skills. That’s why I went with Demico’s Green Dragon equivalent: Caldo Verde.
Caldo Verde is a Portuguese dish meaning “green broth”— its color coming from the strips of dinosaur kale simmered into this chorizo-spiced stew. Dinosaur kale, or Tuscan kale, may not be the easiest to find in grocery stores. But you can also use curly kale or collard greens instead. The key to this dish, though, is finding the right kind of chorizo.
The majority chorizo you’re going to find in American grocery stores is raw. You want the cured kind from Spain or Portugal. Not only will you be cooking it into the broth, but you will be garnishing it with its slices. You want chorizo that is prepared and ready to serve like below.
Since I based this dish on the poison-breathing Green Dragon, I thought I’d include ingredients associated with toxicity (in unusually large quantities). I’ve done something similar for my Munchies & Minis Green Dragon Cheese Egg recipe if you recall. So into our broth, I blended in dried apricots (which’s pits contain cyanide), nutmeg, and cinnamon.
Finally, to make our dish Antonio Demico art-worthy, I had to make some edible garnishes that went along with the soup. That’s why I made some wing and horn-shaped chicharrones. Chicharrones, for those unaware, is crispy fried or baked pigskin tossed in spices. The wings I coated in a mix of matcha, sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. The horns I dipped in honey and toasted sesame seeds.
Combined with this creamy pork broth, this dish is a taste of coming home after a long, monster-filled campaign.
Sing for your Supper!
If you plan to cook the recipes off the site, keep scrolling. However, while access to recipes on the blog will always be free, I now have printable PDF recipe cards and thematic cook-along Spotify playlists as rewards for those who choose to support the blog.
The printable recipe cards and playlist for Green Dragon Caldo Verde and Green Dragon Horns & Wings will be available as a $2 donor reward on my Ko-Fi page until Friday, March 13th, 2019, at 8 pm EST.
-OR-
You can instead join my Patreon community at the “Sing for your Supper” level ($1/month) for access to the playlists or the “It’s All in the Cards” level ($5/month) or higher for access to ALL of my blog recipe cards and playlists. Patrons of all reward tiers will even receive a welcome gift of my Lord of the Rings recipe cards and playlists from January 2019 to get you started.
recipe
Fortune Favors the Hungry
Green Dragon Wings & Horns
Equipment: Oven, two large baking sheets, aluminum foil, cooking spray, cutting board, knife, flour sifter, and two small dishes.
Ingredients:
- 2 lbs of raw pork skin
- 4 teaspoons matcha powder
- 1 teaspoon powdered sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1/4 cup honey
- 1/2 cup toasted sesame seeds
- kosher salt
Instructions:
- Preheat the oven to 325°F and line your baking sheets with foil. Coat the foil lightly with cooking spray.
- Trim the pork skin’s layer of fat so that it is even. Then cut out eight wing shapes, using the first one you cut as a pattern. Cut 32 triangles from the remaining skin.
- Arrange the pieces fat-side down on your baking sheets and spray the stop with cooking spray. Liberally season with kosher salt.
- Bake the skin two to two and a half hours until crispy and golden. You will need to remove the horns from the oven first.
- Let the skins cool on paper towels once baked.
- Blend the matcha, sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg in a dish then transfer to a flour sifter. Sift the blend onto the wing skins to coat.
- Pour the honey into a dish and the sesame seeds into the other. Dip one side of each horn into the honey, then into the seeds.
- Place the finished horns on a plate and refrigerate to set the seeds before serving.
Green Dragon Caldo Verde
Equipment: Stovetop, large pot with a lid, and an immersion blender.
Ingredients:
- 1 lb golden potatoes, diced
- 1 lb yellow onion, diced
- 7.9 oz Spanish or Portuguese chorizo, thinly sliced
- 1 cup dried apricots, diced
- 1 large bunch of kale
- 4 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed
- 8 cups of chicken broth
- 1 tablespoon sherry vinegar
- dragon wing and horn garnishes
- olive oil
- kosher salt
Instructions:
- Heat a drizzle of olive oil in the pot over a medium flame. Add the onion and half the chorizo. Stir cook until the onion softens.
- Add the garlic and cook for another 30 seconds before stirring in the potatoes and apricots. Pour in the chicken broth and bring to a boil.
- Season the broth with a few pinches of kosher salt and cover with a lid. Reduce the heat to medium-low and let simmer 20 minutes.
- Remove the ribs from the kale while the broth simmers. Then slice the kale leaves into thin ribbons.
- Using the immersion blender, blend the contents of the pot until smooth.
- Stir the nutmeg, cinnamon, vinegar, and kale into the broth. Simmer another 2 to 5 minutes while adding kosher salt and olive oil to taste.
- Ladle soup into the bowls, garnish with a few slices of chorizo, a dragon wing, and four horns before serving.
