In the long-awaited content update for “Animal Crossing: New Horizons,” farming and cooking was finally introduced to the game. Not only does the game now include cooking, but it includes a wide variety of diverse meals from different countries and cultures. While players are still working on unlocking all of the different meals you can cook, there are at least 50 known recipes in the game.
Because I love the Animal Crossing franchise and am a sucker for farming and cooking mechanisms in video games, I decided to try and recreate a recipe from the game. While there were lots of easy recipes that I already know how to make, like spaghetti or french fries, I was determined to challenge myself. I decided that in order to pay true homage to the game, I needed to pick something that I wouldn’t normally make or couldn’t find frozen at the grocery store.
My “Animal Crossing: New Horizons” island is forest and fungi themed, so I decided that something involving foraged ingredients would be best. As I was searching through recipes from the game, I stumbled across a cooking recipe for Champinones Al Ajillo, commonly known as garlic fried mushrooms. While I’m not usually a big fan of mushrooms, I thought that this would be a great way to try something new and make something I might actually cook in the game.
Cooking in “Animal Crossing: New Horizons” doesn’t require a lot of talent. You gather the materials and press A repeatedly until your dish appears seemingly out of thin air. The ingredients for Champinones Al Ajillo in the game call for one round mushroom, one flat mushroom, one skinny mushroom and one rare mushroom. I went to the store and bought four different types of mushrooms – cremini, portobello, shiitake and button mushrooms — to try to follow the recipe as closely as possible.
Most of the real-life recipes I found for Champinones Al Ajillo called for similar cooking ingredients and methods, but in order to stay as true to the game as possible while still having edible food as an end result, I omitted any other ingredients that I could have found in the game but weren’t included in the in-game recipe. For example, a couple recipes called for citrus zest, but since there are citrus fruits in “Animal Crossing: New Horizons” I decided to not include that.
I started by washing all of the mushrooms and cutting up the larger ones. I know there are a couple of different techniques to wash mushrooms, but I just put mine in a colander and rinse them in the sink until they are clean.
Then, I set the clean mushrooms aside and heated up a saucepan with a small amount of olive oil, a tablespoon of butter and crushed garlic cloves. After the pan was hot, I added the mushrooms and cooked off the extra moisture until they were lightly caramelized. Then, just before I took them off the heat, I added a handful of grated parmesan cheese and stirred it into the mix.
I took the mushrooms out of the pan and added parsley on top. Overall, this recipe tasted surprisingly good. While it didn’t look exactly like the “Animal Crossing: New Horizons” version, I would recommend checking out the recipes in the game and trying to recreate the ones that look tasty. You might surprise yourself.
