Gourmet Gamer Girl Ventures into the Village to make Sarmale de Peste!
Horror, Cooking, & Resident Evil
What're ya buyin'? Haha, just something an old friend of mine used to say...
Ah, The Duke from Resident Evil: Village. One of the countless colorful characters we've seen throughout the many years of Resident Evil. Released in May of 2021, Village is the latest installment of the Resident Evil franchise, and follows to story of Ethan Winters as he travels to a remote Eastern European village to track down the cult that kidnapped his infant daughter, Rose.
Now, you may not know much about Resident Evil. Maybe you're like me, and your first experience with the franchise was those "old" zombie movies from the early 2000s. Maybe you know absolutely nothing about Resident Evil too. Maybe mold people, lycanthropes, and an eight-foot-tall vampire-esque lady with giant Freddy Kreuger claws sounds absolutely bonkers in relations to a game that originally focused on a zombie virus in a mansion. I wish I could explain how strange the lore for the game is when you look at it from the outside, but it just makes sense, ya know? The wild, wackiness of the Resident Evil universe is why I love it so much. It's one of my favorite franchises of all time, for good reason!
Now, I love horror. I've been a horror fan since I was very, very young. Halloween has been my favorite movie since I was six (other than The Mummy, but that's a different story for a different day!) I would literally celebrate Halloween every day of the year if I could because I love the holiday that much.
But, we're here to talk about Resident Evil. As I said, my first introduction to the franchise was watching the movies with my parents when I was growing up. I didn't know much about the games other than the fact that the people who enjoyed them hated the movies. They had a fair reason though- the movies suck in comparison to the story presented by the games. The lore is so rich, it makes me wonder why the movies are so bad in comparison (yet, still something of a guilty pleasure for me!) Huh. Why is it so hard for Hollywood to make a solid movie adaption of a video game?
Anyways, back to Resident Evil. Village is something of a different beast when compared to the earlier games. It continues the story of Ethan and Mia Winters, the protagonists of Resident Evil VII. Unlike most games in the franchise, both Village and VII are told completely in the first person. They were meant to reinvent the Resident Evil experience, since most games were told through the third person or through a fixed-third person camera angle. While you follow Ethan's story through the Village, you meet a man who calls himself The Duke. He helps you by acting as a merchant of sorts- he sells and upgrades weapons for you, offers a store to purchase goods, and even cooks recipes that help to boost Ethan's stats (which gives him a better chance of surviving combat encounters against the various enemies lurking throughout the Village!)
Now, The Duke will never be as cool as my main man, The Merchant, from Resident Evil IV, but I can respect the hustle. He seems like a decent guy for helping a lost father rescue his daughter from the many monsters trying to harm her. He also cooks food for Ethan when he's in the middle of nowhere without asking for anything in return, so honestly? Solid guy. I appreciate him.
Now, The Duke has six recipes in his culinary repertoire. Most are inspired by traditional Eastern European cuisine with some minor modifications to spice them up slightly. I'm a half decent cook- so, I decided to try my hand at recreating The Duke's recipes. Of the six he offers, I chose Sarmale de Peste, since it seemed the most interesting and challenging.
Why not, after all? We're getting into spooky season. It only seems right to make something from the best horror franchise of all time- at least in this humble author's opinion. Without further ado- a gamer girl who knows how to cook tries her hand at recreating Sarmale de Peste- and hopes she won't end up in a village filled with mutated zombie-esque monsters.
Ah, well... at least if I do, I can count on The Duke to keep me company.
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The Gourmet Gamer Girl's Guide to Cooking Sarmale de Peste
Remember when I said there's a distinction between cooking and baking, dear reader? That cooking is an art, while baking is a science? Remember when I said that I wanted to dedicate this blog to recreating recipes from the video games I love? Sometimes I follow recipes, sometimes I do my own thing, yada yada yada. Well, we're cooking this week! Know what that means? This week, I did my own thing. No recipe this time- just a girl who can cook trying her best to recreate a recipe with very little direction. It was a fun one, honestly!
