Ghibli feast #8: the Castle of Cagliostro
June 2, 2010
Posted by AnnaTheRed in bento blog (all), bento blog - ghibli (totoro, etc...), bento blog - non bento Tags: Ghibli feast, the castle of cagliostro
6 comments
Day 3 of Ghibli feast
Ghibli feast #8: The Castle of Cagliostro
This is the last feast in Ghibli feast! When I decided to do a Ghibli feast, I knew that I wanted to watch this film last. This film isn’t by Studio Ghibli, but the Castle of Cagliostro is the first theatrical film Hayao Miyazaki directed in 1979. I used to watch Lupin the Third on TV when I was little. Lupin the Third is a TV series version with most of the characters from the Castle of Cagliostro. I remember it was funny but also very raunchy sometimes. But Miyazaki turned the anime for grownups into a beautiful masterpiece filled with action, comedy and love.
Especially the car chase scene in the beginning is probably the best animated car chase scenes ever made. If you’re a Miyazaki film fan, and haven’t seen the Castle of Cagliostro, you must see it! The main character may not be a strong willed innocent girl or boy, trying to save the world, but you can see how Miyazaki really enjoyed making this film. I think that the car chase scene describe the personality and relationship of Lupin and Jigen (his sidekick with a magnum) very well. They’re both crazily adventurous and trust each other. It was a famous (but unconfirmed) rumor that Steven Spielberg was blown away by this film, especially the car chase scenes. I’m not surprised if the rumor is true.
After Lupin and Jigen realize that the money they stole are very famous counterfeit money “goat bills,” they decide to go straight to the source and enter the Principality of Cagliostro. They learn about the wedding of Count Cagliostro and Princess Clarice when a waitress brings a mountain of pasta and meatballs.
[Pasta with meatballs]
This is probably the second most famous food in Miyazaki films. (The first is of course being Laputa bread) Unlike Laputa bread or other famous food in Ghibli films, this pasta is not very detailed, but how they eat made this simple pasta with meatballs look so amazing.
We made a simple tomato sauce with crushed tomato and basil, an used IKEA meatballs. (I know it’s cheating but they are so soft inside, and we like them!)
No technique involved in this dish. I just had to carefully make a mountain of pasta. It's not impossible, but it required patience.
I also had to carefully place the meatballs on top of the pasta.
-
—
——
Not as much as the film but it's still a lot of pasta!
——
—
-
I think this kind of food definitely goes into the category of the “food that makes you want to try because of the unrealistically large portions of it.”
This is a bit trivia, but didyou notice that Lupin’s friend, Goemon Ishikawa, is buried in the pile of counterfeit money in the backseat of Lupin’s car when they escape from a bank robbery?
This is about 2 minutes into the film. You can see his hair and his katana.
Goemon and Lupin have a different friendship than Jigen and Lupin. Goemon usually shows up when there’s a job, but he doesn’t hang out with Lupin outside the “work” like Jigen does. After they rob the bank in the beginning, Goemon disappears and doesn’t show up until much later. So the very first scene Goemon appears is the Castle of Cagliostro is actually in the very beginning! I was telling this to my boyfriend when we were watching the exact scene. He didn’t know about this, so he had to go back and check it. When he saw it, he laughed and said “AWESOME!”
And this sounds kinda off-topic but not. My boyfriend and I were working at Anime North in Canada past weekend, and I got to hang out with my friend who lives in Canada. It has nothing to do with my Ghibli feast but I thought it’d be perfect to post the picture of his car in this post.
Compare the car with my friend who's standing next to it. It's so tiny!
Does it look familiar?
That’s right!
This is the exact same car as Lupin’s car, Fiat 500 Cinquecento!
It used to be yellow like Lupin's car, but after many repairs and restorations, it's green now.
The engine is in the back.
The gas tank is in the front.
Space-wise, I’d say the inside is about the same as the inside of a mini-cooper, but four of us were able to fit in the car. Everyone at Anime North was waving at us as we drove by them. My friend (the car owner) was so used to it, he was waving back to them as if he were a president.
