Splatoon 2: Crust Bucket #2: Double-Fried Super Shwaffle

 Time for the second round of schwaffles, this one is an escalation of the previous recipe.

We've got more of the waffles and some of the prawn tempura, we'll fry these waffles and refresh the tempura again in the hot fryer, as it goes soft and soggy overnight in the fridge.

hot and oily!

now we reheat that chocolate sauce as well.

Now for the extra added component! as there appears to be an extra layer of something creamy and chocolate-speckled in the middle, ive opted for a scoop of cookies & cream ice cream to join the layers.

***

While the tempura prawn is absolutely bangin, and the chocolate sauce isnt even that bad with it... these are starting to get a little sickly, these waffles really arent meant to be deep fried, they're becoming like oil-filled sponges. 5 more sanity points lost. Also hows my balancing food on melting ice cream skills eh? Pretty vertical eh?

#1 ink consumer

Splatoon 2: Crust Bucket #1: Deep-Fried Shwaffle

 Deep fried shwaffle is already straight in the deep end, as it appears to be... a large tempura prawn riding a fried waffle covered in some sort of brown sauce.

I guess the first question is: sweet or savoury? I guess it could do either way, but the presence of copious amounts of cream on the later dishes suggests that maybe ill just have to suck it up and make tempura with chocolate sauce and cream. Plus when I looked it up online, that seemed to be the most popular interpretation of the dish.

I was hoping to find some pre-made tempura/panko prawns when shopping, but instead i settled for the biggest fuckin prawns i could find, and ive already got some tempura batter so thats alright. These don't have the tails on but eh, hopefully its close enough. .

Battered them up and deep fried them, damn these are looking GOOOOOOD. I'll be able to use these for the next few recipes as well. If i cook the waffle next will it taste kinda shrimpy?? I guess it wont matter at this point.

Now i've opted for home made chocolate sauce, as it looks kinda thick in the game so i wasnt going to settle for a squeezy bottle of vaguely chocolatey vegetable oil. Butter, milk, cocoa and sugar, just guessing with the proportions really tbh, i can always add more of anything.

nah this is looking good.

I went for pre-made waffles since we're doing plenty of cooking already and... OK so the pre-made waffles I bought are... a little funky and unnatural. When i put it in the fryer is immediately flopped like a blanket and i had to scoop it out. Maybe it will harden back up when it dries?

***

Surprisingly I didn't gag, it was pretty palatable. But I feel like I lost sanity points as I was eating.

#1 damage taker

Splatoon 2 & 3: SplatFeast!

The poll has spoken... the next challenge will be SPLATOON 2 & 3 Featuring all non-drink recipes from the Crust Bucket and Crab-N-Go!

There's not many foods so this will be nice and short, but probably quite intense as some of these I would describe as "mountainous"

aight freaks lets fry

Super Paper Mario: Saffron & Dyllis Super Show: Complete!

 At 95 recipes, our second and even bigger challenge is complete! Unlike the cooking mama challenge, we got to cook our own way. But instead, designing recipes according to our best approximation of the somewhat whimsical in-game ingredients.

Things I learned:

- There's a solution for everything! Electricity? Poison? Stars? We can cook it!

- Some mushrooms are better than others...

- ...but I still dont really like them.

- You can actually eat horsetail, you just can't find any.

- Several ways to set a pudding!

- Mario does not get enough vitamin b-12 in his diet.

- Portobello is the worst mushroom, oyster is the best mushroom.

- No seriously, i'm so done with mushrooms!!!

Total Ratings:

*            x 6

**          x 7

***        x 27

****      x 32

*****    x 23

Average score: 3.62

Favourite Recipe:

#85 Megaton Dinner
Toss up between this and the mango pudding! This one won me over because I thought a pow block was just the most ridiculous thing to attempt out of this whole list, and I took a chance on a silly idea i had - one that forced me to buy spam for the first time ever and try cooking something i'd never eaten before. And I just think I smashed the brief, and what's more i'm a total convert! I even bought another can of spam to make something like this again later.

Least Favourite Recipe:

#52 Volcano Shroom

I'll admit my execution of this was poor, trying to get a quick and simple version of a cheese-stuffed mushroom... I thought it would be pretty simple and i'd get a simple spicy grilled cheese on a vegetable. Instead I got dehydrated cheese on a wet sponge.

My bad.

Special thanks:

Special thanks to the following resources:

mariowiki.com
Tobi who has volunteered to compute the scores in spreadsheet forever.

My lovely family who made the best looking store-bought gingerbread house ever, and put up with a few of my weird mushroom cakes and stews!

Super Paper Mario: Saffron & Dyllis Super Show #95: Mistake

 Mistake is not a real recipe! It's what happens when you cook any incorrect combination of ingredients. Initially I was saving this for when I needed a do-over. But you know me, I have a tendency to roll with the punches.

So instead I thought it might be fun as a lil' bonus to just cook something that somewhat resembles the sprite, and really make whatever I was feeling like making anyway! So here's what ive got to work with. A whole sea bass, a bag of chopped kale and some pre-made sweet potato mash (to save me some effort)

I've been wanting to try making "crispy seaweed" style kale, and now is the perfect time. Ideally you should shred it up a lot thinner, but its just to make a lump of green so im not too fussed. I sprinkle on a tablespoon of sugar, give it a few grinds of salt and drizzle it in some sesame oil.

Now i wanna put a lil somethin' to season the sea bass. I'll crisp it up with a mixture of chilli and olive oils, shove a bit of african chilli relish in the cavities, and sprinkle some paprika salt on at the end!

