Cooking Mama's Cooking Challenge #6: Grilled Gyoza

 Grilled...? Gyoza?

Slice up!/Chop up!

Grabbed just a handful of cabbage from the freezer and diced it up. Trying to coordinate having the right fresh ingredients with minimal waste is a whole thing I'm up to.

Chop up!

1 clove of garlic. I have a garlic press, but it says to chop it so eh, why not.

Add the ingredients!

Grabbed about 200g-ish of minced beef, the cabbage and garlic, drizzle of sesame oil and a sprinkle of salt and pepper.

Knead!

smush it all together

Fold the dumplings!

OK so not pictured was a whole ordeal right. I couldn't easily find gyoza wraps so I figured I'd actually just make some myself. So I prepared the worlds driest simple flour + water pastry, rolled it out till all the bones in my hands hurt, cut circles with a big cookie cutter, and voila! This is actually kinda... working?

Cook amount told!

I'm not sure Mama knows what grilling is. This is steaming/frying gyoza in a shallow pan of water. 

Finish

****

Thought this was going to be a disaster. Every time I make pastry I remember that I hate pastry so much. Then the gyoza were sticking to the pan and I was worried they were all gonna eat shit. Couple of them did but as you can see they're largely intact, and they cooked through just fine. Made a simple dip of sesame oil, soy sauce, vinegar and worcestershire sauce to go with which I recommend. Maybe I'm not better than Mama but at least I know what a grill is.

Cooking Mama's Cooking Challenge #5: Fried Chicken

Time to make fried chicken AKA Karaage. 

Slice up!

Pack of chicken thighs sliced into cubes... or cube-ish.

Grate!

Grated some ginger I think about a tablespoon-ish

Add the ingredients!

We're adding the ginger, sesame oil, cooking wine and soy sauce. I'm using the light soy sauce this time ok!!!

Knead!

Gonna use a spoon for this actually, do you have any idea how much I have to wash my hands to take a picture each step of the damn way.

Coat!

I don't have potato starch so I'm rolling these in a mixture of corn starch and plain flour. Why both? I don't know I just happen to have both.

Deep fry!

Sorry I'm stingy with the oil sorry it just feels weird to use so much.

Finish!

****

Aww hell yeah the business! I wanted to pad it out a bit to a more rounded meal so I made a little stir fry with rice noodles and cabbage to serve with it. This wasn't like some luxury super crunchy battered chicken (esp since I didnt have the right starch) but a very nice basic crispy dark meat chicken. Also keeps it pretty economical for a fried meat dish. Goes best with a sweet and spicy dip. Bonus: my kitchen now smells like a fried chicken takeout mmmm.

Cooking Mama's Cooking Challenge #4: Sweet Fried Egg

AKA Tamagoyaki. This is just like a simple Japanese rolled omelette recipe, often used for bento and such.

Break an egg!

The game says 3, to be precise. That's usually a good number for an omelette IMO.

Beat an egg!

no one wants to be defeated~

Add the ingredients!

Here we add unspecified amounts of sugar, soy sauce and mirin. I have chinese rice wine but same dif probably idk time to find out. I feel like about a teaspoon of each is probably right. What could go wrong?

Pan-fry!

OK so ALSO the other thing im about to do wrong is that I don't own a square pan. So we're just gonna try and roll a round one WCGW. Apart from it being brown and foamy.

Finish!

****

LMFAO ok so perhaps I should have used light soy sauce and not dark soy sauce for one thing. I served it (on my ugliest plate) with some japanese pickles. Despite its non-optimum appearance though, this really hit the spot today. Smashed it. The spot has been obliterated. The combination of nicely enhanced fried egg flavour and sour pickles worked so well. Would definitely fumble again.

Cooking Mama's Cooking Challenge #3: Potato Salad

 A simple potato salad with cooked potato and carrot and raw cucumber in mayonnaise.

Peel!

We're actually only going to peel the carrot here, but since I've got to peel the potatoes after boiling (yes I've been planning ahead, highly recommend) I'm going to score the skin with a knife in an X shape so it peels easier later.

Chop up!

Chop

Boil!

Yeah boiliungge

Peel while hot!

Mama imma be real with you... this is a HORRIBLE way to peel potatoes. Just peel them before you boil them!? What difference does it make?

Slice up!

Also chopped the cooked potato into cubes.

Add the ingredients!

Seasoned with mayo, ground pepper and salt to taste.

Mix!

I mixed it with chopsticks just like Mama do

Finish!

**

Love me some potato salad but honestly? This was lacking a lil' something. Wish we kicked it up a notch with some lime juice or chilli or something you know? Ah but the things I do for the craft. The snackrifices I make.

Cooking Mama's Cooking Challenge #2: Miso Soup

Bit more exciting, but fair warning... I couldn't source any kelp/konbu so I'm going to make do with whatever seaweed-like things I can scrounge.

Chop up!

OK I chopped these earlier for storage reasons.

Slice up!

Apparently I failed to take a photo of me slicing the tofu, but instead here's what we're using for seaweed, some sushi nori sheets ill cut into squares with scissors and some dried cornish seaweed seasoning I managed to find. Probably not the most cost-effective way to make a simple soup, 

Make Stock!

The game also totally fails to mention the involvement of dashi (the soup stock), but I'm going to make do with a simple vegetable stock cube instead (THATSE FUSION CUISINE, BABY!!!)

Stew!

Hey this is looking... pretty good actually! You can't really see the tofu cubes easily because they sink to the bottom but they are there and I even bought SILKEN tofu.

Finish!

**
This actually turned out pretty alright. Not a huge lover of miso soup, its very mild and delicate but the seaweed and generic UK veg stock worked out nicely. And it's really easy to make if you fancy a bit of novelty and a lot of iodine.

Cooking Mama's Cooking Challenge #1: Boiled Rice

So, I'm going to go through the entire recipe list of Cooking Mama on the Nintendo DS and make all the recipes, using ONLY the gameplay (and the wiki page for quick reference) as my only instruction on how to make the dishes.

Here goes!

Measure and add!

I think I will make myself about 2 portions so I can have some for lunch tomorrow.

Wash some rice!

Oof tough one this, steady on!

Set the timer!

I don't have a rice cooker like The Mama but I have a steamer so this isn't too far off really. 

Finish!

**
I'm quite fond of rice but i'm a bit fonder of it with any kind of seasoning really.

It's been ten years...

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Ten years!!! Since I last updated this blog. Fair warning, I considered purging my old posts because they are probably cringe and contain problematic language here and there... but I've decided to keep them, and hope that they become buried in the sands of me actually making new content. Please note that I condemn any bad attitude and language used by 23 year old me, and think that she belongs in jail.

I was never really planning to come back to this blog. I still cook, but taking photos of my dinner and writing 6 whole paragraphs of bitchy remarks is kind of a pain... But the I decided I kinda wanted to do something related. I wanted to systematically go through the entire recipe list of a videogame and do every single recipe.

Or at least, the closest I can manage with what I've got in a brexit-ravaged, tory-soiled England with access to a big Lidl and a small Tesco.


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Heres a little border thing, yknow, for a fresh start and that

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graphic design is my passion

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