To sum up the Ghibli feast, it was so much fun! I got to make and learn how to cook food that I’d never cooked before. Such as making poached salmon, gutting mackerel, making fish pot pie, cooking shishamo, roasting soybeans, etc… And also guessing what’s in the food by just looking at screenshots was fun too. Studying the texture and the color of the food and how it’s cooked made us pay more attention to the food in the film.
Even though I try to cook something different as much as I can, when I get lazy I always end up making food that I’ve cooked many many times, so this was a great challenge for me. I’m so glad that I did this. My favorite dish from the entire Ghibli feast was the fish pot pie from Kiki’s Delivery Service. We had no idea how it’d taste before we made it, and when we ate it, it was something we’d never tasted before in a very pleasant way.
I hope you get out of your comfort zone, and try cooking something you’ve never cooked before. You might learn a new technique, and find amazingly delicious food to be added to your recipe books!
You can also see these pictures in Ghibi feast set on my flickr page!
Ghibli feast #7: Spirited Away
May 28, 2010
Posted by AnnaTheRed in bento blog (all), bento blog - ghibli (totoro, etc...), bento blog - non bento Tags: Ghibli feast, spirited away
9 comments
Day 3 of Ghibli feast
Ghibli feast #7: Spirited Away
Spirited Away was the second Miyazaki film that was theatrically released in the U.S., so I’m sure a lot of people know and saw this film in the theater. I’m not going into details of this film since I’m not good at summarizing… so let’s just get to the feast.
I’m sure the people who missed my “preview of Ghibli feast” post are wondering what I’d make for Spirited Away. There is soooo much food in the film. So much that I could probably have a feast just with Spirited Away. I hate to disappoint you but I’ll save that for some other time. Sorry!! But I will do it someday, maybe soon… I have to do a lot of research first. But for this time I decided to do the simplest food from the film.
Dish 1
[Rice balls]
After Chihiro started working at the bathhouse, Haku tells Chihiro to meet him outside. He gives her back her clothes and a card from her friends with her name, Chihiro, on it and tells her not to forget her name. He assures her that she’ll see her parents again, and gives her rice balls. The rice balls Haku gives her has no seaweed and it doesn’t look like anythingis inside either, but it looks soooo good when Chihiro eats them. Chihiro, who’s confused and worried about her parents starts crying as she eats the rice balls.
Growing up, eating rice myself, I can understand her feeling so well. Nothing makes me feel more at home than eating rice. I used to go to conventions a lot, and for a couple of days I’d have to eat hotel food, convention food, take-out, fast food, etc… And usually by the end of the trip, I just can’t wait to get home and eat rice. Chihiro is feeling so lost and alone in a strange world, and biting into plain rice balls relaxes her, making her burst into tears.
My boyfriend and I make rice balls every Sunday morning, but we usually have seaweed on them. I should’ve had him make them though. His rice balls are usually perfect triangular like the ones Haku gives her.
My rice balls always end up big and round.
-
—
——
My grandma used to tell me farmers go through 88 stages to grow rice (thus splitting the Kanji for rice becomes 88), so I had to chew one mouth full of rice 88 times to pay respect. I've tried, and it's not an easy thing to do... but it's a nice story nonetheless.
——
—
-
Dish 2
[Steamed red bean bun]
After a busy day at the bathhouse, Chihiro stares at the train running outside the bathhouse. Rin who also works at the bathhouse tells Chihiro that the train only leaves, but never comes back, and gives her a steamed bun with sweet red bean inside.
I didn’t want to wait for yeast to rise, so I used cake flour to make steam buns. (check out “how to make steamed bun with cake flour without yeast”) I was going to make sweet red beans from scratch, but I had bought sweet red beans a long time ago to make Oshiruko, so I decided to use it. (Oshiruko is rice cake in sweet red bean soup) I’ve never made seamed bun with sweet red bean but it came out pretty nice!
