Anyway, instead of simply providing recipes of foods that somehow fit the fantasy setting, The Düngeonmeister Cookbook attempts to specifically target your next tabletop RPG gaming session, making certain decisions based on the ability for the items to be eaten during a game without, for example, taking the center stage on your gaming table, which would displace your campaign maps and likely result in dice going into your meal. They set the intention, so I will be reviewing this book with that in mind.
I don't like generalizations. Period. (Well, okay, I guess I like some sometimes while others seem to be grossly overreaching...) Anyway, since the stereotypes and tropes of gaming sessions feature players digging out (or searching for) Cheetos and Mountain Dew, picking up fast food takeout on the way over or ordering a pizza... and since I've personally gamed at all of these stereotypes, I'm going to postulate that tabletop RPG hosts who are highly skilled chefs are probably rare. That would mean that the recipes should either be easy to cook (not all are), have their difficulty clearly labeled (they're not) or, at the very least, the recipes should be accurate and not have the potential to kill those who eat the resultant meals. (Um, yeah... grab your wizard hat and pull up a chair... it's about to get a bit bumpy.)
My wife, Psibabe, is a great cook. Has been since I met her. However, we've taken the pandemic more seriously than most and haven't eaten in a restaurant for just over two years now. Yes, two years. In the absence of going out to eat, my wife's culinary skills have skyrocketed; not only has she made a lot of recipes, but she's gained a certain amount of insight into what works and what doesn't. Her task, here, was to cook these recipes to the letter... at least until it became obvious that they weren't going to turn out well and, at that point, to use her amazing skills to save them. It was a good thing that she is so skilled, for if she had simply made the recipes exactly as written, one garlic potato dip dish would have been primarily made of raw potatoes. One chicken dish could easily have had uncooked/undercooked chicken. And, somewhat bafflingly, a chili would have been made with all of its spices left sitting in a prep bowl, as no instruction ever said to add them in.
The Düngeonmeister Cookbook contains recipes for 75 dishes. Of those, we tried a sampling of 8. These included: Dragonborn Breath (Skordalia), Dwarven Battle Pasta (Toasted Ravioli), Transmute Stone to Pizza (Pizza Dip), My My Myconids (Italian Stuffed Mushrooms), Inspiration Points (Roasted Garlic), Difficulty Spikes (Chicken Satay Skewers with Peanut Sauce), Flames of Tartarus (Chorizo Chili), and Copper Pieces (Salted Caramel Lace Cookies). The first five in that list all have a Mediterranean (Italian / Greek) flavor profile and were cooked together for my birthday dinner. The Chili, Chicken Satay Skewers and Salted Caramel Lace Cookies were made over the next week.
Before Psibabe cooked any of the recipes, she also looked online for similar recipes, to compare and contrast the book's recipe with those commonly found on the Internet to see what sets it apart. In some cases, she found the same recipe to the letter online, even if the comments on that recipe were unfavorable. In other cases, such as Dragonborn Breath, the Skordalia recipe, she found that the included recipe had some fundamental differences that seemed odd, as it was a change to the baseline of the recipe. In the book's Skordalia recipe, they excluded any vinegar and, instead, had lemon juice. Psibabe pointed out the oddity of this choice and the fact that their recipe didn't include any nuts, where most other recipes she found did, even if the type of nuts varied. In writing this review, I researched Skordalia on Wikipedia (*link below) and found that this variant almost looks like something found in the Ionian Islands, except they would include cod stock, as well. However, even if you ignore the odd departure from the most popular Skordalia recipes on the Interwebs, it's still difficult to overlook the fact that boiling whole large potatoes for 20 minutes on high heat didn't come close to cooking them. It could have, had the potatoes been cut into smaller pieces, so the centers wouldn't be so well insulated from the heat, but the recipe only says "4 large russet potatoes, peeled"... not "and quartered" or "and diced." Psibabe boiled the potatoes twice as long as the instructions in an attempt to get them to completely soften by following the recipe as closely as she could, but ended up improvising and finishing them off in a microwave oven to get the potatoes to a sufficiently cooked point to continue the recipe.
