Otaku Café – Sword Art Online
Recipes for Asuna’s Frontliner Sandwich and Rabbit Ragout provided with a special service~
Sword Art Online isn’t just full of monster-slaying, dungeon-crawling and harem-gathering. When she’s not kicking ass or threatening Kirito with various sharp objects, Asuna likes to cook all her own meals. I decided I take it upon myself to try and recreate a few of the dishes we’ve seen her whip up so far in order to level up my own cooking skill. A little effort in the kitchen is all that stands between you and the possibility of sampling some of Asuna’s home-cooking right in your very own home without even having to put on a NerveGear.
Asuna’s Frontliner Sandwich
Sword Art Online episode 6
I have something to confess to you: I have never made a sandwich before in my entire life. Sandwiches just weren’t something I enjoyed eating, so I shunned them throughout my childhood and took a myriad of different snacks with me for lunch instead of the universal PB&J sammy. While I’ve always loved the shocked gasps I get from diehard sandwich fans (which I’ve learned is an actual thing that exists), I figured I would try making a sandwich to see if I could satisfy my picky tastes. I succeeded. This is a flavourful and filling creation that could easily be eaten on the go while you’re grinding for levels!
Ingredients:
-half a fresh baguette
-1/2 cup baby spinach
-1 egg
-1 teaspoon milk
-1 tablespoon cooking mirin OR 1 tablespoon sugar
-handful of dried cranberries
-1/4 of an onion
-small steak (cut thinly)
-2 tablespoons soy sauce
-1 teaspoon teriyaki sauce
Recipe:
1. Get all your ingredients ready, you baka.
2. Cut your onion into flower-like shapes (more like throwing stars). If you’re not being obsessive like me, just cut it into small pieces like a goddamned normal person.
3. Get out a frying pan and begin cooking the steak and onions on med-high heat with soy sauce and teriyaki sauce. Cook until the onions are soft and the meat is just how you like it.
4. Set the meat and onions aside when it’s done and clean the pan. In a bowl, crack two eggs and stir it with milk and cooking mirin. I prefer mirin, If you don’t have it on hand, use sugar.
5. Once the eggs have been stirred, grease your pan and pour the mixture in. Set the heat to medium-low. Once the bottom starts to cook, try and coax the egg into a rectangular shape by folding the sides in. Flip it over and cook it on the other side. Once it stops running it can be set aside as well.
6. Cut the baguette in half because that’s how sandwiches work
7. Now we just lay on all the good stuff! Start with a layer of spinach, then egg, then onions and cranberries, and finish off with your glorious steak. Put the other half of the baguette on top and wrap that badboy in a napkin.
Sorry for the messy presentation, but I assure you it tastes good. The soy sauce for the steak gives it a bit of a salty taste that’s balanced out by the sweetness of the egg. I called the cranberries “surprise sugary treats” but my friends who were subjected to the taste test called them “weird additions from a girl who eats too much sugary things.” Feel free to skip the cranberries, guys. I like them, at least. As it stands, my only regret is not being able to acquire white, flower-like objects for the sandwich. The improvised onions tastes good, but lack the delicate look Asuna’s sandwich had. Like I said…I’m still leveling up my skills here!
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Rabbit Ragout
Sword Art Online episode 8
Rabbit is indeed a rare ingredient! I’ve never cooked with it before either. Yes, another first. You are in such good hands with all these first time attempts at cooking things, aren’t you? Anyways, I was up for the challenge at making a real feast and not completely wrecking this elusive drop item. This dish takes considerably more work than the sandwich, but the outcome is pretty rewarding.
Ingredients:
-a rabbit (preferably dead)
-2 potatoes
-1 and 1/2 cups chicken broth
-1 tablespoon olive oil
Marinade
-1/4 tomato
-1/4 red onion
-2 tablespoons worcestershire sauce
-1 tablespoon ketchup
-1 tablespoon garlic powder
-1 teaspoon thyme
-1 teaspoon cilantro
Recipe:
1. Clean the rabbit thoroughly and cut it up into sections. I got my butchers to do most of the cutting, so I just had to remove a couple of organs like the liver. If your rabbit has a head…have fun.
