Hyrule Chef

I am a bit late for Christmas, but sadly I took ill after my Christmas adventures and then found myself snowed in at Rito Village, where my holiday travels took me. However, I learned two festive recipes over the holiday in the snow, which I am excited to share with you now.

The Nut and Honey Chestnut Cake, as the Rito call it, was something new that I have never tasted before! Where I am from, a "cake" is normally very sweet and mostly only a dessert. However, in the harsh winters of the Tabantha Frontier, the inhabitants are looking for something hearty that can fill them up and be easily stored or packed for short day trips. A holiday favorite in this region, the Village Nutcake is not a cake in the dessert sense, but a wonderful hearty sweet loaf that my people would probably call a type of bread or hearty muffin!

If you like nuts, you will love this, as I believe nearly every nut you can forage in the region is contained in this recipe! It also makes a very nice gift for passerby, visitors and neighbors as well. It is something that can be eaten for breakfast, a snack or as a dessert - just add a little maple syrup or honey on top and it is mostly all sweet with no savory.

The recipe did take some time for me, but that is my own doing... As my wife helped me to forage for this particular recipe, she happened to get whole nuts instead of sliced, which made for some very interesting antics in me trying to ground whole nuts! I tried a masher, I tried a knife, a hammer and a rock hammer that nearly broke before the nuts were crushed! My next purchase will definitely be a food processor gadget of some kind.

Now the recipe does call for chestnuts and particularly chestnut honey, which I found was a particularly challenging ingredient to find in this region. All the side quests for chestnut honey came up empty, so I used chestnuts, regular honey and some tweaking and made something that the Man in the Wood promised me was very close to the real thing. It was definitely a unique taste that myself and everyone I shared it with over the holiday seemed to love!

My only question is why do chestnut flavorings taste so good but chestnuts themselves smell so bad?

5 Stars *****

I'm ashamed, but I admit it...Since childhood I have chased them, carried them around against their will, thrown them into wells and pits, stabbed them just to see what they would do...and finally, yesterday, I cooked one.

And that was the final straw. I am now under the Curse of the Cucco.

Here's why I believe I am now under the Cucco Curse. On Thanksgiving, we took all the necessary steps to prepare, including thawing out the frozen Cucco (again...I am sorry, goddess). But apparently, being my first time de-thawing a Cucco, I did not realize it was not thoroughly thawed. So even after the long side quest of making our own homemade red Miso out of Soy Sauce and curry for the "stuffing"...even after following the book of recipes to a T...our beautiful bird was raw in the middle.

So I spoke to the Wise Man in the Wood again and he told me how to "fix" it. And thus, we did. And thus, it looked even more beautiful when it was done half an hour later. By this time, my wife and I were starving, having not eaten but a piece of bread in the morning! So we decided to skip the step where the Old Man told me to let the Cucco "rest" in all its juices, with foil over it. Who knew a Cucco was so complex?

But nay, we fell straight into the trap of gluttony that has been the downfall of so many others before us, and we did not wait. We also did not know how to carve it, neither of us having carved a Cucco in our lives before. But we believed at this point that all was well.

Inevitably, the curse must have fallen in that moment, because as we followed the recipe book and put down our Hylian Rice, followed by the beautiful vegetable curry stew mixture with sauce, and the Cucco on top, we brought our long fought battle earnings to the table and...it was as rubbery as a wagon wheel tire! Somewhere between the kitchen and the table, I am sure the curse fell upon us!

This time I went to the nearest Great Fairy, pleading for help. And she did give us grace! We chopped the meat into fine pieces, made a few adjustments with the vegetable curry stew, added our brown Hylian rice, and a very hearty meat, rice and vegetable stew was the result. It was not the meal we hoped for, but it was a meal to be thankful for, nonetheless.

We decided the Carrot Stew would have to wait for another time, as all our time was spent trying to reverse the curse.

However, the Fortified Pumpkin Pie was a true Gift from the Goddesses! I truly believe we were blessed with the best pumpkin pie I have ever known in all of Hyrule, because of our repentance and promise to never, ever cook another Cucco again...because this pumpkin pie truly is fortified! I made a gluten free and refined-sugar free shortbread dough from scratch and it wasn't even that difficult, but very worth it, not only for the health benefits but the taste and the cost of rupees! Unlike most pumpkin pies, the fortified was a little spicy, tasted of real and not artificial ingredients, and it blessed us with leftover puree to make an assortment of cakes and smoothies...and I heard the Princess herself loves a good smoothie.

Today we’re celebrating Thanksgiving in our little corner of Hyrule, and the entire menu is fully Zelda-inspired! Since our party consists of just two brave adventurers, we’re skipping the traditional turkey and instead making… I am so sorry… a Cucco dish.

Please forgive me. I do feel like an absolute fiend cooking a Cucco—but it’s Thanksgiving, it’s in the recipe book, and my quest demands completion. May the Goddess have mercy.

