(options blipping) (exciting music)
(energetic music)
- [Alvin] Hello there.
Welcome back to another episode of "Arcade with Alvin."
Today, I'll be making the pasta curry
from "Pokemon Sword and Shield."
Uh, just noticed that my apron is not ironed.
Looks kinda cool, though, so we're just gonna go with it.
This is a package of curry roux,
often used to make curry,
specifically a Japanese-style curry,
a more mild and mellower version
of what you might be used to.
When you open up a package like this,
usually you're presented with a couple of blocks.
I'm gonna go ahead and take four of them,
break them up, and throw them into a saucepan.
Let's just give this a taste. Delicious.
I'm just following package instructions here,
so four cups of water, mixing that in,
and bringing this to a boil until it's thick
and kinda reduced into a sauce.
This is the base of the curry,
to which we're gonna add 10 berries,
as that is the recipe from the game.
I have here a couple of blackberries, a few Oran Berries,
a handful of red Rawst Berries, and finally one Pecha Berry.
That, that's one large Pecha Berry.
And one sausage, because I messed up during the shoot
and thought we were making the sausage curry first
and not the pasta one.
But we'll get to that later.
All right, first step: fan the flames.
Make sure to give your curry a good old stir,
and put your heart into it, like that.
Ta-da!
A game-accurate version
of "Pokemon Sword and Shield's" sausage curry.
Let's just give this a taste here.
Mmm. Oh, no.
That, that is not very good.
Can't really say I'd be very happy eating this one.
Sausage is okay.
Uh, cut the video.
"Pokemon Sword and Shield" takes place in the Galla Region,
inspired by the United Kingdom,
so I'm going for a Japanese and British-style curry here.
In order to make the curry roux from scratch,
we're gonna start with a wonderful recipe
from "Just One Cookbook."
I'm cooking seven tablespoons of butter
with 3 1/2 ounces of flour, constantly stirring this
until it looks like peanut butter, basically.
For seasoning, I'm adding 1/4 cup of S&B curry powder,
which seems to be a common ingredient found in this curry.
Next, I'm adding a tablespoon of garam masala,
a teaspoon of onion powder, 1/2 teaspoon of cayenne pepper,
and about a teaspoon of MSG 'cause that stuff's really good.
Once all the spices are combined,
I'm taking this off the heat and pouring this
into a small dish lined with parchment paper,
as this can chill in the fridge until it's hardened.
So potatoes, carrots, and onions are the common vegetables
found in this style of curry,
so I'm gonna peel and cut four potatoes.
Peel four medium carrots.
I'm doing a roll cut so they get that nice jewel shape.
Finally, two medium onions, peeled and cut. Pretty standard.
It's also pretty common to find apple flavoring
or apple in this style of curry,
so I'm gonna peel and grate one Fuji apple,
four peeled garlic cloves, and a two-inch piece
of ginger that I've already sliced and peeled before.
Once the vegetables are done,
it's time for my favorite part: the meat.
We did have a ribeye steak in the fridge,
which I would personally just sear and eat like usual,
but this is for the greater good,
so I'm gonna slice it very thinly into small pieces.
When everything seems to be in order,
I think it's time to set up our tent outside
and cook in our "Pokemon" camp.
I've got a nice big, roaring fire over here.
Let me just put down our Dutch oven. Ow.
And after a healthy glug of oil to heat up,
I'm first cooking the onions
'cause I want a nice brown color on them.
This is followed by the ribeye,
which I also will seek a brown color on.
Once the stuff in the pot is brown,
I'm throwing in our carrots and potatoes.
Just like math, order of operations
is actually pretty important here
so we don't overcook certain vegetables
and undercook others.
For the last of our solid stuff,
in goes the apple, the garlic, and the grated ginger.
For the liquid stuff, I'm adding in five cups of beef stock,
two tablespoons of ketchup, two tablespoons of honey,
and two tablespoons of soy sauce.
Once those are in, make sure
to give your a curry a good old stir,
and oh, I forgot, a couple of dashes
of Worcestershire sauce for flavor.
Gonna cover this up and cook this for about...
Honestly, I'm not too sure.
This is cooking over an open flame,
which is a little different than on the stove,
but we're gonna let it go until it starts to thicken,
probably around an hour or so.
While our curry is bubbling away in our "Pokemon" camp,
let's check on the roux block, shall we?
Our golden curry paste is nice and hardened,
which means it's pretty easy to lift it out
and cut this into a satisfying number of blocks.
Nice.
And just for comparison, this actually smells quite similar
to the packaged roux blocks.
Dare I say even better?
Let's bring in a second opinion.
This is Rachel.
She's very good with food.
This is Steve.
He likes the one we made, too.
Ours has a little bit more spice, maybe because we went
for a more British-style curry in the flavoring,
but both are just as good.
It's been about an hour, and our curry looks
like it has reduced down a little bit,
so I think it's a good time to add our curry blocks.
I'm using a ladle trick where you first put in all the roux
and you lower it into the hot bubbling bath of curry
but use a little bit of the liquid to whisk in first
inside the ladle before incorporating it
into the whole entire pot of curry itself.
This helps the roux disperse easier
so you don't end up with huge clumps.
Over the open flame, it did reduce a little bit more
than I expected, so I'm adding back in about two
to three cups of water to compensate for that.
