- Hey guys, it's Inga and in this video
I will only be making and eating foods
from Studio Ghibli films for 24 hours.
Since I did the Disney princess cooking challenge
from last time I have read all your comments
and received a lot of amazing follow-up requests,
but this is one of those that got me really excited
because I love Studio Ghibli films.
I grew up with them.
I even worked at a store that sold Studio Ghibli products.
It's so incredible how they are able
to build these magical worlds from scratch.
Also, the food in every single film of theirs
just looks incredible.
Maybe it's just something to do with anime food,
they always look even better than they do in real life.
Because there's so many films to choose from
I am going to try and pack in as much as I can
within these 24 hours.
I am truly very looking forward to this
because this is something that I've been wanting
to do for such a long time
and now I get to do it with you guys.
So with that being said let's get to the kitchen
and start cooking.
Good morning everyone.
It is the beginning of a brand new day
and I am so pumped to test out all these new recipes
and also really looking forward
to being able to eat all of them.
I feel like for breakfast the most classic one
that we immediately think of is the one
from "Howl's Moving Castle", big strips of bacon
and eggs, but because I feel like
it's a dish that has also been done
so many times already what I'm gonna be making instead
is the ramen from "Ponyo".
I actually grew up eating ramen for breakfast,
it's fairly popular in Hong Kong.
So to me it kinda makes sense,
just that I might be treating myself a little bit.
So with that being said let me show you guys
the ingredients I have.
There's only four ingredients required for this ramen.
The most important thing is this ramen.
The reason I bought this one specifically
is that it actually doesn't require cooking
over the stove top, all you really need to do
is pour hot water and then cover it with a lid
and wait for three minutes.
That's actually exactly what they did in "Ponyo".
Remember how the mom came in, she poured hot water,
so we'll be able to recreate that scene almost exactly.
Ramen aside there's also some scallions
as garnish, as well as a hard boiled egg
and some ham, which Ponyo was obsessed with,
so I had to make sure I got some good ham.
So I think breakfast will be pretty straight forward.
I'm gonna cook the egg really quick,
chop up my scallions, slice the ham
and then we can get the ramen going.
My egg has been boiled, it's all peeled now,
so we're gonna slice it in half.
Nice.
I have all my ingredients ready
it is time to cook the ramen.
This is what the ramen looks like on the inside.
You can see that it's already been flavored.
There's no extra broth packets,
so I'm just going to go ahead and put all this in here.
The instructions say to put 400 milliliters of water.
Then we're just gonna cover it up.
My bowl didn't come with a lid so I'm just using my pot lid,
but I'm setting it now for three minutes on my phone
and I'll probably add the rest of the toppings
around two and a half minutes in.
It is done.
Ta-da.
I love how this looks.
And the noodles are definitely cooked.
It also just smells really good.
I can totally see why Ponyo would love this.
Also, before I start digging in
I'm just gonna make a quick drink.
You guys remember in the film the mom made
this honey drink for both of them
and look at that.
I just remember this scene being so satisfying in the movie.
Pretty much just adding some honey
to a little bit of milk and hot water.
On a cold winter night this is perfect.
Now let me dig into the ramen.
You can see that the noodles are a little flatter.
Oh, I should also try the broth.
Broth is also really good.
It's very much just like chicken soup
with I think some soy sauce.
The texture of this noodle is also I think
more similar to that of cup noodles,
which is probably why it cooks so fast.
I'm almost gonna have a piece of ham.
Ponyo when she saw this she was like, ham!
This is for Ponyo.
As you guys can see just like in the film
this meal is so, so straightforward.
Everybody when we think of "Ponyo" now
we think of this bowl of ramen exactly
and it really is as comforting as it looks.
So I'm gonna finish the rest of this now
before we move on to the next meal.
It is lunchtime and I am ready
to make some more food and eat again.
So for this meal I am thinking of making
the bento box from Totoro.
I remember being amazed by just how much
the older sister, Satsuki could cook.
She was still just a kid,
but she was making these amazing meals
for her family and also these beautiful bento boxes.
So yeah I thought I would give it a try.
I love making bento boxes normally.
I once made a really, really cute one.
I do have a bento box here.
I'll be packing lunch in this tiny little box.
Let me show you guys the ingredients I have.
So again for this meal there are that many ingredients.
Some edamame beans and then I have some fish here,
I believe their called Capelin.
I know my grandma actually just grills these
and eats them with a little bit of salt,
so that's probably what I'm gonna do with that.
Some umeboshi, which is just pickled plums.
This I know is very, very common in Japanese cuisine
people genuinely enjoy this with rice,
which is what we'll be doing today.
And then for the pink portion I have these salmon flakes.
I believe in the film they actually used
another ingredient, sakura denbu,
which I actually used in my pink foods
cooking challenge before, it's basically this
seasoned codfish condiment.
But since I couldn't find it this time
I'm going with this instead.
And then of course over here I have my beautiful rice.
Based on what we see of the ingredients
this is actually a fairly traditional Japanese bento box,
so I am excited to put it together.
Because I don't have a grill at home
I am just going to cook the fish over the stove top.