On today’s festive menu:

The Roast Pocket Cucco

Steen’s Carrot Soup from Kakariko Village (made with Swift Carrots!)

Olkin’s Fortified Pumpkin Pie, another beloved Kakariko specialty

I’m also planning to brew a Green Tonic to sip throughout the day—just a little extra magic for this Thanksgiving feast.

We’ve foraged our ingredients, stocked our satchels, and believe we are properly equipped for this massive new quest. I’ll report back soon on our hopeful success and happy Thanksgiving to all of wanderers.

Well I took up the courage to make Lon Lon Cream on my own last night, a creamy, delicate dessert I have craved since first I found this recipe book. When you can't get to Lon Lon Ranch, you want to be able to enjoy this delicacy in your own home, and since matcha is one of my favorite things in Hyrule, I had to make this happen.

Or I had to try, anyway. After foraging all the ingredients into the pot, I realized I was missing one - milk powder. I asked an old wise man in the wood named ChatGPT if I could make this without the milk powder and he gave me an alternative. Great.

Then I realized I did not have the right machine, called a yogurt making machine, for this quest! And I am nowhere near Dampé to be able to get him to make me one today. So I go to the wise man again and he says there is a simple way to do it without machines and instead using the stovetop to heat it! Great.

Then....I put the yogurt in too soon. Too late, all the ingredients were mixed already and I am completely out of some of them, so I have to make this work. The wise man yet again, gave sage advice to compensate for the error.

The wise man also gave advice for my raspbery couils, but sometimes he is wrong. It made 1 tablespoon instead of the 4 required. So I take some time in between the yogurt disaster to go pick more raspberries and make more raspberry coulis. All seems well now.

But alas, it seems that three "fixes" for this mess may be too many. The cream is still liquid after 12 hours. Again, I speak to the wise man and he says, yet again, it is so easy to fix! Get the milk powder. So I order it straight from Lon Lon Ranch via messenger boy, which takes a day.

It has arrived.

So now, I will attempt to add the milk powder and in 2 hours...we will find out if this side quest was worth the effort or a giant waste of my time.

Kakariko Village has enchanted me since I was 8 years old. The music, townspeople and bit of mystique in A Link to the Past's Kakariko Village made me fall in love with the Zelda series in a whole new way. In every new imagining of Kakariko I look forward to spending time in the town, meeting the people, taking part in the side quests, shopping, and sometimes just chilling to the ambiance. So when I had to decide what Zelda recipe I was going to try first, I naturally was inclined to dive in head first to one of the hardest recipes in this book, because I was very anxious to see what the food in Kakariko tasted like.

Not only did I find out what the fortified pumpkins taste like, but also how long they take to prepare! Maybe this is why they carry special healing properties. In my world, pumpkins are mainly used for carving at Halloween and for pie. I have never actually eaten pumpkin without it being in pie or a latte, although I discovered this is not usually the case in other places, like Australia. According to my best friend and my wife, both Australian, pumpkin is a regular thing to eat in soups and simply roasting it in the oven. Likewise, a good friend of mine who grew up in Germany also makes a delicious pumpkin soup! I suppose I never knew what I was missing...those things can do more than just haunt your front porch!

I took special care to pick out fortified pumpkins only, as you will see in the video (coming soon!). Have some patience with me, because this was the FIRST recipe I did and I was going from "cooking mac n' cheese are my best mad skills" to Village Meat-Stuffed Pumpkins with 25 ingredients for which I had to forage across Hyrule, and most of which I had never heard of! It collectively took probably 4 hours, but in the end I was quite proud of my achievement, they looked beautiful and tasted unique and "earthy!" Honestly, they weren't my favorite recipe thus far, but they were real, healthy, and tasted very much like what I would expect from Kakariko Villagers (they also had other magical effects that gave me a new theory as to why the Pegasus Boots might have been needed in this town....).

So all in all, would I recommend going through the Village Meat-Stuffed Pumpkin side quest? Absolutely! And go out there and pick out your own fortified pumpkin. It will make you feel like a true village visitor.

Hi, I’m Christina, the Hyrule Chef who is a total beginner in the kitchen but a lifelong wanderer through the many lands of Hyrule. I have several talents, including music and writing, but none of those talents is in the kitchen! In fact, I have never had a desire to cook until I was given the Unofficial Zelda Cookbook by Thibaud Villanova... and I became instantly in love with the idea of finding out exactly what Mushroom Risotto or Salmon Meuniere tastes like...or how tangy and refreshing a Noble Pursuit in the heart of the Gerudo Dessert actually is! So I am putting my zero cooking skills to use in the most magical way, with an effort to bring to life the Legend of Zelda world...hopefully with the help of a Great Fairy or two... and maybe I'll find a few geeks to wander through Hyrule fields with me on this massive side quest! Expect lots of lore, burnt mushrooms, maybe some Ocarina and themed music, and plenty of random musings along the way. ✨ My first recipe + post is coming soon—stay tuned, and may your apples always roast evenly.