Stardew Valley: Food Festival! - COMPLETE

Grandpa's ghost appeared to me in a dream... in his weird little diagonal bed... he told me I'm a Gourmet Chef now! 

Things I learned:

- So many ways to make a fish and seafood stew.

- DON'T use expired yeast!!

- Brown sugar is the secret to great fruit pies.

- Snails. They're edible I guess.

- Root vegetables, especially parsnips, are so versatile and underrated.

- Stardew Valley recipes lean very North American, and I wanna say... northern states?

- I still don't care for rice pudding.

Total Ratings:

*            x 3

**          x 11

***        x 18

****      x 23

*****    x 26

Average score: 3.72

Favourite Recipe: 

#20: Fish Taco, #46: Farmer's Lunch and #79: Tropical Curry

It's a three-way tie! I'm in charge so I'm allowed to do this. It was such a long challenge with so many good recipes, there were 3 distinctive chunks in the process where I was like "this is it, this is my favourite one of the challenge."

The fish taco was my first ever fish taco, my first time cooking with tuna steak and chimichurri as well. I wanna use them all for cooking more!! and have soft shell tacos again! That's a whole lot of horizons expanded.

Farmer's lunch was very representative of the wonderful simplicity of stardew's food: fresh vegetables, and a powerful combination of flavours. This reminds me of a pear & blue cheese omelet i had in a restaurant once, but using simple cheddar and sweet glazed parsnips makes it a cheap and easy dish to make at home!

I was anticipating Tropical Curry for the whole challenge... How easy would it be to make a pineapple bowl? Would it be sweet and sour and flavourful like I hoped? Finally when it came around it absolutely lived up to my hype!

Least Favourite Recipe:

#10: Strange Bun

Ugh, what was I thinking!? Every step in this process was frustrating. From the nasty smelling filling, to the unshapeable dough cones to the runny garnish, nothing was working how I hoped. I was convinced this would still be edible...

Guess what it made me sick. I actually thought it was the cockles, and tbh I still never want to eat those again, but after getting ill in a later recipe, I realised it might have been the expired yeast after all!!

This recipe really made me take a step back and reassess my approach, as I'm probably too brave and stubborn for my own good.

Special thanks:

Special thanks to the following resources:

stardewvalleywiki.com

Mo - the best at baking!

Twee - a star chef and plays stardew with me on weekends.
Tobi - my spreadsheet legend, morale booster and stardew witch wife.

Stardew Valley #81: Moss Soup

Ingredients: Moss

Item Description: It's thick and slimy, but edible

Moss soup!!! Easy.

What? You don't want to be food? Fine... maybe I can make some sort of alternative...

So when I first started this challenge... there were 80 recipes. But some busy game developer couldn't resist... they had to add just one more new recipe in a recent update! I don't think I can get any sort of edible moss, but I did find a recipe for a sea moss soup that im going to take inspiration from, though i'll be changing it so much you can hardly call it the same dish.

Let's start with peeling and cubing a bunch of potatoes, both regular and sweet potato.

Thats already quite a bit! These will take the longest to cook so im going to start boiling them in the water already and then slowly add everything else.

Peeled ginger and garlic ill just blend into a paste.

This is quite a bit of ginger, but its gonna be a big soup.

And then for the other spices: a cube of chicken stock, turmeric, allspice and orange pepper. Hopefully this will give it an interesting caribbean style flavour, making it different from our many, many other soups. Especially algae soup.

These black eyes peas are classic Caribbean and South American veg, and they're already pre-soaked so they wont need anywhere near as long as dried ones. I'll add about 4tbsp.

A tablespoon of honey! How medicinal.

Now im gonna throw in... this whole entire bag of spinach. I really wanted to get okra to make it "slimey" like the description... I even walked all the way to waitrose, but they were fresh out ;_; The recipe I am following has a little bit of many things including broccoli and cabbage... but I just want to use up the greens I bought and not have a ton of leftovers.

Gonna chop these up loosely, so we can really fill this soup out with goopy green clumps. What? It's moss soup! Its gotta be all.. goopy green clump-y

The algae is back, as our last attempt at a satisfyingly moss-adjacent ingredient. And because I still have loads to use up.

And lastly, some chopped green chillis i put in at the end so that hopefully they can be visible and look a bit like okra...? And a drizzle of olive oil. The more non-starch, non-grassy flavours we can get the better I think.

*****

Wow!!! I accidentally made something great again. It's so powerfully ginger-y and spicy, and the sweetness of the honey and sweet potato gives it this tropical summery flavour somehow. It's fiery and medicinal, yet tasty, satisfying and well balanced. Would make a great soup for when you've got a cold. Sometimes its good not to stick to the brief of making something... merely "edible".

cannibal!!

Stardew Valley #80: Squid Ink Ravioli

Ingredients: Squid Ink, Wheat Flour, Tomato

Item Description: Temporarily protects from debuffs.