I'm gonna add some salt and I'm going to let it slowly cook.
In the meantime I going to open this.
This is pretty much already cooked
I just need to microwave them a little bit.
I have all my ingredients ready to go.
Now for my favorite part assembling the bento box.
First up is the rice and there's gonna be a lot of it.
Making bento boxes is one of the most therapeutic things.
Lay our fish right on there, fish flakes,
it's a very fishy bento and then the peas.
Last but not least just half a plum.
There we go.
Ta-da.
That's kinda what it looks like.
What do you think?
Isn't this just so cute?
Really packed with protein.
There's a lot of rice.
If I just packed it up.
This is my little bento box.
I would totally take this to work.
I love this so much.
There's like a considerable amount of weight in this
because of all the rice.
Just the idea of having somebody
pack you a lunch like this.
No wonder the younger sister was so excited.
I would be excited if somebody made me this.
I'm going to dig in.
So this is the fish.
There's a lot of roe on this side.
It definitely reminds me of my grandma's cooking.
She can eat like 10 of these in one meal.
The fish smell is definitely strong, but I like it
and it's perfectly salty,
so we can get a good big bite of rice.
I actually eat this a lot normally
just salmon flakes with the rice.
I knew going there that was gonna be great.
I'm gonna try this pickled plum.
It has a very, very strong flavor
that's like both sweet and savory
with like kind of sourness to it.
It's meant to be eaten with rice
because of the amount of flavor it packs into one bite.
This is very, very enjoyable.
It's so well balanced and it's so convenient.
For those of you who haven't tried making a bento box
before though you should definitely give it a shot.
Another meal down, time for me to do some more work
before we eat some more food I guess.
So it hasn't been that long after lunch,
it's still fairly early in the day.
I just uploaded a cut of my video.
I'm just waiting for notes and I'm craving something sweet
so I think now is a good time to take a mini-break.
I don't know how many of you
actually recognize the character here,
but this is Setsuko, the little girl
from "Grave of The Fireflies".
"Grave of The Fireflies" is my most favorite
Studio Ghibli film.
It is also probably the most depressing,
every time I watch it I cry.
This candy is known as Sakuma drops,
they're these hard candies
that are made with real fruit juice.
This was Setsuko's favorite thing.
Every time she was sad or upset or tired
her brother would give her one of these.
And I think for me because of how young I was
when I first watched the film,
I've always had a fondness for this.
It actually says, since 1908.
And I know for as long as I've been here too
that this packaging has stayed the same.
This is super nostalgic for me.
So this is what it looks like,
it's like the flavors that we see on here.
Already it smells kind of fruity.
It's definitely very sweet but I feel like you do get
a lot more of those natural fruit flavors.
All right I'm gonna continue working now,
but I'm glad to have this by my side.
It is not quite dinner time yet,
it's actually I think around like 4:00pm-ish,
but I thought I would pop into the kitchen for a snack.
Honestly, usually for snacks I'd just grab something light
like saltine crackers or fruits,
but today I am in for a treat because I have
the steamed buns from "Spirited Away".
In the film I believe Chihiro gets these from her friends.
They're just like these giant steamed buns
that I guess is very popular in the bathhouse.
I actually just went ahead and made my own.
I have my own steamed bun recipe
that I shared awhile ago and then I bought
some red bean paste and essentially what I did
was wrap a big chunk of dough around
an equally big chunk of red bean paste
and then I went ahead and steamed it
and that's what brings me to today
where I have this giant bun.
I have never made steamed bun this big.
The red bean is actually showing
because of how much I tried to cram in there,
but you do get the fluffiness still.
I don't actually think I will be able to finish this
if I want to have dinner,
but I'm gonna go ahead and take a big bite.
They're so satisfying seeing her bite into it.
This is probably a meal in itself.
Look at how much red bean I tried to cram in there.
That's why it's like coming out.
It is very, very good.
So I think I'm probably actually
just gonna take a few more bites
and then save the rest of this for tomorrow
because it is a lot.
It is also very satisfying to hold a bun this big.
Work hours are now officially over
and that means I am ready to make some dinner.
There were so many dished to choose from,
but I decided to go with this one salmon dish
from "Porco Russo".
This dish actually appears in the beginning of the film
when Porco visits the hotel that is run by his friend Gina
treats himself to this nice fancy dinner.
The dish seems relatively simple.
The salmon is served with this sort of creamy white sauce.
I'm gonna be making a beurre blanc sauce,
which is essentially a fancy, french butter sauce.
Even though the film is set in Italy
I just assume that because it's such like a nice setting
that the sauce is probably also elevated.
So let's take a look at the ingredients.
Some salmon, which I am going to cook in the oven,
a lot of butter, shallots, some baby carrots
and then of course I have some white wine,
which is to go with the sauce.
And of course the white wine is also here
for us to enjoy with our dinner later.
So I'm gonna start with the sauce
and begin with cutting up the shallots.
Got my saucepan add all of this right in,
add in my wine and now I'm just gonna turn it on
to high heat and let it cook down
until we only have around two tablespoons left.
Prep my salmon so I can pop that in the oven.
This has been reduced by a lot
you guys can see that there is barely any liquid left.