Oops! trying to do the kale alongside the fish might be a little hasty, i guess we should do this low and slow as its cooking very unevenly. Oh well, mistakes for the mistake god!

Fortunately the sweet potato mash is just a simple job in the microwave, cant mess that up!

Looking good all cooked, but you know what we didnt come here to show off an appetising whole fish... lets see dem bones!!

***

Not much of a mistake! I don't know if its something about the investment but a whole grilled fish just tastes so much better than I always expect even with quite simple seasoning. I also really liked the flavours of the (unevenly) crispy kale. However, like most people, i dont really enjoy the part where im sat picking bones out of my meal the whole time. Also the sweet potato mash was decent but it didnt really go with the other components very well.

Super Paper Mario: Saffron & Dyllis Super Show #94: Trial Stew

 Trial Stew is made from COUPLE'S CAKE and POISON SHROOM

Here we are, straight after the last recipe! We've got the rest of the mushrooms, ive thrown in some chopped ginger and wasabi for the full poison shroom experience. Now for the couples cake... wait, the couples cake? Remember that?

I ate it all a while back. But the couple's cake was made from the snow bunny recipes, which in turn were made from turtley leaf, pink apple, and ice storms. Sounds horrifying, but what if we just pick out the most stew-friendly interpretations of that...? Instead of an apple ice cream with mint leaves, we've got some plain cream, fresh apple and a bay leaf! Thats starting to sound... well, better...

I also kind of wanted to bulk this stew up into a proper meal, so i also bought a bunch of beef and a celeriac root! I've tipped the mushroom mix into a bowl for a moment so i can give these a proper browning and make sure the meat is cooked through. (Also if you don't know, a celeriac root is basically like a turnip that tastes like celery.)

Next we add in the apple and bay leaf, then we can add back in the rest of the ingredients and some hot water... and of course the cream!

Hmm, this is tasting a bit plain so far, so im going to throw in a vegetable stock cube and some pepper just in case. Trial stew indeed! What have i created?

****

Oh! Its actually good. Ultimately ive just rounded it out into a creamy beef, veg and mushroom stew, with some slightly unorthodox but not too outlandish additions that go together just fine. I feel like you could simplify the recipe, like replace apple and wasabi with mustard and get a similar flavour for less work. Trial passed!

Super Paper Mario: Saffron & Dyllis Super Show #93: Dangerous Delight

 Dangerous Delight is made from POISON SHROOM.

As we've covered before, poison is alcohol! alcohol is an poison. So we have leftover sake, and we have a mix of mushrooms. I'll pick out the shiitake ones for this cause they have a fairly classic mushroom look, and we've got kind of a japanese theme happening here.

Just gonna soak all of this in soy sauce and sake first. Then i'll just fry them whole.

This is more spring onion than I need, but I love to freeze half of it chopped, then you can easily put a pinch of it in instant noodles or soups.

Are you wondering why im using such a massive pan to fry these? What will I do with the rest of them... well the answer is this will flow straight into the next recipe. Since this one just depicts a small plate of mushroom, and im sick of eating plates of mushrooms, im just gonna do it as like, a lil' appetiser dish.

**

If there's one thing we've learned is that presenting mushrooms ain't that easy, they just kind of end up as a small brown rag on your plate, so here's just my best go of it, using ginger for spikes and dots of wasabi. Anyway, these were just ok. just a floppy seasoned mushroom. The wasabi was kinda nice. But I think shiitake really shines when its there to flavour a larger dish... which we'll get to next recipe....

Super Paper Mario: Saffron & Dyllis Super Show #92: Heavy Meal

 Heavy Meal is made from HONEY JAR and HONEY CANDY

So double honey, and it just looks like a layered pile of wiggly drippy.... yes ive got it! Baclava!

Ive got all sorts of nuts in my cupboard: pistachios, walnuts, and a mixed bag with more walnuts, cashews and hazelnuts. I'm taking a handful of each and chopping them up into nice little crumbs!

Now to get that wiggly edge i'm going to attempt to cut this store bought filo pastry with a cookie cutter- easier said than done as it is NOT made for this, the pastry is extremely paper-like.

it says to butter in between every other thin layer of the pastry? is that necessary for pre-made stuff? I dunno but we'll find out, its a heavy meal anyway. I have some butter i melted in the microwave for a few seconds.

we layer in lots of filo sheets and nuts and a drizzle of honey in each nut layer... the sheet cutting is very rough but honestly? it wont matter that much as it just has to look all wobbly slobbly

then we put them in the oven to bake! it says 20min on high and 30min on low or something, ill just take them out when they look brown and crispy. Meanwhile we need MORE syrup to drizzle on top after cooking. Normally in baclava you make a typical middle-eastern sweet flavour with orange blossom, cardamom etc but i happen to have some gingerbread syrup (for drinks) handy, so i mix the remainder of the honey with the rest of the melted butter and water it down with the gingerbread syrup!

It's brown and crispy! On goes the syrup and then we let it cool, and HOPEFULLY in spite of being mega sticky, itll come out of this silicone muffin mould just fine...?

spoiler: it did! and heres a nice cross-section because i think its turned out rather well.

*****

I made a big baclava! This stuff is normally meant to be in smaller pieces so what ive done is made... a real heavy meal!! The gingerbread syrup worked great adding that complexity of flavour, while being slightly different from the traditional recipe. Really like this, i think it tastes fresher than store-bought too.