Stardew Valley Cookbook Achievement Pictures

Fruit Salad 2, With Apricots.jpg


My second crack at Fruit Salad, this time with apricots for the salad and pits for the syrup.

Recap of the ingredients: Watermelon, honeydew melon, blueberries, apricots, a vanilla syrup with apricot pits infused in it, and a garnish of mint leaves.

For the occasion, last weekend, I had a birthday shindig that a number of visiting relatives came for. My actual birthday is tomorrow, but for the convenience of relatives who drive way out of town to visit, we always try to have those on weekends regardless of when the actual date is. (Side note: since I got laid off my first job on a previous birthday that doubled as a Friday the 13th like this one tomorrow will be, I'm mildly apprehensive about it since it's the only classic superstition I have practical reason to believe in)

I'd say this was a step up from my previous Fruit Salad since I was actually able to locate and acquire apricots this time. The ingredients themselves are not that cheap these days, but for a single person's use, this will last about a week and a half to a full week. In the book, every recipe has an NPC blurb who gives praise to the recipe, often people whom said recipes are Loved Items in the game proper. This one has one from Haley about this being much better than the "overpriced" ones in Zuzu City and easy to make too. I agree this is easy enough to make, but to make it even easier, next time I make this, I will try to get a melon scooper to make actual balls out of the watermelon and honeydew.
 
Spaghetti.jpg


Decided to revisit the Winter section and try something year-round: Spaghetti.

This recipe calls for butternut squash pasta and a mushroom bolognese, and a topping of parmesean and some basil.

Traditionally, spaghetti is as simple as getting a box of pasta, a jar of sauce, a can of parmesean, boiling the pasta, and heating the sauce. Plain and simple. Not in the Stardew kitchen, though!

To start, we had to carve out the squash and roast it. Then we had to make it into a dough and chill it for at least 2 hours and up to overnight, causing this to be a 2-day process. Then we had to do something we never did before: use the dough to make the pasta from scratch.

This was a process that took us almost an hour by itself. First, we had to divide the dough and thin it out enough to make the pasta the right size. All the time, we had to keep dusting the work area and dough with flour. Lesson learned: be liberal with flour as that prevents the pasta from sticking together, which did happen a lot; some did come out properly, though.

When that was done, we moved on to the bolognese, which called for garlic, white button and cremini mushrooms, celery, carrots, yellow onion, red pepper flakes, oregano, tomato paste, pureed tomatoes, dry red wine, and some butter. This was a very rich and hearty sauce that is quite unlike any spaghetti topping I've ever had before.

Finally, we boiled the noodles when it was time to serve everything together and topped them with the bolognese, parmesean, and basil.
 
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