(Anime characters speaks in Japanese)
- Dig in.
Fragrance bomb...
...take two.
- Oh, a risotto's inside the omelette.
- The trapped fragrance's been released
in an explosive burst.
- [Alvin] Hello there.
Welcome back to Anime with Alvin.
Today, I'm gonna be making
the curry risotto omurice from "Food Wars!"
These are fake eggs.
According to the show,
this recipe has quite the number of components.
One of which is a beef broth from scratch.
I'm cutting up some onion,
some carrots and throwing in some beef neck and knuckles.
There's a lot of fat, connective tissue,
collagen and flavor in these bones
that's going to make the broth taste really good.
Next, a couple slices of ginger
and a bouquet garni,
because why not?
Freshen things up a bit, you know?
There's a lot of stuff in this pot.
After filling this to the top with water,
I'm going to let it simmer for quite a bit
so that the flavors can come out and intensify.
And after the entire Babish studio
starts to smell pretty good,
this is done.
Oops.
I'm straining the whole thing through a mesh strainer,
eating a carrot because this carrot's good
and slowly waddling off screen like a penguin
without its feathers.
Next up,
I'm gonna make a mango chutney.
Hey, who put this here?
Get that out of here.
This ain't that kind of anime.
Starting with a couple of ripe juicy mangoes,
cutting along the seed to take those two big edges
and slide them against the walls of a bowl.
This helps the flesh come out in one smooth piece.
Bloop.
After taking the mangoes out of their little sweaters,
I'm cutting them up into a fine dice,
almost like an onion, so to speak.
Now that the mangoes are done,
I'm also taking these apples
and aggressively undressing them with a peeler
and the apples also get a pretty fine dice as well.
This way it helps the apple cook evenly
alongside the mango in their little pot of doom.
Onto the banana.
The banana gets a nice little, what,
this is just a chop.
Okay.
The next component I'm making
is the glaze that goes on top of the omurice.
So I'm adding in some honey,
some soy sauce, some oyster sauce and some water,
and reducing that over medium heat in a pot
until it becomes a glaze.
Before we can start cooking the chutney,
I actually have to cut up some garlic and some chilies.
So I'm finely mincing this garlic,
using a kosher salt almost scrubbing technique,
and some chilies to put into the pot first.
These get cooked in a little bit of oil first
that the fragrances can come out
and then I'm adding some spices
like coriander and cumin to also bloom in the oil.
We can finally dump in the fruits
that I spent a lot of time making jokes about
and add in a good amount of sugar,
which will thicken and make the chutney delicious.
This smells so good.
When the glaze is correctly reduced and finished,
it should barely come together after being spread apart
in the bottom of a pan.
And now this will sit aside for garnishing.
So to get the "risotto" started,
I have to cut up some onion
and saute in a little bit of butter.
And once everything smells great,
in goes a good amount of ground beef
till it gets nice and brown with the onions.
And the curry comes from a custom curry powder
that we actually made in-house,
you can find lots of recipes online,
but adding that with the beef and the onions
just smells really, really delicious.
Some seasoning, just to make sure this tastes good.
And after that,
the beef is ready to take on one of its good friends,
arborio rice,
which is a very commonly used rice in risotto.
I really like cooking the rice with the beef
without any liquids so that it gets a kickstart
on the flavor before we add in
our homemade mango chutney from earlier.
We add in the beef stock and
I'm pretty sure this is the scientific definition
of flavor town, population one, that's me.
Even though this isn't a traditional risotto,
I'm still adding the liquid bit by bit
and stirring until it reduces and becomes nice and creamy.
Little check for seasoning and
oh, that's hot.
Oh, that's hot.
It could use a little bit of seasoning.
So after some salt and some pepper
and one off-camera QC check,
and this "risotto" is ready for its final cheese bath,
some grated Parmesan cheese in, slowly getting,
oh, definitely got to take some for myself.
And once that's all mixed in
and it's nice and creamy and delicious,
one more QC check because, you know, why not,
but man, this stuff's good.
While the rice cools down,
I'm cracking a couple of eggs to make the omelette part
of the omelette rice.
I'm feeling a bit lazy today.
So I'm using an immersion blender to do the work for me,
blending in a little bit of cream and milk
to give the omelette a nice, fluffy, creamy texture.
This is the tricky part.
It has to go into a nonstick pan
over medium high heat
until the curds just begin to set a little bit.
And then you stop.
You don't touch it.
And I'm slowly unmolding my risotto
from a semi football shaped metal thing
and carefully positioning it
in the middle of this barely set egg mixture.
And the goal here is to gently fold the egg blanket
around the risotto baby and slowly invert him
onto a plate.
And voilà.
After a little bit of post shaping
and some glaze drizzles across the belly of this egg child,
we've created a nice, beautiful, cross hatch pattern
for which to finish things of.
A little parsley leaf in the corner,
and this is done.
A fusion of curry, risotto, omurice,
probably really offensive to a lot of people,
but my only question is, how does it taste?
Would this get me first place in a cooking competition?
Ooof, this is really good.
The creamy, soft egg with that sweet and salty glaze
and that beefy but fruity risotto,
it all works together shockingly well.
This is 100% joining the Clean Cloth Club
and I'm going to eat this off screen
because my clothes are gonna explode
in three, two, one.
(chill music)