So... Sarmale. I'm going to keep it real with you, here. When I was doing my research to figure out which recipe I wanted to make, I had to look up what it is. Sarmale is a Romanian dish- essentially cabbage rolls stuffed with a meat and rice filling that you cook in a tomato sauce. Well, if you're interested to know something about me, I can let you in on a little secret- I am (at my core) a simple Polish girl. Sarmale sounds a whole lot like the Romanian version of Gołąbki- which I will now lovingly refer to as Gwumpki. I've been eating gwumpki since long before I can remember- so I have a lot of experience with minced meat wrapped in cabbage. The only strange thing is that much like gwumpki, sarmale is typically made with meat (pork, beef, etc.). The Duke's recipe is Sarmale de Peste- cabbage rolls stuffed with fish.
Now, dear reader, you may have some thoughts. That sounds really weird... being the first one, perhaps? Do not fret- you aren't the only one. When I broached the topic of fish filled cabbage rolls to my family, I received quite a few strange and apprehensive looks. I have trust in my culinary abilities, however. Worst case, it's weird and I know to change the approach next time. That's cooking for you!
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The Cooking Process
So... the interesting thing about this recipe? I don't have an ingredient list to follow, or any direction for the actual cooking process. I only really have two hints from The Duke that I can use to form some kind of idea to start with.
The first? In Resident Evil: Village, every recipe is created with ingredients that Ethan can bring back to The Duke. The recipe for Sarmale de Peste calls for six "fish", and one "finest fish".
The second? The description for Sarmale de Peste reads as follows: a superior cabbage roll stuffed with a rare fish found only in this region. So light, they make your body feel almost weightless.
Not much to go off of. So, that makes it my job to use my culinary knowledge to figure out what ingredients I would use in a Romanian cabbage roll stuffed with fish. Now, the traditional roll is stuffed with rice and a minced beef or pork. So... it's a bit more on the hearty side.
In that case, we probably want to use more of a firm fish so the whole thing doesn't fall apart on me. I chose to go with salmon, since it happens to be a fish I can find fresh fairly easily. I'm sure some kind of firm white fish would have worked just as well, but I like salmon... so we're going with salmon!
Now, recipes for both sarmale and gwumpki typically call for you to mix the meat with raw rice that cooks when you put the rolls in the oven. I didn't include rice in my rolls for two reasons. First, I had to cook my salmon ahead of time for my filling because they don't really sell ground salmon. Using raw salmon would have been super difficult in my filling, so I chose to cook mine ahead of time so I could flake it with forks and mix it with my vegetables. Second? Raw rice and salmon mixed together in a roll really sounded nasty to me for some reason. I'm not a big fan of rice in anything other than Chinese or Indian food, so I decided to say no to that. Especially since I was cooking my salmon ahead of time, and the cook time for raw rice in gwumpki can be finicky in my experience.
Also, didn't The Duke say they were light? Rice filled rolls didn't sound overly light, at least in this humble author's opinion! I swapped it for breadcrumbs, since I wanted to make sure I had a binder to hold the rolls together.
Now, cooking fish in the oven can be difficult. Ever tried making a salmon filet in the oven and it comes out with that nasty white stuff spewing out all sides? That's albumin. It's a protein! It usually comes out in that nasty looking white form when you overcook salmon, or cook it too quickly. It's harmless, but it makes for gross looking fish. To remedy this, I put my salmon in the oven while the oven was off and let the fish cook as the oven was heating up! I cooked my salmon at 350 for around 20-ish minutes, give or take.
While the salmon was chilling (or should I say heating?) in the oven, I worked on heating up water to par-boil my cabbage. Much like you do for pasta, it was a simple matter of filling a pot with water, pouring in a whole lot of salt, and setting it on high heat until it started to boil.
The real big deal was cutting up the vegetables for the filling. Most sarmale recipes (and consequently, most gwumpki recipes) typically use onion in the filling. I decided to roll with red onion since it was what I had on hand, but I also added carrots because I wanted more vegetable- and a little more flair too!
Now, obviously this isn't a cooking advice blog. But... I know cutting onions can be super annoying so I thought maybe I could give a few tips. I'm already here after all, aren't I, dear reader?
First, make sure your knife is sharp. You know what's scarier than a sharp knife? A dull one. When the knife is sharp, you're much less likely to cut your fingers off. That's why I use that huge Michael Myers knife you'll see in the pictures below. It's super sharp, and cuts very easily. Is it scary looking? Yep. That's how I like my knives. When they're dull, you really have to saw when you cut (and when cutting is hard, it's super easy for the knife to slip and cut a finger instead of the onion!)
