Recipe for my Punpkin soup with shrimp, because it came out amazing and I'll remake it Spoiler: recipe needs, for the shrimp: handful of shrimp (7-ish) tsp of honey tsp of tamarind paste splash of soysauce bigger splash of water to thin it out needs for soup: 1 butternut pumpkin 1 shallot 3-4 cloves of garlic 1 can of coconut milk a chunk of ginger (about an inch long piece? maybe?) 1.5 tsp of green curry paste seasonings to taste: salt, cumin, curcuma, nigella seeds, lemon grass, cinnamon, coriander optional but recommended: bread product for dipping (used a small turkish-style flatbread) toasted coconut shavings Do: The night before soup, mix your honey, tamarind paste soy sauce and water in a bowl to make a marinade. microwave for half a minute to mix better if necessary. Once well combined, add your shrimp, toss to coat evenly and plop it into the fridge. actual soup: peel and slice your shallot, put it in a pot on medium heat with a splash of oil and a pinch of salt. While the shallots start cooking, peel and slice your garlic, add it. Stir until shallots are gaining some color and garlic loses its raw edge. Add in your coconut milk, wash out can with a splash of water and add that as well. while this comes back to temp, get your pumpkin. Chop off top and bottom, peel, cut into similar sized chunks and put it into the soup pot as well. Peel and finely chop your ginger and add. Add your curry paste and seasoning, bring it back to a boil and put heat on medium. The pumpkin can soften while the rest happens. (if you use coconut shavings: now's the time to put them in a dry pan, toast until lightly browned, then reserve until needed) Shrimp: put your shrimp into a hot pan and cook about a minute or two per side, or until nice and pink. Do not toss the marinade! Reserve shrimp in a bowl, dump your marinade into the pan and reduce it down into a glaze. Once that's happened, put your shrimp back in and toss in the glaze until well coated. Take the pan of the heat and let it sit on the side. By now pumpkin should be pretty soft. use an immersion blender and puree all the pumpkin smooth. If it becomes too thick, add a splash of water. Once you got the consistency you want,taste for seasonings and adjust as necessary. Once the soup is seasoned how you like it, laddle it into a bowl. Top with your glazed shrimp (and if used: coconut shavings) andserve it forth. i used a frozen bread to go with it. I took it out of the freezer about an hour before soup production started to thaw. once soup production got underway, i preheated the oven to 200°C. Once shrimp went into the pan, I put the bread into the oven for 5 minutes to rebake. Pulled it out and left it too cool while finishing up the soup, came out beautifully crisp and tasty.
Time for some au musings: Spoiler: slutty ihop backstory Matt lost his parents to a car accident at 16 and afterwards got moved to his maternal side grandma, who lived out in the Stücks, but who was about the right amount of strict and laisse-faire that he needed afterwards. Was probably already known as Kind Of A Slut at that point, who his gran reckoned that as long as nobody hot pregnant or sick, who gives a damn? Grandma was also on the witchy side if things, and matt's Gateway drug to paganism. He lived with her during school, but afterwards opted to help take care of her instead of going to college. She had a fatal stroke when he was twentytwo and left everything to him, including the lil house he lives in now, her collection of barn cats (now reduced to a singular house cat) and a surprising amount of money that he's been reluctant to touch. Went and became the local health inspector afterwards, and now at 28, has been at that for a while. Slutty ihop is his nemesis for health violations (he went over their pantry with a blacklight once and still has nightmares about it) but his superior is a regular customer and doesn't let him shut it down. Spoiler: pac rim au Matt got Pilot trained and looked like a REALLY promising candidate because in Simulation, he can shrug off a lot of damage and keep going, which is very useful as kaiju gdt bigger and meaner. Problem: while he manages to be okay-ish drift compatible with a lot of people, it's never really good. So he got bounced around bases a lot, trying to find him a Partner. Meanwhile Matt is slutting it up and the upper ranks are keeping track actually, in case they find someone really drift compatible that way. In the end, he gets Aodhan. Mostly because their try-out find activated all of his feral gremlin instincts like nobody's business. He and aodhan very much tried to take chunks out of each other for real, and then ended up with rage-sex the moment they found a closet. They're very much the team you send out when you want things SUPER dead. They paste the kaiju. Their jaeger is probably meant more for underwater fighting, far away from settled areas, so i'm thinking more of a fishy/seasnake vibe for it? Spiny and strong enough to lift a kaiju over the water line and literally rip it apart while laughing manically. Full supervillain laugh. Like Nico/Gale they definitely fuck after the kill, right in the jaeger and still partially in drift.
Note to self: at some point this Winter, sort bras into 'fine', 'need mending (and then mend them)', 'good for goodwill' and 'trash' I keep pulling broken/uncomdy bras out of my wardrobe and it's gotta stop
ao3 won't let me leave more kudos and honestly that is a shame bc u deserve many this is gud gud writing
Man, mending stuff is so deeply satisfying? Like, oh that shirt was broken and had Holes, but now it's not and that's because i fixed it. Just. Feels good man.
meal plan for the weekend: - panfried leftover use-up (3 smoll potatos, a handful of pasta, leftover pesto rosso) - shakshuka with feta task plans for the weekend: - vacuum - more laundry - dishes - work on new plushie pattern (head!!)
also i got two smol hokkaido pumkins, so I can make my idea for cheese stuffed ones (camenbert, some toasted walnuts, a splash of white wine) maybe i could add some dried fruit? i think i got apricots somewhere still...
also, for personal record keeping: Sir Chad, my orchid which puts all other orchids to shame, has started blossoming today. 1 main flowerspike with 3 secondary branches.
Hnnm. 7? 7. First time i killed something with necromancy without meaning to. I was new to London, a coven tried to take me out using the traditional 'burn the witch' approach. I got hurt enough to lose control, "ate" two of them and their familiars before i got control back.
matt: is he ever uncomfortable with any aspects of his role in life? (any verse) geme: biggest regret?
Matt: 3 on the uncomfortableness scale and yes, absolutely? I do like being a Necromancer, mostly. But chances are that my best friend is going to have to put me out of everyone's misery in the future. Hard to be comfortable with that, innit? Geme: 2, I would think? Not keeping contact with the family I had. My parents had a number of children after I left. I feel like I should have kept tabs on them, but somehow I could never bring myself to get close to them again.
Ah, that's a hard one but not an uncomfortable one? So a 1 on that scale, but also it's just a hard question to answer. I can't exactly decide if someone deserved to be cursed with vampirism, much less pass judgement on their descendants, but I do admit i'm always wondering a little what they did. It's probably natural curiosity, but very rude to ask, I think. Now people who do it to themselves through magic I feel pretty free to judge. Mage-making a vampire is not an accident. You don't just mispronounce a spell and end up that way. It takes a lot of work, and a lot of life spilled for nothing but your own gain - or perhaps the experiment on someone else, in which case the person getting judged is the one performing the spell, not the poor victim. Still, I hold that made-making a vampire is a terrible idea all over and nobody in their right mind should attempt it on themselves or another. It's never worth it. there are things that humans aren't meant for, that's why it's used as a curse, no? Turning it into a blessing is nothing human magic really lends itself too, we can't rebalance it enough to do that without utterly breaking the magic apart.