Dwarven Battle Pasta came out very nicely and was one of my favorite dishes. However, the battering instructions in the recipe basically lead you through making a "Shake and Bake" sort of coating process, using a sealed bag, instead of simply dipping in the egg mixture and then coating on a plate of breadcrumbs. Psibabe followed the instructions, but did so while making exclamations of how "Stupid!" it was and that it would have coated better if she hadn't used the bag.
One issue Psibabe took with the recipes is that, while they do have an indication of how many servings a recipe is supposed to make, in the case of individual items, such as cookies made from a batter, it doesn't indicate how many the recipe should produce. Sure, Copper Pieces serves 9, but how many cookies are expected per serving? That would help in judging how much batter each cookie should consist of. Instead, the instructions say to use "small teaspoons." I'm pretty sure a "teaspoon" is supposed to be a standard measurement, so finding that phrase in a recipe is a bit disturbing to me. As it turned out, however, this recipe, while tasty, didn't "set up" properly, which, based on comments posted on the exact same recipe found online, can happen when attempted in a locale with higher humidity. In California, this recipe might work fine, but in the Southern states, you're rolling the dice.
Serving sizes can also be internally discrepant. Take Difficulty Spikes, for example. This claimed to make enough Chicken Satay Skewers and Peanut Sauce to serve four. We found that we had enough Chicken Satay to serve the three people who were eating the meal, with one serving left over. Perfect! However, we had more than enough Peanut Sauce for the Satay. Not "enough with a bit left over"... but volumetrically more Peanut Sauce than Chicken Satay! The Peanut Sauce was exotic and great with the Satay, but Peanut Sauce is a tough leftover to incorporate into other things. I've made an interesting mixture by adding it to instant ramen, but not everyone's going to enjoy that dish. I had enough Peanut sauce to do that three times! I feel like it would have been safe to either half the Peanut Sauce or double the Skewers, easily. Also, the cooking method for this recipe is vague and sus. We used a frying pan and a little bit of oil, as they wouldn't have properly cooked based on the recipe.
Some of the recipes in this book are simple. Some don't even require heat. ...Nor do they include ingredients that need to be cooked to be safe for (human) consumption, such as the salsas (Critical Dip and Minotaur Caviar) and a few of the desserts, such as Icy Burst Bananas (Frozen Banana Yogurt Pops), Elven Perfection (Fig Mascarpone Tart with Honey) or Gnomish Burrows ("Grown-Up" Dirt Cups). Those should be fairly approachable and, even though I haven't tried them, I feel safe in saying that in the worst case scenario, they might not come out perfect. However, in these five no-bake recipes, I don't see any obvious mistakes in the recipes that would lead you scrambling to figure out where a mentioned ingredient is supposed to go. And at the very least, these won't turn out dangerously undercooked.
For the most part, the dishes in this book are quite tasty. However, my wife's experience in attempting to coax these recipes into those tasty dishes was a bit harrowing, as she would get to a certain part of making the recipe, realize that the dish was going off the rails and would have to cook something longer than suggested or improvise a way to thicken the chili or select a time to add seasonings that would otherwise not have been actually incorporated into the dish. It was often like watching a live version of Cutthroat Kitchen.
All in all, I find it very difficult to recommend The Düngeonmeister Cookbook. The same wit that fans have come to expect of Jef Aldrich and Jon Taylor is present in the descriptions and "flavor text," but there are issues with some of the recipes and there has been no attempt to label recipes based on difficulty. Some of the dishes within are exotic and interesting and all of the dishes seem like they could be tasty, but if the recipes are quite simply wrong, not only could it lead to burnt food, damaged pots, wasted ingredients and, perhaps, food poisoning, but it could also reduce someone's confidence in the kitchen, which is exactly the opposite of what a cookbook's supposed to do. If you want a great fantasy-themed cookbook, I could highly recommend the official D&D cookbook: Heroes' Feast or the less official but more widely-reaching The Geeky Chef Cookbook. For drinks, I could even recommend their own Düngeonmeister's Guide, which doesn't feature any ingredients that are dangerous when raw (except for one drink that includes a raw egg, if I recall correctly. Just avoid that one).
