Stardew Valley #1: Fried Egg

Ingredients: Egg

Item Description: Sunny-side up.

Hello again, fried egg. We've done a fried egg twice before in past challenges. This time I'm gonna go pretty puritanical and do you just a single fried egg, sunny-side up.

We do got our special little fried egg sized pan. Love this unbalanced bitch. I will also cook it with a bit of butter.

Course its gonna cook all weird as soon as im doing a single egg for the camera. The egg whites got all up inside the yolk while cooking but thats not really a bother.

*****

Five star is a bit much but i seriously love a good fried egg with the runny yolk. Put a cheeky bit of chilli salt on it after taking a pic. Top tier.

Stardew Valley: Food Festival!

 Before you know it, the seasons pass... and the next food challenge is underway!

With a hearty 80 recipes, this is another good sized challenge comparable to cooking mama or super paper mario. I won't be growing my own crops for this one, at least... and we'll have to see what we can get with all the seasonal vegetables and magical fish... but i'm feeling pretty inspired by this one.

Alright let's get our hands dirty!

Splatoon 2&3: Complete!

  At a mere 12 recipes across 2 games, this was a super speedy cooking challenge! A nice break from the mushroom-heavy mario menu, Splatoon 2&3 was a grease trap full of deep fried seafood and futuristic vaguely-pacific-inspired cuisine. I think the worldbuilding really comes across in the dishes, much like the game its decadent dressing floats above a dystopian and chaotic world. Damn that's deep. ...fried.

Things I learned:

- You could do a lot worse than tempura prawns with chocolate sauce.

- You can get soft shell crabs, and you can eat them whole!

- Tempura prawns are not a suitable replacement for hot dog buns.

- Sean uses too much sauce, Marigold doesn't use enough.

Total Ratings:

*            x 0

**          x 2

***        x 4

****      x 5

*****    x 1

Average score: 3.42

Favourite Recipe: 

Splatoon 3: Crab-N-Go #1: Crab Trap Sandwich

The less overstuffed version of the Crab Trap sandwich was a wonderful fusion of crispy and goopy, tangy and salty, greasy fried goodness. If I were to make it again there's definitely a few tweaks to be made... I might use a corn tortilla or something, or just forgo bread entirely and have yakisoba with egg and tempura and lemon juice.

Least Favourite Recipe:

Splatoon 3: Crab-N-Go #5: Mega Mountain a la Marigold

I don't regret the combination of ingredients I went for in the end so much...I feel this was just kind of inevitably going to be a bit of a bust for me. I'm not really a big fan of wet chips in gravy as it is, and I had this mountain of pretty decent but ultimately very beige and stodgy food, the type of food that doesnt really get better as leftovers, to get through. Also this wasn't mentioned in the write-up but as I was eating a portion of leftovers for lunch I accidentally dropped the plate and then cut my hand on the plate shards and had to spend my lunch break cleaning blood and potato salad off my kitchen floor (very metal i know) so I guess I also have bad memories of this now. Say goodbye to the weird red plate an old housemate left with me as you'll never see it again.

Special thanks:

Special thanks to the following resources:

splatoonwiki.org

My lovely family even though they avoided being roped into this one.
Tobi who has volunteered to compute the scores in spreadsheet forever.

Splatoon 3: Crab-N-Go #6: Marigold'en Garden Greens

Last recipe already!? Where did the time go!?

This one's almost as chaotic as the previous recipe, with just a shit ton of ingredients, but fairly minimal cooking if I think about it. We've got sushi rice (ive gone ahead and cooked it earlier), tempura prawns, pre-made bao buns, tortilla wraps, lettuce, carrots, pickled red cabbage, avocado, and a few other bits for garnish including tomatoes and some fruit.

Since the bao are small and the prawns are long, I'll just cook 4 tempura prawns and cut them in half.

Now we got vegetables to prep! I need thin strips of carrot so I thought i'd try my weird 3-in-1 peeler spaghetti mode. It works!

Got all our chopped veg to one side, this is so much stuff to manage!

Seasoning the rice with a bit of mirin and salt and fluffing it up

That's right we're making sushi rolls but in a tortilla! Im using the lettuce, avocado, carrot and pickled cabbage. I bought enough to make tons of these weird tortilla sushi wraps (weird btw!!! but look at the graphic and tell me what else you see, because i see a sushi in a tortilla idk.)

But anyway cause theres was so many things to manage and to eat I only felt like making 1 in the end. I think thats gonna be enough to look good.

The bao buns come frozen and I just popped them in the steamer for about 7 mins. Looking good!

So im increasingly aware of how dry and unseasoned this all seems, so im at least going to pop in a bit of mayo to try and sauce it up. These bao buns would be fine for slipping in some minced up char siu or curry prawns, but trying to make a sandwich with crispy prawn, lettuce and cucumber slices? SURPRISINGLY HARD.

Right, now to assemble everything, and lets not forget, the little sides! I originally wanted to have some passion fruit and melon, but there wasnt any in the shops so I got some mango and peach chunks together.

****

Not bad, not bad! Very fresh and good combinations... but a stark lack of sauces and dressings. Maybe I should have prepared a dip or something..? but to be honest I didn't really know what I wanted to have this with. I guess chilli mayo might have been good to get. I only ate half of it for dinner, for something so salad-y its surprisingly heavy.

 #1 Splat Assister

Splatoon 3: Crab-N-Go #5: Mega Mountain a la Marigold

Right its time to tackle the biggest recipe. This one's a little concerning for me as it's a massive fuck-off pile of soggy food, and I don't actually want to waste any food.