I like using a bamboo steamer. No need for cheese cloth, and no worries about water dripping on the buns!
I tried to make them as big as possible, but my steamed buns were not even close to the size of the bun Chihiro had. I think Miyazaki wanted to make her look like a very skinny city kid, and that’s why her hands are tiny and her arms and legs are almost stick-like. But look how HUGE the steamed bun is compared to her hand!!
-
—
——
Chihiro's bun is as big as my steamer. I'm not sure if she should be eating something so big as a night snack.
——
—
-
Dish? 3
[Konpeito]
This one was a last minute extra food we threw in. When we decided to do this, we realized that we had the “konpeitou candy” which Kamajii feeds to the hard working Makkurokurosuke. I bought the candy for my boyfriend a long time ago because he didn’t know what it was and was surprised when I told him that you could buy them.
“To make Konpeitou, the rice kernels are put in a turnable pot, and slowly covered with syrup over a period of 10 to 30 days, allowing layer after layer of syrup to build up, about 1 mm a day. Spikes will start appearing about the 5th day.” (Copyright 2010 Practically Edible. All rights reserved and enforced.) Read more of this snippet here.
That’s right, those tiny spikes are not artificially created or from a mold! It’s pretty much pure sugar, so it’s very very sweet. The ones I got were plain flavor, but for some reason, he had eaten more colored ones than white ones. The colored ones do look tastier.
-
—
——
——
—
-
Okay, so it wasn’t much of a feast… But we had one last feast planned to finish the Ghibli feast! It was the Castle of Cagliostro.
You can also see these pictures in Ghibi feast set on my flickr page!
Ghibli feast #6: Nausicaa
May 18, 2010
Posted by AnnaTheRed in bento blog (all), bento blog - ghibli (totoro, etc...), bento blog - non bento Tags: Ghibli feast, nausicaa
3 comments
Day 2 of Ghibli feast
Ghibli feast #6: Nausicaa
The last feast for the day 2 of the Ghibli feast was Nausicaa.
Nausicaa is probably my most favorite of all Miyazaki films. I think it’s because I saw it when I was young, and it had a huge impact on me. I’ve seen this film the most number of times too. I remember almost every line of Nausicaa, and I cry almost every time I watch this film.
I really wanted to include this film in the Ghibli feast, but compared to the other Ghibli films, this might have the least amount of food. Even so, the only food in this film is actually one of the “food in anime I want to eat most” list.
[Chiko no mi / Chiko nuts]
After gunships crash into the Valley while transporting the God Warrior, Tolmekians invade the Valley. To protect the people in the Valley, Nausicaa agrees to be taken as a hostage on an airship. Right before they leave, a group of girls run to Nausicaa, and gives her a small sack of chiko nuts. After they leave the Valley, the airships get attacked by a Pejitan gunship, and the airships start to go down. Nausicaa orders other hostages to escape in an airship, and she jumps on a glider, taking Kushana, the leader of Tolmekians, with her. They land in the Forest of Decay, but Nausicaa learns the Pejitan pilot is still alive, and flies in her glider to save him. Nausicaa saves the pilot’s life in a nick of time, but after crashing into the ground, they get sucked into quicksand.
They wake up in a strange place below the forest where the air is clean, and they introduce each other for the first time. Nausicaa gives chiko nuts to the Pejitan pilot, Asbel. He eats it and makes a face and says “Despite the taste, I could eat a boot-full! (of chiko nuts)”
Chiko nuts are fictional food, so I tried to make a list of “facts” of chiko nuts.
1. When a group of girls give Nausicaa a sack of chiko nuts, she says “So many… You’ve worked so hard.”
-> It’s not easy to collect a sack full of chiko nuts.
2. Nausicaa says “It’s good for you.” when she gives it to Asbel.
-> Chiko nuts are nutritious.