2. Place the rabbit into a tupperware container and put in sliced tomatoes (cut into small pieces), sliced red onions (also in small pieces), garlic powder, cilantro, ketchup, thyme leaves and worcestershire sauce. Close the lid and shake it like a polaroid picture before placing it in the fridge to marinate for at least an hour.
3. Cut 1 potato into small cubes (about 1cm all around) and the other potato into very tiny, thin slices so they dissolve and thicken the stew. Put the potatoes as well as the tomatoes and onions from the tupperware into a large pot on the side.
4. Brown the rabbit in a frying pan with olive oil until the outside is nice and cooked. Put the rabbit into the pot when it’s done and add in chicken broth.
5. Set the heat to high until the stew starts to boil, then turn the heat down to low. Put a lid on top of the pot and let it simmer for 2 hours.
6. Are two hours up? Your stew is done! Serve on rice and/or some lettuce and enjoy.
I used a slight modification of my mom’s recipe, which is ironic since she was the one who was absolutely petrified at the idea of me bringing home an entire rabbit to hack up and cook. That’s another story entirely though. The dish itself turned out nicely! The rabbit meat fell right off the bone from stewing so long. I now know that I like rabbit, as it tastes almost exactly like chicken. Like with the sandwich, I invited a friend over so a third party could give it a taste, and he seemed to really enjoy it. Success! Unless he was just humouring me! Overall, it was an “anything goes” sort of dish since we never see the finished product in SAO, but I tried to use everything I saw Asuna cutting up in the anime as an ingredient to make it at least slightly authentic.
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Natural Honey Mint Tea
Sword Art Online episode 6
Here’s a little bonus that’s dead simple to cook because it involves zero cooking. All you need is a few mint leaves, a teaspoon of honey and boiling water. Simply put a few mint leaves into a cup and pour boiling water over it. Stir it around and let it sit for about 7-10 minutes so it’s nice and strong. Afterwards, remove the leaves and stir in about a tablespoon of honey (depending on how sweet you want it). Take a sip and enjoy some perfectly natural mint tea while you puzzle over murder mysteries! The real mystery is what flavour of tea they were actually drinking in episode 6 though…Hmm…my guess was mint though, so let’s leave it at that. Case closed.
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Cooking with Cool
Why am I trying to get people to cook on an anime blog? Because it’s fun! I’ve always been an advocate for combining real life hobbies and knowledge to anime posts. Sometimes it’s neuroscience, sometimes it’s psychology, sometimes it’s poetry and sometimes it’s cooking. My hobbies are as endless as the stars, my friends. I may not be an expert (or even anything better than “average”) in any of these fields, but I certainly try to get better through writing dorky animu posts.
I was also inspired by our past cooking posts organized by Ness and Kyokai and a lovely site I frequent called Gourmet Gaming, which looks at food seen in video game and tries to recreate them. The ideal goal is to get people to try out these recipes and eat the food from the anime while they watch it…but I doubt that will happen. My optimism ends there, right where it started. However, at least you can see my attempts at recreating anime food and go “haha, look at that” without using up nearly as much time as I did. A win-win for you, isn’t it?
If any of you DO try out these recipes, please let me know! Send pictures and tell me how it went, even if it tasted putrid! If you guys like this I’ll continue to share my anime-related cooking endeavours with you all. :3
Don’t forget to save room for dessert~
About Overcooled
A neuroscience graduate, black belt, and all-around nerd. You'll either find me in my lab or curled up in my rilakkuma kigurumi watching anime.
POWUH: iLurker with 6 comments
Thanks for the recipes… would try them one day
POWUH: Meta Team and The Mad Scientist with 5525 comments
Thanks! If you ever try any of them, I hope you like the outcome.
