Curry of Life from Naruto | Anime with Alvin

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– Hello there. Welcome back to anotherepisode of Anime with Alvin. Today, I'll be making theCurry of Life from Naruto. In the show, this curryhas a spice level so high that it can immediately wakeup an unconscious person when fed a single spoonful. So as you can tell by this bowl of dried chilies in front of me, this is gonna be a spicy one.

For the curry recipe itself, I'm starting with a Japanese style curry beginning with onion, ginger and garlic. I'm just peeling andslicing one large onion into normal size chunks. For the garlic, I'm chopping up two cloves and for the ginger, I'musing about a one inch knob removing the skin withmy knife and grating it until everything has been broken down.

The other vegetables, I havethree carrots and one potato. I'm peeling and cutting the carrot into nice jewel size chunks and providing the sametreatment to the potato. For the meat, it'spretty common to use beef in these kinda situations and the cut of beef usedfor this curry is chuck which has some connective tissue and fat that'll break down quitenicely in the braise.

Once it's been untied, the chuckgets cut into large chunks. These end up shrinkingquite a bit during the cook so I like to have them a little larger. All right, everybody's all happy. To the stove. In a large Dutch oven over high heat, I'm browning the beef in alittle bit of cooking oil. That gets followed up bya healthy pinch of salt and a heavy dose of freshlycracked black pepper.

Once that's looking pretty good, the beef exits the pan intoa bowl to rest for later and after all the remainingjuices have reduced down, in go the onion. The onions hang out and stir in the pot until they started to sweat a little bit then the garlic andginger joins the party. If they came to theparty a little too soon, they probably would've burned.

So it's good that they have the onions to help give them protection. For some spice, color and flavor, I'm adding in one tablespoon of togarashi along with one tablespoon of tomato paste. Even though you may not find these in a lot of Japanese curries,lady Sanshō from the show does seem to add a lot ofthings into this Curry of Life and the flavors do seem to makesense with everything else.

Once everything's been stirred and takes on a nice, beautiful red color, I'm gonna deglaze withone whole cup of red wine. This will help get all the flavor bits that might be stuck tothe bottom or the sides but also make the currya little bit darker. We are trying to go fora dark black after all. At this point in time, the beef has decided to rejoin this party.

Along with roughly eightcups of beef stock. Everybody in the pot seemsto be having a good time so we're gonna let them hang out and cook over low heatwith the lid half open. I'll let you guys simmeraway for about an hour or so. While the curry party happens over there, I'm gonna make one ofits best friends, rice. Pretty straightforward. Rice cooker, three cups of white rice.

Which I'm going to first washto remove any excess starch that would cause thegrains to clump together if not washed out. Let's press the buttonand let this rice cook 'cause I have other things to attend to, a rather spicy encounter. I have here an entirebowl of dried red chilies. I believe these arefrom the Sichuan origin and being Chinese myself,I'm quite familiar with these.

And how terrible they arewhen they hit your tongue. I do wanna make sure Iremove the stems first because those would definitelynot be pleasant to eat as if the other parts are. As I am going through these stems, I am contemplating howmuch to actually use and I decided to not killeverybody in the room because this is the Curry ofLife, not the curry of death. I will settle with half abowl of dried Sichuan chilies.

Fun fact, a single one ofthese usually makes me sweat. This is going to be rather interesting. Now, over a high flame, foreshadowing, I'm gonna toast thesetopless chilies in a dry pan until smoky and dark. This not only removes the moisture but also wakes up the chilies'aromatic and spicy flavors just like how this curryis supposed to wake up an almost dead person.

Let's check back on thiscurry party, shall we? Hm, this party seemsto have reduced in size so it's time to add in a few more guests, the potatoes and the carrots. These usually come last to the party because if they go a little too early, they would have a breakdown. The water level seems a little too low so I am topping it off witha bit of extra beef stock.

But even though everybody'sin there having a good time, the party can't really start until the guest of honoris here, the curry, which in this recipe will take on the form of a curry roux block often come in packagessold at Asian supermarkets. I made sure I got thespiciest one out there. Says extra hot right there on the box. For the amount of food we have in the pot,.

