I mentioned a little while ago that I was going to try a cooking game next because I had bought lots of groceries and didn’t know what to do with them. I downloaded this DS game at random: Itsumono Shokuzai de Dekichau Suteki na Sweets to Gochisou, which means something like “Great Meals and Desserts you can make with Everyday Ingredients.”

Of course, in this day and age of the internet, no one needs to download a game to find a recipe. It was just an excuse to try a random cooking game. Itsumono Shokuzai did have a tasty-looking pork belly recipe though. It involved cutting the pork belly into thin slices and frying it up with red, yellow and green peppers and soy sauce. That’s a ‘subuta’ recipe in Japanese IIRC. Even the picture looked delicious (unlike most of the other pictures), but I didn’t have any green peppers and I couldn’t be bothered to go buy any. In the end I just googled “pork belly” and came up with two different recipes, both of which I tried last night.

The first one was Daikon and Pork cooked in soup, which was going along great until I added a lot of green onions to it. TBH the onions were going bad and I wanted to get rid of them, but maybe I should have sliced them up and frozen them instead, or saved them for fried rice. I mean, the soup tastes okay now, but definitely not as good as it did before. Also I think I went a bit heavy on the ginger thing, because I had a ton of ginger that was going bad (see a pattern here?). Btw, rotting ginger smells really, really bad, take my word for it. The other thing I tried was Braised Pork Belly, which I again added a ton of ginger to. I think I overdid it on the five spice powder through, the whole kitchen still smells of the spice. It was in a bag and I was tipping it slowly forward when whoom! a whole lot came out! Still delicious, though.

Anyway, what this means is that Itsumono Shokuzai didn’t help me at all. I only got one good recipe out of it, and I didn’t even use it. There were a number of other things that could be made, all dressed up with fancy pictures and descriptions. I’m a meat kind of person, so the sheer number of fish dishes was a bit surprising… and off-putting. I don’t really like fish. To me, the presentation of the dishes was seriously pretentious as well, but thinking again it might be perfect for someone hosting a dinner party at home. Arrange a few veggies artistically on a white plate, drizzle a simple sauce all around it and voila! How does it feel to be a Michelin chef?

Navigation was a simple, straightforward affair: forward, back, repeat. You can look at ingredients with quantities and the utensils used before you start, and each stage of the recipe comes with actual photographs. The text was very small, but the directions are helpfully read out (in Japanese) by a cold, digital voice reader.

Despite the colorful, cartoony cover, I don’t think this game is for beginners. There are too many unexplained steps, for one thing. For example, they don’t explain the different ways of cutting ingredients. They don’t explain what a water bath is. They don’t explain how to sift flour or even why you should. The steps are short, too, sometimes just “Cut everything, fry it up, serve” without detailed directions on exactly to cut it, how long to fry it for, how to tell when it’s done, etc.

Another thing: the “Everyday Ingredients” part of the title was misleading, especially for the desserts.  I’m not referring to the fact that I don’t live in Japan and so what’s “everyday” for them is rare for me. What I mean is that half of the ingredients are “store-bought” this and “store-bought” that. The very first recipe is custard cream. What could be more “everyday” than eggs, sugar and milk? But no, the recipe calls for store-bought pudding, which is then mixed with a bit of flour. Eww. I love all kinds of custard, but this is just insulting. Then, as you can see, their version of millefeuille is just store-bought wafers, sandwiched with the aforementioned ‘custard’. Do they even know what millefeuille is? And their cakes all call for store-bought castella. Again, I love castella, but what could be easier to whip up than a simple sponge cake? A little flour, some eggs, some sugar, a few minutes in the oven and it’s done! And you can customize it to suit your tastes!

Strangely enough, their tiramisu recipe calls for mascarpone cheese, which is probably not something most people buy regularly. The recipe also uses plain white bread instead of biscuits or even castella, which just sounds gross. Their swiss roll uses bread instead of cake as well, which is, quite frankly, disgusting.

In summary, Itsumono Shokuzai de Dekichau Suteki na Sweets to Gochisou is a collection of very pretty-looking but very unappealing and unappetizing recipes, presented in a fairly easy-to-follow but highly impersonal format. If you’re looking to impress people with the outer appearance of your food, you might get some good tips from this. If you’re looking to impress them with the taste, however, keep looking.