I am going to turn the heat to low
and just one by one put this butter in.
My sauce is pretty much done I am going to strain it
and season it with a little bit of salt and pepper.
Now is a good time for me to pop the salmon in the oven.
As well as cook my carrots.
Pretty much after that I will be ready to plate things up.
All right here we go, starting off with my salmon,
then my sauce, trying to match the photo,
now for the carrots which admittedly
are not my favorite things and there we go.
This is the "Porco Russo" salmon, I guess.
There's not too much going on,
but I'm excited to eat it and I do want to recreate
that scene of him cutting into it.
This dish is a lot simpler than most of the other ones,
but it is at the same time supposed to be the fanciest
so I am going to be enjoying this
with a glass of white wine similar to what Porco did.
Okay, you know what he had a whole bottle of wine,
I'm gonna go get the whole bottle.
I'm gonna out my wine right here off to the side
and dig into this meal.
I know the buerre blanc sauce doesn't look like much,
but it actually goes really well with the salmon.
Not surprisingly it's very, very creamy,
very, very very rich.
If you're ready for the shear amount of butter
that also goes into it.
Its very good though.
I feel like if I played some jazz music
in the back ground, maybe had a sip of my wine
this could be me at a hotel somewhere in Italy
having a meal by myself.
Dinner was a pretty simple affair,
but don't you worry because I have
an extremely indulgent dessert coming up soon.
So hang in there with me.
I'm gonna finish my dinner and then we can
probably pretty soon get to dessert.
It's probably only been an hour
after dinner or so, but it is time
for what is probably my favorite meal of the day.
For dessert today I have decided
to go all out and recreate the cake
from "Kiki's Delivery Service".
Kiki actually gets this as a surprise gift
from one of her customers this like really kind
old lady who I think wanted to wish her happy birthday.
So in my head I was immediately like
this has to be the best chocolate cake ever.
So I actually started preparing
for this cake two days ago.
I actually followed a Tasty recipe
that's called The Best Chocolate Cake,
which I thought was pretty appropriate.
It does involve some pretty interesting ingredients
like mayo and stout, but I made sure to use
the best chocolate I could find
and what I ended up with was this super rich,
super chocolatey cake that wasn't too sweet
and it's just very, very dense.
And then once my cake was done
I let it cool a little bit
and then divided it up into three layers
and I also made this again super decadent,
super rich chocolate buttercream frosting
that I kinda sandwiched into the middle
to create those beautiful layers
and then covered it up completely.
This frosting truly is one of the most
luxurious I have ever made.
And after that I made my chocolate ganache frosting,
which really was just some semi-sweet chocolate,
some bittersweet chocolate, some whipping cream
and a little but of corn syrup
because I really wanted it to be shiny
just like it looked in the film
and then I just poured that all over my cake earlier today
and oh my god it looked so good already.
I was so tempted to eat it then,
but of course I couldn't forget about the decorations,
which I decided to make using fondant.
So I haven't really worked with fondant before,
but what I essentially tried to do was
to sketch out each letter and drawing
onto parchment paper which I them cut up.
This process was super tedious.
I probably did not have the right tools
to do most of this, but I tried my best
and yeah this is what I ended up with.
So it's been a super long journey,
this cake really has taken a lot of time and effort,
but that brings me to today where I have my beautiful cake.
Oh my god, it's so heavy.
It's definitely on the shinier side
and then I also have my little fondant cut outs
that I made earlier today.
So what I'm gonna do now is very carefully
transfer it onto the cake and try not to mess up.
This is what's going to make our beautiful chocolate cake
the "Kiki's Delivery Service" cake.
This is my picture reference,
I'll just have this on the side.
Put my ribbon back here, put my tree,
all right and then my letters.
Okay, last one.
It is done.
This is what my cake looks like.
I am freaking out 'cause I really thought
I was going to like mess up really bad on this last step,
but looking at it now.
Look at it!
From this angle it almost looks
exactly like the one in the film.
So happy, oh my goodness.
I am so pleased.
I really don't think I've made
a dessert better than this like ever in my entire life.
This has really been quite the project.
I feel like a proud mom.
I just gave birth to a cake.
It is time for me to cut into this and enjoy my dessert.
I have also been wanting to eat this for a long time.
All right, let's cut up a slice.
Goodbye, Kiki.
I'm treating myself today.
Wow!
Can you see the inside?
This is my cake.
It's so much cake, but I love how this came out.
Take a big bite right now.
Cheers to finishing this challenge.
Let me take a bite.
This cake is incredible.
There's so many flavors going on
the chocolate cake base in itself
was already so rich and so dense
and then there was a chocolate buttercream frosting,
another chocolate ganache frosting,
which just feels like I'm eating truffles
and cake at the same time.
This meal is the best meal I have ever created
on any of the challenges.
This concludes my 24 hour Studio Ghibli
meals only challenge.
It has been such a great time,
but I think the best part of this
really was being able to bring
all these amazing anime foods into real life
and I hope I did okay.
I would love to know what you guys think
and also what other challenges should I try?
On that note I will see you guys next time
while I finish up my cake.
Bye.