3. Asbel says “It doesn’t taste great, but l could eat a whole boot-full!” after eating one chiko nut. (You can also see his eyes get teary.)
-> Chiko nuts doesn’t taste great, but makes one want to eat a boot-full.
4. You can briefly see chiko nuts, and from what they look like…
-> Chiko nuts are very small and round. Its color is dark brown/red or black.
Many Japanese people thought that they were goji berries, because the goji berry is called “kuko no mi” in Japanese and it sounds very close to “chiko no mi.” But I believe it’s completely fictional, and I’ll just leave it as that.
But I couldn’t just give up. So I compromised and decided to use roasted soybeans. I could’ve just bought roasted soybeans, but it’d be too easy since I was already compromising, so I tried making roasted soybeans from scratch.
First I had to soak them in hot water for a couple hours…
Look at these crazy soybeans soak the hell out of the water! (for a couple of hours...)
…then dry them for several hours…
Watch these little guys dry! (for several hours...)
…then roast them until the beans are completely dry.
It took almost an hour or longer to carefully roast in low to mid heat, constantly moving the pan so the beans wouldn’t get burned. The tiny little soybeans just wouldn’t dry!
Who knew manually roasting soybeans could take so long? Well, I didn’t. Now I’ve learned something and appreciate roasted beans more than ever.
Skin got all wrinkly, but that didn't affect the taste.
My chiko nuts didn’t look exactly like the real ones, but it was fresh and tasted really good. Crunchy, it gets sweeter as you chew it. I could definitely eat a boot-full.
-
—
——
You'll need a LOT of soybeans to fill a boot.
——
—
-
Still, having only roasted soybeans for my most favorite Ghibli film felt a bit lonely, so I decided to do something else. Not a food, but I made the tool Nausicaa uses in the film, called “Mushi-bue.” (Insect whistle)
It’s supposedly based on an actual whistle from somewhere in the world to scare off bugs, but you can make a very similar one too! Actually, you can find many Japanese sites showing how to make your own Mushi-bue.
You usually use a film case for this, but I did a little experiments and used different materials. If you don’t have film cases, go to a photo developing place and ask them! They usually have tons of them, and if you ask them nicely they’ll probably give them to you for free. 
If you still can’t get a film case, and don’t want to make a big whistle, you can also use a lotion bottle or any plastic in a cylinder shape. Just make sure it’s soft enough that you can cut it with a box cutter.
Before I start a how-to… We made these in a rush for this post, so we didn’t have time to “pretty up” the appearance of these whistles. Sorry about the unevenly cut tape and messy craftsmanship.
You’ll need…
- a film case (or a soda can or a plastic bottle)
- cooking string (The one you use to tie up chicken. A supermarket has it.)
- an awl
- a box cutter
- a piece of thick paper (business cards are best for this)
- tape (scotch tape, duct tape, masking tape, etc…)
We decided to do some experiments, and used different materials.
Tools: tape, piece of paper, awl, exacto knife (or box cutter), string
1. Cut a slit 1/8 inch X 3/4 inch ~1 and 1/3 inch (5mm X 2~3cm) in on the side of a film case. A film case is small, so please be very careful!
If you have trouble cutting a straight line, draw a line for the slit on a piece of masking tape, put it on and cut it. It makes it a lot easier to cut.
2. Make a hole in the center of the cap.
3. Put the string through the hole and tie a knot a couple of times. (If you’re worried, you can tape the knot to the cap from inside)
4. Cut a thick piece of paper (business cards are the best for this) a little smaller than the film case, and make a lengthwise incision about half a inch, and fold the each side of the paper in the different directions. The paper doesn’t need to be a specific size.
* The paper stabilizes the film case and helps the air go in when you swing it. You can make it without the tail, but it's harder to make the whistle make the sound without the tail.
5. Tape the paper on at a 90 degree angle from the slit.
6. Put the cap on, and swing it in circles!
I think my boyfriend was more excited when the sound actually came out.
