Ever since I was described as a “brave little spark” during the concert at FINAL FANTASY XIV FAN FESTIVAL 2023-2024, I’ve been playing with those words from Flow in my head and how I can live up to them. I know it’s just lyrics from a song inside of an expansion pack of a video game, but they just stood out so clearly in my mind.

Brave. Little. Spark.

I ultimately decided that, for me, it means that I should be trying to push harder to achieve my dreams and try daunting things. I want to write more about FINAL FANTASY because I have a real love for this series and how much it shaped me – especially FINAL FANTASY XI Online. I ended up publishing on Tuesday a lengthy piece about what enemies from FFXI that I want to see in the ECHOES OF VANA’DIEL raid series. I started going back to kendo for the first time since I had to get my wisdom teeth out, and even though I was clearly out of shape, I still tried to hold my own. I am taking a microtrip in the near future to see a genre of music that I’ve never experienced before, and I am trying out realistic sports simulator video games for the first time ever, just so I can write about them. I’m even starting a new book at the moment!

Cooking Eorzea, in a lot of ways, is me trying to achieve my journalistic dreams while also trying hard, new things. I am making a different dish each week, sometimes from crazy ingredients (sorry Victoria if you’re reading this!), and I push through until the end no matter how it looks like it will turn out. I do it all with Love, Eorzean Style, sure, but it still is daunting at times.

I want to live up to those three words and do my best to embody them, because I genuinely want to be a ‘brave little spark.’

If you’ve missed an installment of Cooking Eorzea, you can check out all the prior recipes here.

Recipe of the Week

The 41st recipe in The Official FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Cookbook, Mole Loaf hails from the Thanalan Region with a ‘Medium’ cooking difficulty level. I will be honest: the recipe itself seems fairly simple, and I don’t think that I can screw it up too badly as long as I am paying attention to what I am doing. And unlike last time, there is not much chance that I will risk smoking myself out of my apartment!

Anyway, here is what Mole Loaf looks like when a real, professional chef makes it:

Image courtesy of Insight Editions.

Featured Ingredient of the Week

Photo by author.

This week’s Cooking Eorzea featured ingredient of the week is…ground lamb! From my research, ground lamb is made from lamb meat from the neck and shank, and with trimmings from other parts of the animal. I was surprised at how lamb has a lot of protein in it, and it has a lot of Iron, Zinc, Vitamin B12, and more. Overall, ground lamb is a fairly good alternative to ground beef, and it is something new that I have yet to eat or work with. As a result, this was an easy pick for Ingredient of the Week!

My Cooking Attempt

In the ingredients for this week’s Cooking Eorzea, sake makes a return!

Photo by author.

First, I chopped up the onion and minced the garlic.

Photos by author.

I then added a teaspoon of olive oil to a heated pan and started to brown the onions.

Photos by author.

As I let the onions brown while occasionally stirring them, I broke open both 12 oz. packages of lamb meat and I measured a full pound. I was SO excited that I measured out the exact 4 oz. I needed on the FIRST TRY!

Photos by author.

By this point, the onions were browned, and I moved them into a separate bowl to cool down.

Photo by author.

I added the ground lamb, salt, pepper, and panko to the onions before setting it all aside temporarily.

Photo by author.

I got out another small bowl, cracked an egg, and added soy sauce, fish sauce, ketchup, and tonkatsu to it. I then whisked it around before realizing there was a small bit of eggshell that somehow snuck in that I had to fish out.

Photos by author.

Once the eggshell was fished out and the wet ingredients were blended together, I added it to the other bowl.

Photo by author.

I then blended it all together by hand. It was really sticky and wet, but it held together surprisingly well. I ended up not having to add in anymore panko to the bowl.

Photo by author.

I molded the blended ingredients together into five almost equally-sized patties.

Photo by author.

I added a tablespoon of oil to a larger pan, heated it up, and then added the five patties to the pan. I let them cook for about four minutes to brown on one side.

Photos by author.

Once they were browned on the bottom, I flipped them over and let the other side brown for another three or so minutes.

Photo by author.

I then added in some water, covered it with a lid, and let the patties finish cooking through while the water evaporated.

Photos by author.

When the water finished evaporating, I waited a bit longer and then I pulled the lamb patties out once they seemed fully cooked.

Photo by author.

With the pan still hot, I added in ketchup, tonkatsu sauce, sake, and water together to make the topping sauce.

Photos by author.

I then blended it all together, along with the lamb patty juices, in the pan until the sauce started to thicken up when I drew my spatula through it.

Photo by author.

Finally, I poured the sauce into a small bowl and then ladled it onto the patties.

Photo by author.

And here is the end result of this week’s Cooking Eorzea dish!

Photo by author.

This was an interesting dish to eat. The recipe said to ladle the topping sauce on generously, which is what I did. There was definitely some oil and fat leftover from the lamb patties that got blended in, as you can see in the final dish picture above. The whole dish tasted mostly like tonkatsu and ketchup from the topping sauce, to be completely honest, as it really overpowered the lamb patties. I ended up not coating one of the lamb patties with the sauce and just ate it as it was to see how the lamb patties tasted. They were surprisingly mild, even with the onions and the garlic and whatnot added in. The lamb patties were delicious on their own, but the sauce just overpowered that flavor so much.

Afterword

I think that if I made this dish again, aside from making sure that I got every bit of eggshell out before I blended wet ingredients together, I would just not work with the topping sauce. It was seriously that strong. The patties were delicious though, and they would make an excellent burger instead. Thankfully, the entire dish was fairly easy to make!

So…Thank yous time! First up? Victoria Rosenthal for writing The Ultimate FINAL FANTASY XIV Online Cookbook. Second, I want to thank the staff at Insight Editions for giving me permission to use the photos from the cookbook to show how these recipes look in the hands of a professional. Furthermore, I owe Brandon Rose a special thanks for creating the logo for this series on short notice. You should check him and his works out over on Twitter.

Finally, I want to thank both Hiromichi Tanaka and Naoki Yoshida for producing FINAL FANTASY XIV Online in both 1.0 and in 2.0 and above. It’s hard to not love their work, honestly.

Next Week

Next week on Cooking Eorzea, I will be making Pan-Fried Mahi-Mahi from the La Noscea region! That’s right: a fish dish AND I won’t have to deep fry it. I am stupidly excited about it, to be honest!

What does being a brave little spark mean to you?

What do you think of ground lamb?

Let us know in the comments below!