POWUH: iLurker with 4 comments
I doubt they sell rabbit meat at my local walmart
POWUH: Meta Team and The Mad Scientist with 5525 comments
Maybe not, but I got the rabbit at my local grocery store.
POWUH: iLurker with 1 comments
That’s amazing! I salute you man.
POWUH: Meta Team and The Mad Scientist with 5525 comments
*salutes back* It was all worth it because I got to eat 75% of what I made afterwards. :3
POWUH: and LOLi Defender with 10998 comments
Excellent work. If you like different flavour profiles and textures, you might want to add lemon zest and mushrooms to the ragout. It works well with any meat.
POWUH: Meta Team and The Mad Scientist with 5525 comments
Ah, thanks for the tip! I really like using mushrooms in my cooking, but my mom really dislikes the taste of them so I’ve cut down on using them. They’d probably go well with the ragout though, so I’ll add them next time!
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
I’m becoming more tolerant of mushrooms in my middle age. I actually like the flavor, but dislike the texture. It’s just very unique and something that I haven’t been fond of, through infamiliarity, but I’m getting more used to it, and they don’t bother me as much.
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
Awesome cooking skills, OC. Now I’m getting hungry just looking at this. Hmm.. I’ve never had rabbit before. I gotta get around and try it someday.
POWUH: Meta Team and The Mad Scientist with 5525 comments
Thanks, BB. This was the first time I tried rabbit (same with my official taste tester friend!) and it’s pretty easy to like since it’s so plain. You can substitute it with chicken though if you can’t find rabbit or if you don’t think you’ll like it.
POWUH: 400-499 with 489 comments
ohh the recipe prefers dead rabbit. I tried it with live rabbit, it didn’t look like the picture. I knew I should have looked at the instructions MOAR carefully
POWUH: Meta Team and The Mad Scientist with 5525 comments
If you use a schrödinger’s rabbit that is both dead and alive then you end up with something really weird.
POWUH: iLurker with 1 comments
Well, after reading this recipe for the sandwich a few days ago, I finally managed to get everything together to make it, and this post was made right adter I finished, so I can tell you, with the memory fresh in my mind, that it was amazing. I throughly enjoyed it. The only thing that can be said in a less than positive fashion, is that a spicier version should be made, because it was supposed to be so, yet wasn’t. However it was still a superb sandwich, with no flavor contradicting any of the others. I look forward to making it again, along with the other recipies shown here.
POWUH: Meta Team and The Mad Scientist with 5525 comments
Wow, thanks for trying it out! I’m glad it tasted good. I’m not a big fan of spicy foods (my tastebuds die at the slightest amount of spiciness) so this is the non-spicy version, I suppose. I hope if you try the other recipes that they turn out well!
POWUH: iLurker with 2 comments
There are a lot of edible flowers out there, they might be a bit hard to find though, since they aren’t widely considered “food” and not sold in grocery stores (I do recall seeing some sold at a farmers market once). Arugula blossoms might work well for bringing it closer to Asuna’s original
POWUH: Meta Team and The Mad Scientist with 5525 comments
Yeah, I never see those kinds of things anywhere outside farmer’s markets or small specialty stores. Arugula blossoms look like a perfect match so you can always try subbing them in instead of the onions. I’ve never actually eaten them so I can’t tell you how it’d taste though :B
POWUH: iLurker with 1 comments
Well, my english is veeeery basic, but i understand something of this xD have the recipes in spanish? I really want to try this =D
POWUH: iLurker with 2 comments
I’m from Germany so I have the same problem. 😉
POWUH: iLurker with 1 comments
I’ll try Asuna’s sandwich but that’s it. I’m not eating dead rabbit! xD
POWUH: iLurker with 2 comments
I tried Asuna’s Sandwich and it was amazing. But I dont know how to send pictures.
POWUH: Meta Team and The Mad Scientist with 5525 comments
Ahhh I’m so glad you liked it! I don’t know how to embed photos in comments either (maybe another one of the writers can help me out here) but if you have a link to one somewhere else feel free to post it here