Gastronogeek Anime Cookbook by Thibaud Villanova - Book Review

 

'40 recipes dedicated to anime and inspired by the greatest works of recent years, from Naruto to Attack on Titan , from chef and pop-culture expert, Thibaud Villanova, author of The Unofficial Zelda Cookbook and The Unofficial Ghibli Cookbook.

'Dive into an incredible gourmet universe of anime, from the great classics of the 80s to newcomers on the small screen.

'Re-discover the most essential and popular works of the moment in this collection in the most gourmet way possible, from the One Piece Sanji and Tajiro Curry to the Your Name Dream Souffle Pancakes!'

Finding the time or the energy to cook can be a hard thing thanks to the fast paced way of the world. With people having to work long hour, and sometimes multiple jobs, in order to get by finding the time to broaden your cooking horizons can be a challenge. People don't have the time or the energy to scour the internet looking for new recipes that might interest them, nor do most cookbooks excite them. One area that has been popular, however, is the geek inspired cookbooks.

These books have been popular with younger generations, as food seen in their favourite shows, games, and movies, are suddenly able to be made at home. If you want to relax for the night and throw on a show you love why not theme your dinner to match? And if you've got a group of friends coming over for a watch party you can impress them with a spread of food that ties into the movie. People who've never really been that interested in picking up a cookbook before have become inspired to try their hand at new things in the kitchen thanks to these geek inspired publications. And the Gastronogeek Anime Cookbook is trying to do just that.

The book is written by Thibaud Villanova, who is no stranger to bringing on screen delicacies to life, having produced other geek inspired cookery books like The Unofficial Zelda Cookbook, Disney Enchanted Recipes Cookbook, and Assassin's Creed: The Culinary Codex. This time round the focus is anime, with a collection of more than forty recipes inspired by shows such as Attack on Titan, Cowboy Bebop, and Naruto.

Having not watched as much anime as I used to back in my teens, a lot of the recipes in this book were brand new to me. Whilst I might have known the names of the shows these recipes were taken from, I'd never actually watched any of them. As such, when I first opened the book and started to flip through the recipes it felt like more of a journey of discovery than I was first expecting. Whilst the recipes here are all collected under the theme of anime, they vary a lot in what they offer, and a large part of the fun of the book was turning the pages, discovering what new culinary delight you'd find on the next page.

There is some consistency to things, however, as due to these recipes being inspired by animation that has come out of Japan, many of the recipes are very Japanese in nature. There are a lot of recipes that make use of seafood, particularly things like octopus, and mushrooms make quite a few appearances. For those who are perhaps not so much fans of these particular ingredients, however, there are enough recipes that either don't use them, or use them in small enough quantities that I'm sure you could either leave them out, or try substituting something else in instead.  

Before giving some of the recipes a try I spent some time planning ahead and reading through what would be needed. With limited income and finding shopping difficult due to my disability I had to pick which recipes I'd be trying with those conditions in mind, and unfortunately had to discount several dished that sounded great. I also found that certain ingredients were just completely unavailable in my local area, no matter how hard I looked. For those living in a big city, where you have more supermarket ranges, and can even find specialist markets for Japanese foods, I'm sure this will be less of a problem, but for small town folks you might need to order ingredients online in order to actually make some of the recipes here.

I found that the recipes in the Street Food section of the book were the easier ones to do on a whole, thanks in part to them being quick and simple. These were the kinds of dishes that, as the name would suggest, you'd expect to see a street vendor making, and make for great snacks, really good lunch options, or as a part of a larger meal. The recipes are all given a difficulty rating to begin with, which makes identifying which ones might be better for those just setting out in trying out new things. Even though I have experience with cooking I began with these easier recipes to slowly ease myself into the style of the book, and found them to be easy enough to follow and decently laid out for the most part.

The recipes also list the expected time, breaking them down in prep-time and cooking time. There were a few occasions that I found these times to be a bit off, with my cooking taking longer than what was listed here. However, this might be a case of it being my first time and not being used to the processes, along with my disability slowing me down, but it's worth noting for those trying this out for the first time to perhaps leave yourself a bit longer than the recipe says just in case; at least for the first time you try it.

There were a few things that I did find in the book that made some of the recipes a little harder, such as certain steps not really being covered in much detail. One recipe, Gin's Seafood Rice, lists one of the ingredients as 'two squid tentacles cooked in court bouillon stock'. The recipe, however, does not tell you how to cook this. It's also something that isn't explained in the book, and I had to google to find out what it was. Without knowing whether this is something that I'd have to buy separate, or if it comes precooked this way this became a recipe that I just couldn't do, as I didn't know how it wanted these ingredients made up. The fact that this recipe was a beginner one left me feeling a little dejected, as it resulted in a simple recipe feeling like it was beyond my grasp.

On a whole, I enjoyed reading and trying out the Gastronogeek Anime Cookbook, and whilst there were several recipes I didn't feel equipped to try out yet, what I did try went well, and left me feeling in a decent place to try out some of the others. This feels like one of those cookbooks that I'll be coming back to again and again in the future to try out new things and increase my skills, even if it's drawing from an area I'm not the most familiar with. 

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