We tried making it with a plastic bottle, soda can, and paper tubes. As we kinda expected, we couldn’t get the paper tubes to make sound.
Regardless of the look, we could successfully get these three to make sound.
We went to Prospect park to record me swinging them. It was so nice out that day, maybe too nice. The park was full of people and very noisy. So we decided to just make a video with still images and audio.
—
[Mushi-bue #1: a film case]
—
[Mushi-bue #2: a soda can]
—
[Mushi-bue #3: a plastic bottle]
—
If you want to make it look more authentic, you can make them with bamboo or tree branch. (I’ve seen someone make them with bamboo or a branch before, and they do look very nice.) You’ll need to have the right tool for the carving though.
No sound is coming out from your whistle? Try holding the string shorter or longer, change the speed of of your swinging. If that doesn’t work, make the slit wider. After the experiments, we realized that the bigger the container gets, the wider the slit needs to be. If you think you made the slit too big, you can cover it with tape to adjust the size.
Okay, we got a little side tracked for this feast, but let’s get back on Ghibli feast! Day 3 of feast starts with Spirited Away!
You can also see these pictures in Ghibi feast set on my flickr page!
Ghibli feast #5: My Neighbor Totoro
May 17, 2010
Posted by AnnaTheRed in bento blog (all), bento blog - ghibli (totoro, etc...), bento blog - non bento Tags: Ghibli feast, my neighbor totoro
16 comments
Day 2 of Ghibli feast
Ghibli feast #5: My Neighbor Totoro
What food can you think of from the film My Neighbor Totoro?
The vegetables they chilled in the river look great, don’t they? But unfortunately, I HATE cucumber. There are two foods I don’t like and will not eat. Cucumber and cilantro. I don’t just HATE them I DESPISE them. It’s not like I’ve never had it. I’ve tried them and decided that I’d never eat them again. All my friends think it’s the funny that I HATE cucumber though. They say it’s the most non-offensive food, and they never met anyone who HATES it.
Anyway, enough with that evil food…
The other popular food in the film is freshly harvested corn. Mei and Satsuki carves “To mom” on the outside the corn and delivers it to their mom. The scene is very moving, but the uncooked corn is not much of a “food.” You can also see Mei eating caramel candy on the back of the truck, and the rice cakes and bean cakes the old lady made look delicious too. But we had toast with an egg, pancakes and sausage, fish and pumpkin pot pie before this, and we hadn’t had rice yet that day. So us being big rice lovers, I decided to make the bento box Satsuki prepares for Mei in the film.
I love that Satsuki and Mei cook for themselves. They’re both very young, yet it looks like they’ve been cooking since they’re even younger. Satsuki doesn’t waste any time when she cooks, and you can see Mei grilling fish outside. While she cooks breakfast, she also packs lunch boxes for her father, herself and Mei.
[Mei's bento made by Satsuki]
The fish was pretty small, and I figured it was either shishamo (salt water smelts) or mezashi (Japanese anchovy). I found good shishamo at a Japanese super market, so I decided to use shishamo. If you’ve been to Japanese style izakaya, you might have had shishamo. It’s about 4 inch long, and usually grilled. You eat the whole thing, from the head to the tail. The bones are so small that you don’t feel them at all. It sometimes comes with a slice or lemon and grated radish.
I love shishamo but I’ve never actually cooked it, so I looked for the best way to cook grilled shishamo without a grill. The only thing you have to be careful when you’re cooking shishamo is that he fish is so small and the skin is very thin, if you don’t cook it well until it’s dry, the skin will stick to the bottom of the pan and break off when you try to flip it. After looking at a couple of different methods, I decided to use the frying pan with parchment paper method. I don’t recommend aluminum foil because the fish’s skin may stick to the foil.
Put parchment paper on the pan, and gently lay shishamo on it. (No oil needed)
Nice shiny fishy!
Cook them in low to mid-heat, until the skin is completely dry. The water drips out from the fish, and start to sizzle, but don’t move the fish!