Now, when you actually cut an onion, take note of the "top" and the "bottom". The top of your onion is the part with the little hairs, and the bottom is the opposite side. When you're chopping an onion, I'd start with chopping it in half from the top to the bottom (so that you have two halves- both with a hairy top).
From there, chop off the bottom (your non-hairy end). Make sure you leave the hairy end in tact! We want something to hold the end on while we chop, and also in my experience- chopping off the hairy end makes your eyes more likely to water when you cut (which is super annoying!)
From here, pull the outer layers of skin off so you've got a clean onion to work with. Now, when I chop onions I always cut perpendicular to the hairy end. Slice almost all the way through to the hairy end, but leave a little gap between the end of your cut and the hairy end of the onion. We want to make sure that the onion holds together when we chop. It should look a bit like this!
From there, simply cut perpendicular to those cuts you just made (parallel to the hairy end), and you should have some nice chops to work with. The onion should have held together nicely too since the cuts had something to hold on to while we were chopping. Now you've got a hairy stub and some chops. Simply throw the hairy stub away, and repeat with your other half!
When all was said and done, I had a chopped onion that I put in a bowl to the side while I cut up my other vegetables. The slices weren't entirely perfect in terms of even shapes and sizes, but this isn't the Food Network. I promise Anne Burrell isn't going to yell at you if your cuts come out just a bit wonky (as long as they're mostly similar in size!) At least I hope she won't.
Now, since this is technically my recipe- I wanted to add carrot to the filling since sauteed carrots and onions are like the basic building blocks for any really good recipe. So I did that, regardless of whether it may seem heretical or not! Much like I did with my onion, I started with chopping off both ends. I used a vegetable peeler to remove the outer skin, but I'm sure a sharp knife could have worked just as well.
Speaking of, most recipes like to called for minced garlic. I hate mincing. It sucks so badly when you have to mince garlic of all things- especially since the cloves are so small. I know there's people who love it, but I seriously think it's just easier to use a microplaner and grate it. Gives you the same even cuts in half the time!
Yes, I am using the same cutting board I used for my vegetables. Heretical, right? Now Food Network teaches us never to cut meat and fish on the same board, but if you use the board to cut your meat after you've already chopped your vegetables- it doesnt matter. So long as it's vegetables and then meat, you should always be good to use the same cutting board for everything. Plus, lazy, remember? I didn't want to wash two cutting boards.
I did the same chop size on the bacon as I did on everything else.
From here, I just let the
cabbage cook until it started to turn bright green and it was time to
flip it so the other side could cook. Very difficult thing, turning
cabbage in a pot of boiling water without spilling it all over yourself.
I managed to get by without getting boiling water all over me, so
mission accomplished!
I let the cabbage cook for a few minutes on the other side before I pulled it out to let it chill on the side so it was cool enough to handle later. I complained about turning it being difficult, but pulling it out of the boiling water was worse. I actually had to get a second person to help hold the pot so I didn't knock it over while I was pulling it out, and I needed tongs AND a spider to do it. I don't think I ever want to boil cabbage again, honestly. Actual pain in the butt for so many reasons.
By the time the cabbage was done, I pulled my fish out! I had checked it a few minutes before and it wasn't quite done, but it was after my cabbage was finished.
Now we can get to actually cooking the filling! Woo! I started off heating up some olive oil in a saute pan on medium heat. When it was nice and hot, I added in my garlic so it had time to cook for a bit before I added anything else.
No,
I did not leave it in that big mound in the middle of the pan, before
you ask! I spread it out, gave it about 45 seconds to brown and then
added my bacon since I knew it was going to take the longest to cook.
When the bacon was par-cooked, I added the onion/carrot mixture alongside some basic salt and pepper seasoning. I also added a cap-ful of white wine vinegar so there was some acid in the mixture, since I felt like it would be beneficial.
I let this saute for a little while until the vegetables started to soften and brown. It probably took about ten minutes total, since carrots tend to cook on the slower side in my experience.I also added in some chives and dill to bring back the flavors from the fish into the vegetables too!
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The Rolling Process
Now we get to the actual entertaining part- rolling the Sarmale. I chose to cook in a Le Creuset, since that's what I usually use when I cook something like this. The first thing I did was prep my pan, much like I would do if I was making a lasagna, enchiladas, or something else of a similar caliber. Spray the pan, sauce the bottom, yada yada yada.