We have squid ink! Well cuttlefish ink, basically the same. We have tomato in liquid form. I also didn't want to make my own ravioli, so I decided to get some. There was somewhat limited options of flavours, so I just had to follow my heart on what I thought might be acceptable to pair with seafood flavours. 

First lets make a strong start, frying up some garlic in olive oil. Is 3 cloves too much? Who cares, garlic.

While it burns browns I will decide on a bit of seasoning, ive got lemon pepper and chilli flakes. Probably best to put these in later but ill probably forget so maybe now is ok. Cooking.

Damn this ink is thicker than I thought! I don't know what I expected, but its a full on paste. I will just put enough in to make it black. We've also got tomato passata and white wine in now. A classic seafood pasta flavour imo.

Now we just gotta cook this pasta, very fast just 4 mins. Yeah sorry my hob is dirty needs a clean again, always needs a clean.

Meanwhile yep! Well it looks quite grey in the photo because its blown out, looks darker irl. It's already got a great consistency thanks to the ingredients so its ready to go.

Don't forget to drain the water out the ravioli. 

And geeeeeeently stir in the sauce, trying not to break the raviolis.

****

It's overpoweringly garlicky! Very zingy, very nice. The black colour makes it hard for my brain to process the tomato flavour. Its very pleasant. The squash and cheese filling is ok, but something like crayfish or pork might have been even better. With the power of the garlic, im not sure if the ink adds any subtle flavour of its own. But I have a ton of it left, maybe I should make a paella with it? Oh and does it protect from debuffs? Well its full of allicin and vitamin C, so... yeah...?

Stardew Valley #79: Tropical Curry

Ingredients: Coconut, Pineapple, Hot Pepper

Item Description: An exotic, fragrant curry served in a pineapple bowl.

Soo, this is the recipe I'm most excited for on this entire list. I love a thai style curry, I love sweet and sour, and I love the aesthetics of fruit. I've got a pineapple (which I got free with a voucher!), some massaman curry paste, coconut milk, hot pepper, bell pepper, spring onion, bamboo shoot, prawns, coriander, and jasmine rice.

I had to figure out how to get into this sewn up cloth bag lol... shove some rice in the steamer while we make everything else.

I already had some chopped vegetables from my freezer but I wanted to chop these up a bit more. And the chilli too.

Thats the spring onion, bell pepper, hot pepper and bamboo shoots. I want to try and get this to brown a bit in the pan before we fill it with sauce.

Now!!! Intimidating part... I've never cut a pineapple before, especially not into a bowl shape! It smells nice and ripe so that's a good start.

Whoa... that actually went well. I just cut around the insides and dug under it with a spoon, and then scraped out the rest. Just like a pumpkin, maybe even easier? Is this going to be watertight enough?

I read somewhere that you cut out the hard middle part, so I did that. slice up the soft bits and im just going to put some of it, about 1/3 of 1/2 of the pineapple in with those veggies I was browning.

I don't think these will ever get that crispy but they are looking nicely cooked, and just BEHOLD how tropical this already looks. 

Time to put in half the jar of curry and the whole can of coconut milk... and TRY NOT TO SPILL ANY OF IT DOWN THE SIDE WHICH YOULL HAVE TO CLEAN UP LATER WHEN THE HOB IS COOLED DOWN AND ITS COOKED ONTO THE SURFACE

The prawns are pre-cooked so we can put these in near the end after letting the curry stew for a little while.

And the chopped coriander too, and cook till its heated up again after dumping in all those frozen prawns.

I wasn't sure how to present the rice, but... there's actually quite a lot of space in this pineapple, so we can totally just line the bottom with it, might help keep it watertight as well.

Fruity curry is looking done, time to grab the ladle.

*****

It's divine! It was everything I hoped it would be. Fun to prepare and easier than I expected. Sweet and tangy but not overpoweringly pineapple-y, a good kick of heat but you could also taste the hints of clove and cardamom from the curry sauce. "Exotic and fragrant" for sure. 

Stardew Valley #78: Poi

Ingredients: Taro Root

Item Description: A traditional food with a delicate, sweet flavor when eaten fresh.

I have no idea where to get a reasonably priced fresh taro root (or powder) in the uk but GUESS WHAT i did find in some grocery store?? YES BOI its some taro flavoured jelly. I've never had anything like this before and its taro flavoured, so I think it will have to do.

All we needs to do is simply follow the instructions on the back.

The powder looked off-white at first, but as soon as it hits the hot water that distinctive purpleish colour appears!

We just gotta stir and stir until all the lumps are dissolved, which is hard to see because its opaque.

Then its going in bowls, cooling at room temperature and then going in the fridge overnight. 

*****

I love it! I know this isn't real Poi, but if it's anything like this I get the appeal. It's got this playful, cookie-ish flavour with a sort of medicinal aftertaste like a root beer. I'm that one british freak who actually likes root beer. It's also smooth, creamy and sweet.