 We'll also mitigate effort because its a weekday, I've managed to find plenty of appropriate stuff for our mountain. I've got some thicc oven chips, battered chicken chunks (i think its meant to be karaage but who knows), eggs, some more breaded crab claws, potato salad, and some chunky smoked salmon thats already cooked! Perfect?

Time to ov-in all the beige foods! Proper uni meal this. Luckily everything has the same cooking time of about 20min

Meanwhile I try to soft-boil the eggs. I'm actually trash at boiling eggs but this is not too bad. Kinda medium boiled.

The salmon needs nothing! I'll probably chop 'em in half so ive got 4 pieces.

 

This is looking done, the crab claws expanded massively for some reason. They're actually supposed to be deep fried but I thought this would be ok.

Now for the sauce! I figured the most obvious idea for the sauce would be a thick gravy, but honestly...? With this much unseasoned fried seafood and such, I was thinking... what might go better with all this stuff? I think I like the idea of doing a japanese katsu curry sauce instead, so that's what I've done!

Right, it's time to start assembling! Again, because I wanted to minimise the sheer volume of slop covered food, ive created a bit of a mountain starter by shoving a lil' bowl in the middle. That will help us get more height with slightly less chips and potato salad, I reckon.

Alright second layer is done, now to pour on the curry sauce and then garnish with a lil' coriander and we're done!

 **

Et voila! Why did I make this again? I portioned out a bunch of everything in a smaller bowl for my dinner. The first few bites of chips and chicken and I was really into it. Curry sauce was a good choice! The potato salad went pretty well with it all too! Then as i got to the big chunks of smoked salmon and crab claws I thought... eh... this doesnt really go with curry or anything else here, i'd have preferred this with a tangy chilli sauce or mayo or something. I wouldn't really recommend this dish because its really designed for a party plate, except everyone I know would prefer the food dry and separate with their own choice of dips. It's not gross though, and i'll get a few high protein dinners out of it.

#1 Overall Splatter

Splatoon 3: Crab-N-Go #4: The Pescatariat Royale

For the Pescetariat ROYALE we get to bust out the two EXTRA FILLINGS I bought for this recipe. I don't know why I held back the most interesting ones, foolish, but whatever.

From the same place I got the sashimi and floppy crab I also got some WAKAME SALAD. And from my local store I got some pickled red cabbage.

And then of course we add the same other things from the previous recipe. Our multiseed pitta bread, lettuce, rice, salmon sashimi, avocado and leek.

Oh one other difference with the pescy royale? We're adding TWO massive strips of salmon sashimi. That's an insane, DECADENT amount of sashimi. But I've earned it.

****

Big improvement!! You can really taste the decadence! And by that I mean extra sashimi, and the delicious sweet and sour flavours of the wakame and cabbage. There's still a bit of room for improvement though IMO. The leek strips are too hard and chewy (would celery have even been better?) the multiseed pitta is too hard a soft wheat tortilla might be better, and a touch of extra dressing still would have taken it a step further. Like some sort of poke bowl sauce or something? I dunno.

#1 Score booster

Splatoon 3: Crab-N-Go #3: The Pescatariat

Exciting one! I was originally going to use some smoked salmon but guesss whoooo invested in a log of proper sashimi salmon while buying wobbly crab (hint: its me!)

Now as I mentioned before, im pulling back slightly on this recipe by omitting some ingredients so that we can build on it for the bigger sequel recipe and compare it to this more simple, pedestrian one.

Got some sushi rice i cooked earlier today! Can't have sashimi without sushi rice. Will season it a little bit with mirin mix and salt.

Now i'm using the same flatbreads we used for the crab trap, but this time we will attempt to roll them up..

...around a wide layer of lettuce leaf.

There's our rice and chopped avocado, nice

And a biig long chunk of salmon! And chopped leek because they were totally out of spring onion in the shops. Hmm this is going to be so... unflavoured... I don't really know what to dress it with, shall we just add a bit of wasabi? im adding a bit of wasabi.

** 

Not bad not bad, still kind of plain though. It tastes very FRESH which is nice, and perfect for summer... But I regret not adding something like pickles or salad dressing to this. Why did I leave out the most flavourful fillings?

#2 Score booster

Splatoon 3: Crab-N-Go #2: Commercial Crab Trap Sandwich

Went all out for something a bit special for this one... I ordered from an online fish specialist... a soft shell crab!!! It's a crab you can EAT WHOLE, claws and all! Didn't know it was a thing, and at £9 for 2 its not exactly a value meal but its not out of budget for a bit of novelty.

Here's our star! Defrosted, dabbed dry and ready to fry, as well as our 2 other new ingredients: some black beans i've been soaking and a bit of lettuce. The prawns and yakisoba can be reheated from yesterday as I cooked extra, and ill do another egg and lemon slice.

A little dusting of flour and then I'll just pan fry 'er

This is a lot of stuff, so I'll just be trying to fill this sandwich as I go... hmm I don't trust these beans to stay inside. I wish i'd bought some softer tinned ones... 

 Now the lettuce, crab, yakisoba... oh christ how am I going to close this sandwich??

Oh geez we're still not quite done yet...

WHAT NOW???

****

WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THIS?? Maybe i should have scaled down the fillings a little... but still, I feel like the new ingredients didn't really add anything to the already perfected crab trap jr. The whole crab was a cool novelty, sort of a cross between whitebait and crab meat... but I feel like its rare delicacy could be better appreciated on top of a salad and not buried in a tsunami of fried noodles and prawns.

(bonus pic of the chomps once i managed to eat it down to sandwich proportions)

After that... i am feeling SO FULL!!

#1 clam carrier