Breath of the Wild #1: Mushroom Skewer

Ingredients: Any Mushroom

Description: "This simple mushroom-packed skewer has its colorful presentation to thank for its appeal."

Ah, mushrooms. You enduring menace. I went on a proper mission to find a good range of mushrooms to use for these recipes, and for this skewer ive settled upon shiitake. It's a very mushroomy looking mushroom, and its one of the least bland ones out there. I don't think this is going to qualify as a "colorful presentation" though.

But we don't have to go on this adventure alone, do we? I don't care if link has the palette of a paleo diet influencer or not, im going to make these with a nice marinade. I chose something I feel is a general classic. Olive oil, soy sauce, vinegar, salt, pepper, chilli flakes, sugar and garlic.

Splatting the mushrooms in there.

Oops! I accidentally dropped in some more mushrooms for a future recipe. But this box of mixed mushrooms has the most gigantic shiitake i've ever seen, so its going on this shiitake-only skewer. Oh, and i left these to marinate for a few hours.

Look at that beast! It's so hulking its threatening to break the wooden skewer. 

Now it can go in the grill pan, never you mind about those other ones they'll come up later.

***

Meaty and chewy. I definitely think shiitake was a good choice for grilling. The marinade did a lot, it was a very punchy flavour thanks to the garlic and chilli. Almost as good as a chicken skewer, but not quite.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Triforce of Forage

 One guy. One pot. An indeterminable amount of fire.

I realise there is a second game in this series, I've played it even, but since thats around 200 recipes, I thought it would make sense to split it into 2 challenges, and do recipes in BOTW first, and then add in TOTK's unique recipes as a sequel challenge later.

I will be using TOTK's recipe book as a loose guide though, since BOTW didn't have one and recipes didn't seem to have a canonical order back then.
I'm also just going to do combined food recipes and not the individual cooked/frozen ingredients, elixirs and inedible garbage. Well, probably. Mostly. Maybe a little garbage, we'll see.

Alright, let's recover some hearts.

30 Gourmet Sandwiches: "A sandwich for every day of the month"

So, indulge me. One of the things that inspired me to start this blog, besides all the massive food indexes in video games, was this particular viral list of sandwiches I once saw going around the internet. I dunno, it just seemed like it had some fun and unusual sandwich recipes, and sandwiches are delicious and... usually easy to make.

In fact, i had remembered it recently and i had a URL saved in some bookmarks folder, and to my horror, the uploaded image was deleted! I searched the internet for what I could remember and i couldn't find it. But, harnessing the power of the incredible wayback machine, we found an archived version and i've reuploaded it for myself. And i thought... why not do that next then? 

Anyway sorry its not video games or anime, but I do what I want.

Let's get that bread.

Delicious in Dungeon: The Monster Meshi

 Ah, this manga series was made for me. I was already a huge fan before the anime came out, and with the manga wrapping up last year it was already set to be on the shortlist for my next challenge... so, here it is.

I will be following the manga recipes to completion, but for the benefit of anime fans I will throw in a spoiler marker post once I have caught up with the end of the anime season 1. I will also try not to spoil the story anyway, and see if I can keep any major plot points revealed in recipes nice and vague, with some tactful renaming if necessary. Hopefully at worst all that might be spoiled is potential monster encounters, minor details, and, of course, the recipes themselves.

Alright, time to see if Ocado has dragon meat........

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: 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 - Let's-a go!

 So our next game, as chosen in a limited poll on twitter is... Super Paper Mario! Wahoo!

Why not start with the first Paper Mario? Well, the recipes have significant overlap across the games and at a glance, Super Paper Mario had a lot of the classics across the series and a lot of pretty wild ones as well. Will I regret choosing this game? Maybe. I don't even like mushrooms very much.