When you think the skin is dry, hold the tail gently and lift the fish. If the skin isn’t stuck to the bottom, flip it over, and cook until nice and brown. If the skin is still stuck to the bottom, keep cooking.
That’s it!
It sounds simple and easy but the important thing is to wait for the skin to dry completely. I can’t remember exactly how long I cooked, but it took a lot longer than I expected. While I was cooking, I tried to lift the fish a couple of times because the skin looked pretty dry. But the skin on the bottom was still stuck to the paper, so I let it go. At that point, I wasn’t sure if the fish would come out good, but after a long wait, I tried to lift the tail again, and it came off the paper very easily. So if you’re making this, just be very very patient.
This is after I flipped the fish. (*The brown stains on the paper is the juice from fish.)
I also tried to cook some in a toaster oven. (I put parchment paper on top of aluminum foil.) It came out fine, but I felt that the ones cooked on the frying pan were juicier on the inside. Also the fishy smell stays inside the oven for a while.
Cooked in the toaster oven.
Before I started packing the bento, I studied the bento carefully again.
I realized that Satsuki filled the whole bento box with rice! I totally thought the other side of the bento box had vegetables or something, but you can the whole bento is filled with rice. I guess the Kusakabe family really loves rice.
Look how much rice each bento box has!
I filled the bento box with rice, and put shishamo in the middle. I sprinkled sakura denbu on rice, and put a sour plum. Then I put sweet peas I had bought, and realized that it probably wasn’t sweet peas in Mei’s bento… I didn’t think the color would be so different. =/
I bought a bento box similar to Mei's for this feast. It's actually very tiny. 5-ich long, and 3-inch wide.
The color might be off, but it still tasted goooood.
Well, I couldn’t help it, so I got regular peas later, and made the bento again.
These look more like the peas in Mei's bento.
The greener the definitely better.
Just looking at the sour plum makes me salivate. 
Sakura denbu is basically sweet fish powder dyed pink. It’s mainly used for sushi (rolls) but can be used on regular rice. I thought maybe the pink stuff could be salmon flakes at first, but when I did the research, pretty much everyone believed that it was sakura denbu.
Saura denbu: I remember eating it in secret when I was little. It tasted so sweet and good that it made me feel like I was doing something wrong.
-
—
——
Simple, but you can appreciate the flavor of each food.
——
—
-
It made more sense when I actually ate the bento. Sour plum is very sour, and shishamo is kinda salty, so the sweet sakura denbu was the perfect neutralizer. As I ate this bento, I wondered if I’d have liked it at Mei’s age. Sour plum, grilled fish, and peas… Not sure if I’d be so excited and jumping up and down for it. As matter of a fact, I didn’t like sour plum when I was little because it was too sour. I guess good kids like them appreciated any food back then.
Eating this bento reminded me of how my dad always made me rice balls with sour plum in it, and I always had to remind him that I didn’t like sour plums. He’d just say “Oh, you don’t like them?” I don’t think I’ve told him that I can eat sour plum now but I don’t think it really matters anymore. He probably still doesn’t remember that I didn’t like sour plum anyway.
Our next feast was Spirited Away!
You can also see these pictures in Ghibi feast set on my flickr page!
Ghibli feast #4: Kiki’s Delivery Service
May 15, 2010
Posted by AnnaTheRed in bento blog (all), bento blog - ghibli (totoro, etc...), bento blog - non bento Tags: Ghibli feast, kiki's delivery service
17 comments
Day 2 of Ghibli feast
Ghibli feast #4: Kiki’s Delivery Service
Kiki is a 13 year-old witch in training. Every witch has to leave their town and live on their own for a year to train themselves to become a better witch. With no special talents or skill other than flying on a broom, Kiki starts her delivery business in a city by the ocean.
Originally, I was just going to make the pancakes Kiki eats in the film. But I thought it’d be too simple if I just made pancakes especially because Laputa bread was right before this. So I decided to also try making something very challenging.