Now, we roll. I have tons of experience rolling enchiladas, but when you roll a cabbage roll it ends up more like rolling a burrito. You have to tuck in the edges so the filling doesn't spill out and destroy the roll entirely. I'm not the best burrito roller, so I ended up calling in back up and asking my mom for a bit of advice on that frontier. I may be good at eating cabbage rolls, but I'm not the best at rolling them!
The best tip I got was to cut out part of the stem of your leaf, since it really isn't nice to eat. I decided to heed that nugget of wisdom, and cut out a small triangle of the stem at the bottom of my leaf so it ends up being a bit easier to eat.
From there, I filled the leaf with a small amount of my filling that I rolled into a log and placed just slightly above the tip of my cut. Then I folded the cut edge over the top, both ends over the cut edge, and rolled while I tucked to make sure the final product ended up as tight as possible. I placed seam-side down to ensure that they wouldn't come apart as they cooked too!
I repeated the process until I got towards the middle-end of the cabbage that wasn't cooked very well. Once they started getting hard to roll because the cabbage wasn't as pliable, I stopped rolling cabbage rolls and just turned the rest of my filling into some salmon meatballs. I added the rest of the sauce onto the top of the rolls, and covered the entire tray in foil before I set it in the oven. I ended up cooking them at 350 degrees for ten minutes with the foil on, and then another ten minutes with the foil off. After they finished cooking, I let them sit on the oven while I finished making sides.
The sides? Pierogi. I'm Polish- it's the usually side for Eastern European food in my house. However, we didn't come here to talk about pierogi. When one of the Resident Evil characters eats some pierogi, maybe we can have the conversation. For now? It's irrelevant. They were store-bought anyways, since I wanted to focus on the sarmale- so honestly, they don't really matter in the grand scheme of things. Anyways, let's get to the good part, huh?
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The Gourmet Gamer Girl Verdict
So, how were they? Did they end up tasting as weird as they sounded when the idea was first pitched? Did they hold together well? Can The Duke's strange modifications to the recipe actually make a solid-tasting dish? Well, I think there was some good and some bad. Let's discuss, shall we?
First, we should start with the level of ease in actually cooking the meal. Hard prep work? No, not really. Honestly, the prep work wasn't too bad, it was just a bit extensive. Wrapping was slightly annoying, but that's simply the lazy cook in me talking. The cook time was fairly quick, so that's always a plus. I'd say this falls about right in the middle of super easy and very difficult. It requires a decent chunk of prep work and hands-on cooking, but it isn't anything super difficult to do. Then again, I did make the recipe, didn't I? I'm sure I could find a way to make this easier if I tried, but that's cooking! You try and edit as you go, especially when you're designing your own recipes!
Surprisingly, they actually tasted good! I know, right? Fish cabbage rolls cooked in tomato sauce does sound a bit weird, doesn't it? It was oddly reminiscent of a salmon patty, but still- I'd say they were good. Lighter than the gwumpki that I'm used to, but still pretty tasty.
Now, I still don't think these are good as the cabbage rolls I grew up eating, and enjoy still today. Did The Duke (and I) create something interesting compared to the traditional recipe? Yep! I don't think they were quite there, though. I feel like I could have done a much better job. The sauce wasn't acidic enough, so it did very little to cut the richness of the salmon. The vegetables were nice, but I do feel like it was missing something that I can't quite put my finger on.
Oh well. Were they the perfect roll that I had dancing around my imagination? No. That's cooking though. Sometimes you hit, sometimes you miss, and other times it's good but not great. This one falls on me. I'm sure there's plenty of modifications I could make to switch this up the next time I try to make them! A different, more acidic sauce, perhaps? Something that would add a bit more jazz to the filling? I'll figure it out. That's the nice thing about cooking. Maybe the recipe isn't the greatest the first time you cook it, but you can always switch it up next time and make it better!
Regardless of my personal feelings, I'd say these are a solid seven out of ten as they stand now. Would they be something I enjoyed eating after a nice, long day of killing parasite infested monsters in a remote Eastern European village? Honestly, yeah! They weren't perfect, but they were still damn good! So, thanks Duke! You can remain my second favorite merchant for the time being.
Sorry man- my main man from Resident Evil IV will always have my heart!
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