Lid goes back on, and this will cook
until it's gotten nice and thick.
Throwing the berries in whole
in that first batch seemed a little bit weird,
but what if I chopped them up a bit and let them break down
and absorb into the essence of the curry itself?
So I'm gonna finely cut up three blackberries,
four Oran Berries, two red Rawst Berries,
and one Pecha Berry.
Uh, those are just blackberries, blueberries,
strawberries, and a peach.
And just like the game, we have to fan the flames.
Fire died. Whoops.
Add our 10 berries, give the curry a good old stirring,
and finally, put your heart into it.
Just like that.
One does not simply eat curry without rice.
Here I have four cups of Japanese short-grain rice,
but before we can cook it, it's important to wash it
because it gets rid of the excess starches
and any other particles that might be in there.
Once the rice has been rinsed about three to four times
in the sink until the water runs clear, it's time to cook.
For the water level of cooking rice,
I like to go about an inch above the rice level.
The lid goes right on top,
and this will be brought up to a simmer.
The rice from the game seems to be a yellow-colored rice.
Now, saffron rice was my first thought
when I thought yellow rice,
but that doesn't really make sense
because it's really expensive
and its subtle flavors would be overwhelmed by the curry.
So how about a teaspoon of turmeric for that color
and that slight hint of spice?
Mix this in until it's all incorporated, cover it up,
and cook until the rice is nice and fluffy but not soggy.
No one likes soggy rice.
Actually, I take that back.
That's just porridge.
I ate it all the time.
All right, the rice is done cooking,
and it is a beautiful golden yellow-colored rice.
Onto a plate it goes in a mountain,
on top of which the curry is going to go on nicely.
But this isn't just any curry with rice.
This is a pasta curry,
which means in a large boiling pot of water,
I'm gonna cook about half a handful of pasta.
Not very accurate, but hey,
I don't really measure when I cook pasta.
And I always end up making too much.
You guys know the drill, though: boiling water, salt, pasta,
cook until it's a little bit to the tooth,
and it's ready for some sauce.
Again going for slight inspirations
from Japanese and British spaghetti,
I wanna cook this pasta in some marinara sauce
along with a slight touch of ketchup
for both balanced sweetness and color.
Once the pasta has a nice little red jacket,
the last touch is to incorporate a pat of butter
around the tablespoon,
and I'm gonna go ahead and plate this thing.
Rachel actually taught me a really cool trick.
If you grab the pasta with tongs,
instead of twirling it onto the plate,
you twirl the plate, not the pasta, and that way,
you get that perfect photo-finish corkscrew
of a beautiful mound of swirled pasta.
Now, that is really cool.
And just to garnish, a sprinkle of chopped parsley
and one parsley leaf right in the middle.
And I present to you a pasta curry
from "Pokemon Sword and Shield,"
made with 10 different types of berries inside.
All right, I'm gonna eat it.
Pretty good. Actually, very good.
Now, you might think, "Hey, that's too many carbs."
But as I like to say, there's no such thing
as too many carbs, just too little determination.
I did have quite a lot of leftover rice and curry,
so I decided to make a couple
other variations from the game.
First up, the sausage curry from before.
In a large skillet with a little bit of oil,
I'm frying up some sausages from the store, or bangers,
as in bangers and mash, as in sausages and potatoes.
I'm just getting a nice brown crisp on all the sides,
and we plate up again, the same thing:
rice, curry, but sausages on top.
Ta-da! The sausage curry from "Pokemon Sword and Shield."
Give this a taste.
Curry and rice taste exactly the same,
but the sausage is a very nice touch.
I like that sausage.
That is a nice sausage.
Next up, toast curry from "Pokemon Sword and Shield."
I'm cutting up five slices of thick white bread in half,
putting them on a rack over a sheet tray,
and toasting them in the oven for about five to six minutes
until it's nice and golden brown all the way through.
Each little slice of toast gets half a pat of butter,
and this goes back into the oven for about one minute,
just so that the butter can melt a little bit.
To plate, I'm gonna have to carefully stack this
on top of this precarious curry and rice mound.
Not the easiest thing to do.
Kinda reminds me of playing Jenga,
except if you lose, you win, because you can eat this.
Just a little bit of parsley on top to finish, and ta-da!
Toast curry from "Pokemon Sword and Shield."
Tastes like curry, rice, and toast.
Pretty good combination.
Don't knock it 'til you try it, folks.
And for our final variation, the cheesy curry.
This one really intrigued me
because it involved putting a whole entire wheel of brie
on top of the rice and curry.
In the picture, it's melted,
which I guess can only be attained
by putting this entire thing into the oven,
so I'm gonna go for about 400 degrees for 10 minutes.
I only did this because our plate is ovenproof.
If it's not, bad stuff's gonna happen.
Not only do I get to eat cheese with curry and rice,
a match made in heaven, the exposed sides
of the curry got a little caramelized
while the exposed sides of the rice got very crispy,
so almost every bite is like the crispy bottom
of the rice pan.
If I have to give my curries today a rating,
I'd like to one day reach a Charizard Class rating,
but I don't think I'm quite there just yet.
Maybe we're just Copperajah Class for now.
Definitely not Koffing.
That would be bad.
(mellow music)