Anyway, after eating only a slice of bread with an egg and an apple my boyfriend was getting hungry, so we started making pancakes and sausages right away. In the film, Kiki eats pancakes to save money. She uses “JIBURI NO HOT KEKI” mix (“Ghibli’s hot cake”, a.k.a pancake), if you hadn’t noticed.
Dish 1
[Pancake with sausage and tomatoes]
We decided to make pancakes from scratch. My boyfriend mixed regular flour, egg, sugar, a little bit of salt and water. At the same time, we boiled water and cooked sausages. (We had to buy uncooked sausage from the store this time… Next time, we’ll get the recipe for sausage from my boyfriend’s sister.) After the sausage was cooked, we cut it and broiled it in the oven to make the surface of the sausage brown. We added a couple of mini tomatoes.
It’s a shame that Kiki doesn’t eat her food like other Ghibli characters though. When she eats her pancakes, she’s feeling a bit down, so it doesn’t look that tasty. =/ But our pancakes tasted really good, even without maple syrup or honey. Nothing beats freshly made pancakes with just a little bit of butter.
-
—
——
Kiki's pancake actually explodes a little bit when she cooks. We couldn't make that happen though.
——
—
-
And, of course, the fish pie…
Dish 2
[Herring and pumpkin pot pie]
Kiki goes to the house of an old lady to pick up a package to deliver. Kiki ends up helping them bake a pie for her granddaughter. While I was doing research about food in Kiki’s Delivery Service, I saw a lot of people actually tried making the fish pie from this film.
I’ve never had a fish pie, let along made one. Even though I love fish, I had not idea if this would taste any good. But everyone who made this fish pie was praising how delicious it was (also to their surprise). I couldn’t find any .. So I had to try it! I found a couple of recipes for this. I got kabocha (Japanese pumpkin), but couldn’t find herrings, so I got sardines instead. We even bought a new baking dish for this. We were determined to find out what it’d taste like.
I’m sure a lot of people might want to try this, but unfortunately, I didn’t take enough pictures to do a complete how-to (I was in a rush!) But it’s really not that complicated at all, actually. I’d rather everyone use your own favorite recipe for each ingredient, or you can save a lot of time by buying prepared fish, white sauce or a pie sheet.
Ingredients for the pie are…
- mashed pumpkin with sauteed onions (I used kabocha, which is a Japanese pumpkin, but butternut squash will do.)
- white sauce
- herring (or sardine or mackerel or cod… I read that any white fish will do.)
- pie dough
- black olives
- egg yolk (to apply on the surface of pie)
- Pre-heat the oven to 400 F.
Mashed pumpkin with sauteed onions:
You can use any mashed pumpkin recipe for this. I chopped onions and cooked in olive oil until they were clear. I steamed kabocha (I removed the skin, but if it’s cooked well, you can eat the skin too. It’s very good for you!), mashed it, and mixed in the sauteed onions, butter and a little bit of whipping cream to make mashed pumpkin. I didn’t measure how much of each ingredient I put in. I just kept tasting it and seasoned with a little bit of salt and pepper. Just don’t make it too thin.
White sauce:
You can use any white sauce recipe for this, or even buy it from a store. I used the left over Bechamel sauce from Porco Rosso salmon dish.
Pie dough:
You can use any pie dough recipe for this, or you can buy rolls of pie sheet from a store. (Pillsbury makes them, and it’s called “pie crust”, but it’s more like rolled sheets of pie dough. They come in a long box, like pasta box. But if you’re using frozen pie sheet, you’ll need two sheets.) Make sure you have enough pie dough! I made pie dough the day before, and had it sitting in the fridge.
White fish:
I cleaned and gutted sardines, but if you’re buying fish from a fish market, they will usually do this for you. Fish pieces should cover the surface, but you can put more or less.
The amount of each ingredient depends on your baking dish. Everything except fish can be used in other dishes, so you don’t have to worry too much about what to do with the extra food you end up not using.
