Persona 5 - Leblanc Japanese Curry!

EDIT: FOR SOME REASON, NO MATTER WHAT I DO, SOME OF THE BELOW IMAGES REFUSE TO UPLOAD PROPERLY AND AS A RESULT THEY APPEAR BROKEN ON THIS BLOG POST. PLEASE FOLLOW ALONG ON MY SOCIAL MEDIA PAGES AND THE POST ABOUT THIS BLOG TO SEE THESE IMAGES. I'M SORRY THAT THEY DON'T APPEAR NICELY ON THIS POST. THANKS.

Hello everyone, and welcome to my fourth blog post and gaming inspired food experiment for BOSS BATTLE EATS! For today's recipe, because it is the last recipe of my campaign for school, I wanted to create something based off of one of my favorite game franchises. While Boss Battle Eats will continue (as I've been loving this experiment and want to continue trying new things), since this is my last obligated post for my school assignment, I wanted to go out with a bang and create something really different and cool. So, as the title has already told you, I decided to take inspiration from Persona 5! Interestingly enough, the Persona series has been around since the year 1996, but the Persona series actually is a spin off of another series (Shin Megami Tensei) - but the Persona series has actually passed it's parent series in terms of popularity and is Atlus' most popular series. With the release of Persona 5 in 2017, Persona became a lot better known due to the strong critical acclaim it received, so much so that the Protagonist from Persona 5 actually appeared in Nintendo's famous Smash Bros series last year! While Persona's popularity has soared the most in the past few years, Persona has been critically acclaimed throughout it's entire life, and has proven to be popular enough to inspire spin-off titles of it's own! Spin offs to a spin off series, crazy, I know! I chose Persona 5 as the inspiration for this weeks recipe not only because it is one of my favorite series, but also because you spend a lot of time in a very specific cafe owned by your caretaker in game Sojiro. In case you didn't read the title, the name of this cafe is Leblanc, and Sojiro specializes in Coffee and Japanese curry. So, I decided to try and make a curry for the first time ever, all thanks to inspiration from Persona 5!

As mentioned before, in Persona 5, you spend a lot of time in a cafe called Leblanc. In this cafe, the owner Sojiro (and your caretaker) takes a lot of pride in the quality and preparation of both his coffee and his Japanese curry. This is why I decided to try and make Japanese curry for the first time, and why I decided to prepare the curry with a wonderful and warm cup of coffee. The Cafe Leblanc is one of the most important locations in all of Persona 5, and for those who don't know, here is what Cafe Leblanc looks like in game:

Who doesn't want to try Japanese curry and coffee there? It just looks so peaceful and chill, and if the curry and coffee are as good as the characters describe, I feel like I'm really missing out. Anyways, as someone who had never tried Japanese curry before this experiment, I wasn't quite sure what to expect - and spoiler alert - I loved the result! So, as someone who had neither tried this particular type of curry, nor had I made it before, I decided to try and find a recipe that was relatively beginner friendly. So, for this recipe, I followed a recipe that had the following ingredients (not including rice and coffee as my sides):

• 2 tablespoons peanut oil

• 1 pound stewing beef

• 1 large onion (peeled and finely chopped)

• 2 cloves garlic (finely chopped)

• 1 tablespoon ginger (peeled and minced)

• 1 apple (peeled, cored and minced)

• 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour

• 2 large carrots (peeled and roughly chopped on the bias)

• 1 large potato (peeled and roughly chopped)

• 1 teaspoon garam masala

• 4 tablespoons curry powder

• 2 tablespoons tomato paste

• 2 cups red wine

• 1 1//2 tablespoons granulated sugar

• 2 tablespoons soy sauce

• 4 cups water

I found this recipe at a recipe called pickledplum.com, and I found that it was a very easy recipe to follow and to create (it mostly just takes a little bit of prep time, but nothing difficult. The exact recipe that I followed can be found here: https://pickledplum.com/japanese-curry-recipe/. I highly recommend you check this recipe out and support them!

Going into the creation of this recipe, I truly wasn't sure what to expect. Whether this recipe would be difficult and/or time consuming, whether or not I would enjoy the end result, etc. Thankfully, it ended up being a recipe that I found to be really easy, and while it WAS somewhat time consuming, I ended up loving the end result so much that I didn't mind in the end.

To create this recipe, essentially the steps are sort of similar to a soup or a stew. You use a large pot, add in some ingredients, let them cook and/or bring it to a boil, and then add more ingredients. You continue this process until everything is added to the pot in sequence, and eventually you let all of the ingredients simmer together in the pot for an hour. Follow these steps (obviously much more detailed steps can be found here: https://pickledplum.com/japanese-curry-recipe/). As I said before, this recipe is quite simple to follow, and results in an amazing taste. I was especially surprised at the sweet taste which is unique from other curries I have tried, and apparently is a unique trademark of many Japanese curries. It makes me really want to try an authentic Japanese curry in Tokyo to see just how amazing the flavor can become. Or, if I can't make it to Tokyo, I would love to find an amazing Japanese restaurant that makes it near me to see how there's tastes. Anyway, here are a few pictures of how the process looked like for me:

As I'm sure you can see from the photos, the recipe was quite easy to execute, and I was thrilled with the end result. While I did not have anything to compare it to, I was still really happy with the amazing savory and sweet flavor, and it paired amazing with rice and a cup of coffee. Here is how the end result turned out:

Does that look as amazing to you as it did to me? I hope so, because it tasted just as good as it looks. The beef was amazingly tender and flavorful, and all the vegetables (and the apples) melted in my mouth and the entire dish had an amazing texture that I am finding hard to describe. Needless to say, I am immensely happy with my end result. Because of how well this curry turned out, it makes me want to try new curries from restaurants, as well as to try and make new and different curries for myself at home. I may have just discovered a new food love, who knew? If you liked this blog post, and/or want to keep up with my gaming related food exploits, please check out all of BOSS BATTLE EATS' social media pages, which can be found below:

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I thank you all for reading yet another blog from me, and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed creating it. It's been a fun ride so far, and while I am no longer obligated for school to continue this page and this blog, I have had such an amazing time doing so that BOSS BATTLE EATS will live on! Please continue to follow my pages and stay tuned for more future content, as I have discovered I am very passionate about creating it and hopefully building a community with you all!

Thanks again for visiting and reading another gaming food experiment blog at BOSS BATTLE EATS!

-Wyatt