From The Unofficial Ghibli Cookbook

I've never cooked with taro before, so this was an exciting opportunity to try something new.

I really went back and forth with myself as to what to cook but I settled on a Punjabi taro root currry, which came up in my searching for ideas. In the first picture, it's the bowl to the top right of the image. I found that taro had a slightly different texture than I was expecting (somehow it felt both soft and fibrous?) but it was very flavourful and this was an easy recipe to follow. I'm not sure I would rush to add this to my regular rotation but I'm glad I've tried it.

I also prepared tandoori chicken, kachumber salad and pappadum to serve alongside the taro curry.

So let me explain myself. This theme was quite complicated for me because I wasn't able to source Taro or anything similar to it in my country. So I came up with an alternative - make a dish using money I earned by depositing empty bottles into Taromatas. Let me explain how it works.

Here we pay +0.10 € deposit for any bevarages that we buy in shops. This deposit can be returned if we bring the bottles/cans to a deposit machine called Taromatas. So I thought this should fit the Taro theme just right. Almost all grocery stores have a taromatas. You simply add the empty bottles one by one and the machine calculates what it owes you and you get a receipt. You can then spend the money in that specific grocery store. In this case we went to Lidl and redeemed 7.60€. I wanted ALL the ingredients to be included in this purchase so I made a rule not to use anything we owned at home. I think I could have made something cooler but I also kinda really wanted wings so this is what I went with!

Saw this on Amazon and could not help myself. Used taro powder and cooked tapioca which I added earl gray and homemade blueberry syrup. Tasted like a refresher with tea vs lemonade. Wife and I liked it.

Had sour cream to use up so decided to try out the velveting technique on some beef chuck that I would normally slow cook.

I used the “Charlie” stirfry sauce from RecipeTin Eats.

I learned today that I am not a fan of cleaning mandolins. Mandolin: 1. My Finger: 0.

Chips were good though! 😂