Cooking Mama's Cooking Challenge: Complete!

 We've done it! All 75 recipes. Using the in-game instructions. Some good, some a little embarrassing. I had a great time.

Things I learned:

- How to make a mean hamburger/meatball sauce

- That I needed a mini deep fryer in my life!

- When in doubt, always pre-cook your bacon!!

- Mama doesn't like garlic

- Mama LOVES ketchup

- Mama just assumes you always have some cooked rice and dashi stock to hand.

- You need a special rice and even specialer equipment for making mochi, and its not worth the hassle.

- How to dice onions... over and over.. and over again...

Total Ratings:

*            x 1

**          x 9

***        x 19

****      x 32

*****    x 14

Average score: 3.65

Favourite Recipe:

#24 Meatballs
The best of cooking mama's skill set, this has got mince, flour coating, deep frying, and dashi based sauce! It ended up a little less complicated than it seemed, and a delicious unique variant of meatball I've never had before that I'd definitely do again.

Least Favourite Recipe:

#51 Shrimp Gyoza

This one was really on me, I think I used the wrong type of gyoza wrappers, steamed them too long... but mamas not about giving me that sort of information. Also even in its melted state, it just wasn't all that flavour-wise.

Special thanks:

Special thanks to the following resources:

Fandom Cooking Mama Wiki
Aromie Youtube Channel
Tobi who has volunteered to compute the scores in spreadsheet forever.

My lovely family who helped with several recipes!

And that about wraps it up I suppose! I'm enjoying this so I've already lined up the next game challenge. Look forward to that reeeal sooon.

Cooking Mama's Cooking Challenge #75: Chicken Rice

 Final recipe!! And it's... the omurice without the omu. Filler recipe.

Slice an onion!

We've got (slightly more than) half an onion in the fridge so we'll just use this.

Slice!

LAST SLICY THING NEVER AGAIN

Chop up!

Just popping it in the bowl so we can put it in after the chicken.

Cut!

2x chicken thighs.

Melt the butter!

Mm melty butter!

Saute!

Chicken, onion and some chopped mushrooms. And we add a bit of salt.

Saute!

Now we just add the leftover rice and ketchup! But i actually have a load of tomato passata in the fridge to finish up so ive put that in as well, maybe itll add a little bitter and curb some of the sweetness of the ketchup (it didnt)

Finish!

**

This is... this is... honestly? not that great tbh. The mushrooms pair surprisingly well, but chicken thigh and rice and ketchup is just like... eh its just not a power combo for me. It's like a ketchup sandwich. Maybe Japan has different ketchup that goes better with rice? Damn sorry to end on such a fizzle. Still hype that we did it though! YEAH!

YEAAAAAAAAAH!!!

Cooking Mama's Cooking Challenge #74: Hamburger with Egg

  I regret to inform you that we've planned ahead and so the first half of this recipe will be a rerun from the last one, as we did enough mince to make 3 whole burgs! What will I do with the 3rd burg you wonder? Well... there's no more burger recipes so I will just cook and eat it unceremoniously between recipes, away from your prying eyes. SO THERE!

Slice an onion!

Good ol' predictable onion, nothing beats that.

Slice!

Ah, my finest work.

Chop up!

Eye wateringly fine, brings a tear to the eye etc

Melt the butter!

Last week on Cooking of Mama

Saute!

Should have taken more pics so you can pretend im doing this again

Add the ingredients!

As PER MY EMAIL, we used beef mince, egg, breadcrumbs, milk, and the fried onion.

Knead!

And here was the mixture

Make shape!

AAAAND we're caught up. This is me, a meat patty. I bet you're wondering how I got into this situation? 

Break an egg!

egg

Fry sunny side up!

I'm using my TINY EGG-SIZED PAN

Pan-fry!

Here's the borger. I should really put it on one of my lower heat hob thingys, since its blackening on the outside a bit fast. My b.

Arrange the plate!

