You heard me right. This week, I'm taking my first stab at foods from vidya games - a few of the many dishes seen in Zelda: Breath of the Wild. And, in the interest of accuracy, I prepared the majority of them in a giant steel wok over a roaring fire. It was hot, it was messy, and it actually turned out pretty good - but I certainly won't be doing it again.
First there was the matter of recreating the cooking rig seen in the game - it looked like a wide, handle-less wok, set in some kind of frame over a campfire. I was visiting my family in the finger lakes, where there's a large Mennonite population, known for their craftsmanship and metalwork. So I found a farm metal shop that would build a frame for me, which I had to describe over the phone (Mennonites being without computers and all). When I arrived, they had fabricated just the thing I needed - and for a mere $35!
Then there was the wok - the one in the game looked like cast iron, but I couldn't find one big enough to accommodate my campfire rig - so I went with raw steel. My brother and I then spent the better part of an afternoon mopping the cooking surface with oil and setting it over roaring flames to build up layer after layer of polymerized oil, like a rudimentary cast iron treatment.
Then all that was left was the cooking - which, while difficult to maintain a constant temperature, worked out pretty well! The risotto cooked perfectly, and the apples came out soft and sweet. Unfortunately the sun set before I could shoot any more, so I decided to go with a ghoulish Monster Cake to finish out the episode - using a 'monster extract' of ube, a purple Japanese yam. Hoping folks dig my first video game video!