Quite frequently a recipe will have "sub-recipes," such as the recipe for a topping, filling, or side that is intended to accompany the dish. (Such as Oven Fries*, as a grudgingly accepted accompaniment to the Garlicky Mayonnaise)**. There are, however, a couple of places in Exquisite Exandria: The Official Cookbook of Critical Role where a very elaborate spread is possible, with an entire group of recipes being intended to come together to form a veritable feast, of sorts. Notably, Tal'Dorei's The Full Emon* is to Tal'Dorei what a Continental Breakfast is to, well, presumably, "the continent," with enough food to successfully break the fast, fuel a full-day's trek or, quite possibly, send you back to bed to sleep it off, replete with bacon, eggs, fried tomatoes, fried chicken and gravy, and waffles from scratch with homemade Orange-Honey Browned Butter Syrup*. If you ramp your gaming session up into a multi-day sleepover event, bear this in mind, should you opt to break out The Full Emon* before your gaming session. Also hailing from Tal'Dorei, The Grand Poobah's GoFiBePo Meat Board* features a total of ten recipes to be combined to form a vast and lush appetizing spread of bread, meats, cheeses, fondue and accoutrements.
Another elaborate, yet fun culinary undertaking, Jester's Sweet Feast* starts off with a recipe for Rough Puff Pastry Dough*, then gives you three recipes to make use of that dough: Roasted Plum Danishes*, Spiced Puff Pastry Pull-Apart Muffins with Cherry Jam* and a more savory Salt-And-Pepper Cheese Twists with Honey Drizzle*.
Personally, I'm quite the fan of salads. Not your typical side-salads or house salads that are often thrown together from a few vegetables and topped with a dressing out of some plastic container, mind you. No, a salad can provide an amazing flavor profile of flavors that unfold and develop in each bite, bursts of juiciness, the occasional crunch of a seed or hearty crouton, and a rich, aromatic homemade dressing. I always love to see what someone can do without so much as a heat source. Exquisite Exandria has just two salads, but both are quite interesting. Marquet's Heartmoor Harvest* includes a varied mix of greens, a honey mustard vinaigrette, shaved Parmesan cheese and, oddly, marinated and roasted blue potatoes. Exotic, yet rustic... and it managed to break outside of my "things you don't need a heat source for" description. Interesting. The other salad on offer hails from Wildemount and also requires a heat source, if only because you're making homemade croutons, here. Plank King Panzanella* features fresh exotic citrus fruits accented with freshly ground pepper and sourdough croutons, topped with a Mead Gastrique*... a salad to please the most finicky of pirates.
While there are a couple of drinks to be found within the Marquet chapter (Sandkheg Hide Ale* and Dalen's Closet Special*, specifically), most of the drinks are to be found in the final chapter, Wildemount. This supports my opinion that if you find yourself needing to venture there, you may well need some liquid courage.
As part of our evaluation process, we prepared several of the recipes and, for still others, looked into making them, but ended up opting out based on preference or the cost or availability of the ingredients. Of the ones we tried, several were real winners. Everlight-as-Air Scones* were light, sweet and delicious. We decided against making the Papaya-Lemon Curd*, as papaya isn't popular amongst those who were going to be tasting things, but store-bought lemon curd was delightful with the scones, so you can decide which way you want to go with that. De Rolos' Revenge Pasta* was one we went back and forth on, not wanting to select it simply because it seemed to be one of the easier dishes, but it ended up being quite delicious, while not overly difficult to prepare. (Warning: Must love garlic.) Another hit is the Conciliatory Couscous*... well, at least with two out of three tasters. Two loved it, the other wasn't fond of sun-dried tomatoes, olives or preserved lemon, all of which played their parts valiantly in contributing to the flavor profile of this exotic dish. The recipe claims it makes 4 to 6 portions, but we eat smaller portions and found that it served us for dinner one night and provided about a week worth of lunches for two people. (And those two weren't mad about that and, in fact, are discussing making another batch, just for lunches, which is saying something.)
Whipped Herbed Feta* was a bit of a sleeper hit. This is a sub-recipe intended as an accompaniment to Pickled Shrimp Smorrebrod*, but with one taster disliking all things pickled and actually being allergic to shrimp, we weren't about to make that main recipe. However, we had enjoyed whipped feta from a Greek restaurant before, so were happy to have a recipe to make some. This isn't the same, but it was quite delicious with pita chips and was scrumptious with some honey drizzled atop, as was how it was presented for the Greek dish we had gotten some with before.