Got some carrot sticks and tomato, and yeah we're doing this again. I bought more creme caramels that we're going to hazardously place right on the dinner plate. Oh and I found my little flag again!

Finish!

****

Yeah not bad. Even better with some ketchup. I think I liked the burger more with the raw tomato than with the plain cooked passata for some reason? Lesson learned: if you're gonna half-ass something, half-ass it a day before, and then half ass it again the next day and then you've got a whole-ass ass.

Cooking Mama's Cooking Challenge #73: Hamburger Stewed in Tomato Sauce

 Hanbagus are back! theres even more variants to this beloved burg of ham.

Slice an onion!

The onion thing again! Wretched onion quests, I will be rid of ye soon.

Slice!

im going to try and cut these up SO SMALL for the borgr

Chop up!

yeah thats pretty small

Melt the butter!

We're using the danger pan again. But its just the right depth for stewing a big burg in some thick saucce

Saute!

Just browning the onions again. Pointless step imo.

Add the ingredients!

Beef mince, milk, egg, breadcrumbs and the fried onion!

Knead!

The messy bit

Make shape!

Shaped into three mega gigantic burgers again! I'll save these for later and pop the last one in the pan.

Pan-fry!

Burgers getting pretty dry and crumbly while i brown it, then when its looking mostly cooked we pour on about a cup of tomato passata. If it falls apart at least its well hidden in all that sauce.

Finish!

***

Kinda tasted just like baby's first tomato meatballs. Mama, we need to talk about putting something more in your tomato sauce. Herbs, garlic, balsamic vinegar, pepper, sugar! Worcestershire sauce even?!

Cooking Mama's Cooking Challenge #72: Mixed Tempura

 This is probably designed to use up leftover tempura batter, but instead we're starting a whole fresh bag of tempura mix and doing this on its own. Oh well!

Chop up!

Thinly sliced onion into strips

Chop up!

Thinly sliced carrot into.. half-discs?

Separate the yolk!

Yolk separated. The recipe utterly neglects to mention where the egg even goes! so its just going in with the next step.

Add the ingredients!

Measured some tempura flour and water, the egg yolk (wait they wanted me to use the yolk right...? maybe i shoulda looked it up oh well too late) onion, carrot, and then they say add "spotted shrimp" but thats some fancy seasonal japanese delicacy so ive just got prawns.

Mix!

This mixture looks so watery im not even sure its coating the veg. Also there's like no way we are getting this into little patties, im just just going to have to drop scoops of the stuff into the frier.

Deep fry!

The mesh bucket was once again a bad idea, I should have really tried lining the bottom with baking parchement or something. Even though its sticking fast to the bottom of the mesh, i was able to pull the veg out with tongs making it a loose mix but still successfully fried and looking good. Also shouldn't have forgot my technique of lowering the bucket and then dropping a bunch in, that helps it a bit. Since its come out so loose im gonna have it in a bowl with a bit of mayo and chilli sauce. 

Finish!

*****

Oh my god its so flippin good!! Turns out that onions, root veg and prawns are some of the best things to tempura fry. Who knew? Ok everyone. Still even though these might not be easy to pick up and eat, youll find a way no problem because they're so damn tasty!

Cooking Mama's Cooking Challenge #71: Squid Tempura

 Another throwback one I did aaaaages ago when it was convenient.

Cut the squid!

Well not that convenient, still couldn't find whole squid like in the recipe, but got these nice squid rings.

Separate the yolk!

Tried this yolk separator tool, but I mashed it a lil bit.

Make batter!

Yolks on you! we have some specialist tempura batter mix. Not really sure whats different from flour, some added potato starch or something? Mixing that with ice water.

Batter!

blap

Deep fry!

Oh god this is so messy aahhh! I eventually learned to lower the basket and drop them in so they didnt deposit all the batter onto the cage. I guess tempura is more designed for dropping in a wok. Now I know.

Finish!

****

Well after a bit of clean up these were almost presentable. My family were there to vouch though, they were delicious!! I might quite like to do whole squid fillets next time.