I found two ways of putting each ingredients in.
1. pie dough – > mashed pumpkin -> fish ->white sauce – >pie dough
or
2. mashed pumpkin -> fish -> white sauce -> pie dough
I had enough pie dough, so I went with 1.
I spread the dough with a rolling pin, cut it to the size of the baking dish and put it at the bottom of the dish.
Then I spread mashed pumpkin on top of the pie dough. (I put it about 3/4 ~ 1-inch deep.)
Then I put the fish over the mashed pumpkin. (The mackerel I used was rather small, but you can put more fish if you like fish.)
And I covered it with white sauce.
This is where it gets a bit tricky… I rolled and stretched the pie dough, put it over the baking dish, then trimmed the pie dough slightly bigger than the baking dish and put it over the white sauce. The pie dough may shrink, so make sure you cut it bigger than the dish. (I learned this the hard way… I cut it too small the first time, and it shrunk after I put it on the white sauce. T_T) I rolled the scraps of the pie dough, cut it for the lines, and put them onto the pie dough. Then I rolled the scraps of the pie dough again, rolled it, and cut it into the shape of fish, fins and scales.
After everything was in place, I sliced black olives to decorate it and took some pictures.
-
—
——
I was more relieved than satisfied at this point.
——
—
-
Then I mixed egg yolk, applied it over the pie dough with a brush, and it was ready to be baked! I put it in the oven, and baked it for 20 minutes at 400 F.
I just kept peeking into the oven, trying to make sure it didn’t get burned. (I was so paranoid that I set the timer to 15 minutes first, then checked and see if it was okay. Then I baked another 5 minutes. And I finally took it out the oven.
Too bad that you can't smell this.
Nice and brown.
I couldn't be happier with how it looked.
It looked good and smelled amazing. But now the most important part,,, the taste! Even with the delicious smell, I was still unsure about the taste, but we couldn’t just stare at it forever, so we dug in.
Nom nom nom nom...
It was absolutely delicious!! It was something I’ve never tasted before. There were so many different flavors in my mouth, but they weren’t fighting each other. You can still taste the sweetness of the pumpkin, the fishy flavor, and rich creamy Bechamel sauce, but also taste it as one perfect dish.
So yes, everyone who tried making this was telling the truth. Fish pumpkin pot pie is delicious! It’s too bad that they don’t have a scene of anyone eating this in the film though. The granddaughter in the film who said she didn’t like this pie must have no taste buds!
-
—
——
Madame's fish pie is more brown, but I just didn't want to risk it... I'm satisfied with the result though.
——
—
-
If you want to try making this, I have advice for you… Even though I loved this dish, I must admit that it is very rich and heavy because of the white sauce and mashed pumpkin. I’ll probably use a smaller baking dish or less Bechamel sauce next time. It lasted for a good 3 day between two of us. (we ate it for lunch and dinner) I didn’t mind at all though, but I was surprised how a small amount of this dish could make me full.
We’ve both watched Kiki’s Delivery Service before, but it’s been a while since we watched it the last time. The one thing we didn’t think of before was the last scene. Kiki got her magic back, and she could fly again, but Jiji says to Kiki, “Meow.” We both went “Wait, so Kiki got her magic back but still can’t understand Jiji??” I did a little research for this, and found that, in fact, a lot of people wondered the same thing. One review I read said that “the conversation with Jiji could be Kiki’s way to understand her own thoughts and feelings. That doesn’t mean Jiji wasn’t talking or Kiki was making things up in her head. It was something between magic and talking to an imaginary friend. And in the end, Jiji probably did say something to Kiki and she understood him, but it’s for us to figure it out. By the end of the film, we should be able to guess what he’d say anyway. ” What’s your take on the last scene?
The feast for Kiki’s Delivery Service took a lot longer than we expected. But we weren’t tired at all, because our next feast was My Neighbor Totoro.
You can also see these pictures in Ghibi feast set on my flickr page!
