Do you like playing games? Do you enjoy cooking? Do you like to occasionally have more than just soda pop and potato chips as snacks for game night? In this new Monday blog series, game industry personalities will be sharing some of their favorite recipes for game night munchies. Welcome to Gaming Gastronomy! This week our savory soup comes from Paco Jaen of G*M*S Magazine.
Paco (Facebook, Twitter, Website) discovered D&D more than half a lifetime ago when fate dropped in his lap a copy of Dragonlance: Dragons of Autumn Twilight. From that moment on it was all looking forward. He then got into RPGs after a sports injury saw him homebound for a few weeks and from there went onto starting the first gaming convention in his home town, a gaming club at the army based where he served in 1993, and collaborate in two fanzines.
He started G*M*S Magazine in 2010 and G*M*S Magazine España in 2016 where he has been producing reviews, over 200 podcast episodes and over 150 videos to bring interviews, reviews and games unboxings to others. An active member of the LGBTQI community, his work and opinion pieces aim to bring diversity and equality around the table, regardless of the game you play.
For years he organised seminars at the two most prestigious games conventions in the UK, Dragonmeet and the UK Games Expo.
“Thank you very much for asking me to send you a recipe. I must admit I struggled to send one partly because there are so many I wanted to send. Having people at home to play is an important part of my life and, in my family, nothing says ‘welcome’ like cooking a meal for your friends, so making sure they get good food is very important to me”
“This is one of those recipes I like to cook in the winter to warm up everyone. The rustic look and how little space it takes around the table makes it perfect for our dungeoneering trips and it feels like the sort of food you can find in any tavern in your fantasy realm.”
This is a dish that you can prepare the day before and it tastes even better. It requires very little supervision and you can make many changes to it if you wish, though the basic recipe is super tasty and perfect as a winter warmer.
Onion Soup with a Twist
Ingredients:
- 1kg Onions, thinly sliced
- 1kg minced meat, ideally beef, though you can use pork or lamb too.
- Two or three cloves of garlic, sliced or chopped (personally I can’t have enough garlic, so three it is!)
- Salt
- Pepper
- One or two small chillies (only if you like it spicy)
- 2 L of water
- 2 meat stock cubes (optional)
- Olive oil
- Butter: 50gr
- A glass of white wine
How to cook:
- In a pan, heat the olive oil on a medium heat and add the garlic until they are nice and golden.
- Add the minced meat and a bit of salt and pepper and cook until all the juices have evaporated and the meat as a firm but loose consistency. You will need to stir it constantly to get this. Once the meat has been cooked, set aside and reserve.
- Add the butter to the pan and deglaze it so you can get all the meat juices back into cooking. Add the onion and stir well to cover with all the butter and the meat juices left in the pan.
- Lower the heat to low, cover and let the onions cook very gently for about 20 minutes. Stir only twice or three time during this process. You will be tempted to do it all the time, but if you let them cook slowly, they will form a brown crust at the bottom of the pan that will make a huge difference to the taste.
- When the onions have reduced in size to about a third, add the wine to the onions and bring the heat up so the wine simmers and the alcohol disappears.
- Add the meat back into the pan and mix well with the onion
- Add the water or stock and the chillies if using them, set the fire to medium and bring to simmering point for about 30 or 40 minutes.
Your soup is ready!
If you want to make this a bit more extravagant, put some grated cheese on some toasted French Baguette slice and leave it to melt under the grill for a couple of minutes.
You can make this fully vegan by not using the meat, using an alternative to the butter and vegetable stock. You will be amazed how well that tastes!
In the coming weeks, check back here on Mondays for more delectable recipes from personalities around the game industry