Of course, we had to try a dessert or two, while we were at it, and Yasha's Flower Cake* was, well, delicious. The flavors of lavender and lemon played really well together and the cream cheese frosting was quite similar to the frosting used by Nothing Bundt Cakes, which is one of our favorite store-bought cakes. Full disclosure, the cake was a bit dense, but we're not sure if this was an issue with the recipe or in execution. Just as a note, for those especially fond of lemon flavor, adding a bit of the above mentioned lemon curd to the cake when serving a slice is also quite tasty. Another recipe (or two?) that caught our attention was Popping Hot Chocolate Bombs*: hot cocoa bombs with a bit of popping candy for extra excitement. (We purchased silicone molds for this one, but the reason I said "two" is because there's an alternative recipe, Popping Malted Hot Cocoa Mix*, which the book calls "An Alternative for the Beginner Adventurer." This easier alternative foregoes the chocolate shells, unnecessitating the silicone molds, an instant-read thermometer, and a bit of skill and, perhaps, luck.) The concept of hot chocolate bombs is novel and exciting, even when purchased from the store, so how cool to have a recipe for them in this book. In concept. We found the instructions to be a little unclear, however... in the way that until you've finished making them the first time, you could think that the description means one thing... then when you find out what didn't work so well and think of how to fix the problem, you realize another interpretation of the instructions would be your new solution***. Yay. Further, one of the novel features of these bombs is the inclusion of popping candy (such as Pop Rocks) in the chocolate shell. Assuming you are able to properly seal your spheres to avoid content leakage, this is a clever idea, since it will stay dry in the bomb and then activate when the shell melts in hot milk. However, in our experience, finding a flavor that worked well with hot chocolate was difficult****. Another thing worth mentioning is that the molds we used were just 2" molds, while the recipe calls for a little bit larger. The next size up I was able to get would have been a 3", which is larger than the book calls for and wouldn't fit in most of our mugs, so I opted for the 2" spheres. As a note, filling a 2" sphere halfway (just one half) with contents seemed to be definitely chocolatey enough, but probably could have used more marshmallows. Your mileage is almost guaranteed to vary.
It's worth mentioning that in order to get full appreciation out of the recipes in this book, you must like garlic. And mushrooms. Lots of mushrooms. Caduceus's Ethically Sourced Mushroom Toasts*, for example, calls for 1.5 lbs of them, while Slayer's Take Stew* calls for a pound of mushrooms and a cup of dried mushrooms. (The Mushroom Toasts were excellent, by the way.)
Not all of the recipes were out-of-the-park hits, of course. Slayer's Take Stew* was elaborate to make, called for dried mushrooms that we couldn't easily source in town (we substituted fresh shiitake mushrooms for dried) and it was... alright. It wasn't bad, but it's not something we're likely to make again, if simply due to the effort to reward ratio. The recipe recommends eating the stew over egg noodles or mashed potatoes or with crusty bread. We tried all three and unanimously found mashed potatoes to be the superior option, but, again, your mileage may vary.
The theming in Exquisite Exandria is throughout the entirety of the book and is quite entertaining, with each recipe having a backstory or colorful description that gives you some cultural context for the dish. One amusing theming element is to be found in Black Moss Cupcakes*, where the book provides a recipe for "Dust of Deliciousness"*, which appears to be possibly alchemical in nature, but then has redacted the important bits and recommends simply using food glitter. Ah, well.
If you're looking for things you can serve at the gaming table during a session, just use good judgement on what to make, avoiding things that are saucy and messy. If you're a fan of Critical Role or just a gaming nerd with a cooking streak, there's a lot to make within this tome. We enjoyed the recipes that we tried, finding most of them to be quite tasty and having a couple that we are quite sure we'll cook again. This book was also our "first" attempt at a couple of things, specifically hot chocolate bombs and scones. There's enough variety in difficulty and consideration for certain dietary concerns on some recipes that there should be something in here for almost everyone. This would make a great gift for nearly any fantasy tabletop gamer with an interest in cooking... doubly so if they're fans of Critical Role.
* For your convenience, you can see the page number for the mentioned recipes by hovering over the recipe's names. You're welcome.
** Okay, as a lover of Garlic, having tasted Garlicky Mayonnaise, I concede that Grog is correct and that the fries, or chips or anything else are a bit superfluous, as it would taste just as good on one's fingers. That having been said, the oven-cooked Fries from the accompanying recipe are also quite tasty, with the mayo or on their own.
*** Specifically, when coating the inside of the molds with chocolate, you really want to make sure that there's a thick layer of chocolate, especially around the top of the mold. That is where you will later be melting it a bit to fuse it to the other half and, if it's thin, it melts away too quickly, changing the shape and messing up the shape. Additionally, if these walls are thin in that area, any attempts to add melted chocolate to the seam will melt the side and deform it, rather than build it back up. I tried a second batch, some about the same as the first batch, to see if the additional experience I had would improve the result and a couple that I coated, let them cool, then coated them again to really build up a thick wall around the top of the mold. These double coated ones were the ones that came out the best - by a long shot. The others came out better than the first batch, but ended up shaped like M&Ms, rather than spheres, due to the loss due to melting at the seam. Further, a couple of them had holes at the seam that I was only able to fix by dropping some cold chocolate flakes into the pan and caulking the seam with this ever-so-slightly melted chocolate.
**** Popping candies tend to come in fruit flavors and not a lot of fruit flavors go well with chocolate and, of them, very few go well with hot chocolate. Cherry might work (think chocolate covered cherries) and orange could, as well, since there are chocolate and orange flavored confections, but even that doesn't sound like it would be a good addition to a cup of hot chocolate. We used strawberry flavored popping candy and it seemed to add an undesirable bitterness to the hot chocolate.