I'm using half of the package or four of these littleblocks broken down. One way that I found useful isto put this in a giant ladle, lower it into the liquidand slowly mix it around to let the liquid absorb into the roux before mixing with the rest of the pot but once it's all out of the spoon, give it a good old mix andit's pretty much ready to go and you could totally stop at this point.

For a typical normal Japanese style curry. It would be prettydelicious with some rice but we're not doing normal today. This is the Curry of Life. Remember all those toastedchilies from before? Well, these are gonnago into a food processor and processed until theybecome a very fine powder. If you don't have anysensitive people in the room, make sure to uncover the lid.

And blow out all of thechili aromas into the room to make them sneeze and cough. Can't really tell butSteve, Nico and Kendall are now feeling theeffects of this chili wave that I have graciously bestowed upon them. This world will know pain. The curry party seemsto be going pretty good. Just gonna top this off withanother splash of beef stock 'cause the water seems to be a little low.

Giving it a stir to make sure that no bits are burnt on the bottom and to really achieve thatsuper dark black color, I'm using a whole entirepacket of black bean paste, also found at most Asiangrocery supermarkets. This paste is often madewith fermented wheat flour and soybeans and theflavor does seem to go well with the rest of the ingredients. This is often used in a lotof types of Asian cuisine.

I've personally seen my mom use this in a Chinese dish called jajangmyeon and Korean cooks use this ina dish called jajangmyeon. Same saying but different. In preparation for the amount of spice we're gonna bombard this thing, with I'm adding a prettyhealthy glug of honey. Sweetness does seem to helpease the spiciness sometimes. So I will actually addthree healthy glugs of honey.

Before giving it a stir and reluctantly but willingly adding in all of the toasted and blended chili powderfrom our food processor. Oh boy. Mm, delicious. Look at all those chili seedsjust swarming to the surface. Now, I could have added allsorts of different peppers, ghost peppers, scotch bonnet but I did actually want thisend product to be delicious.

And those peppers' flavorsmight have actually killed it. At this point, this curry is very dark but it isn't pitch black and I'm gonna be honest with you guys. I'm gonna cheat a little bit with a little splash ofblack gel food coloring. I could have probablyadded something really dark like squid ink or evenmore of that bean paste but I did want this to beedible and pretty delicious.

Because Rock Lee in the show does seem to really love the flavors. After another five minutes, there seems to be ablackout at this party. This looks like a pot of death. Delicious. Our midnight black curryis done, our rice is done so the last thing to dois to plate up and serve. Onto a dinner plate goes amassive heaping of white rice.

The ninjas in Naruto are soldiersand should be fed as such. Onto our heaping pile of rice goes a heaping ladle full ofour jet black Curry of Life. Hey, this looks kinda cool,almost like a yin yang sign with too much of the oneand not much of the other. I forgot which is which but I present to you ourversion of the Curry of Life from Naruto known tobe so spicy and strong that it can wake up an unconscious ninja.

With one single bite. I am awake but I will takea big bite nevertheless. Here we go. No turning back now. Hm. Hm. Oh. What you see here is alook of instant regret, contemplation of themeaning of life itself.

And all of the choices Ihave made in my last years. Sweet baby Jesus. The flavor is actually quite nice. It's like you're eating areally delicious Japanese curry and someone decides tobreak into your house with a flamethrower andhe won't stop flaming even though you tell him to and as time goes on, theflamethrower turns into jet fuel. Here's some milk that Kendallhas graciously provided me.

I'm good now. Oh, look, Nico has fallenunconscious on the battlefield. Whatever will wake him up? Maybe a spoonful of this Curry of Life. Let's see what happens. Oh and he's up and ready for battle after being knocked outby Andrew in a fistfight. Hey, it's Kendall. Kendall, Kendall seems to lovewhat is happening right now.

I really think curry is her favorite food. How about Steve? Steve, what do you think? Steve is shaking or nodding his head. An eye is twitching. I'm not sure what is goingon but nah, he's good. He was playing with us thewhole time, you silly goose. Oh, Andrew. Andrew, what do you thinkabout this Curry of Life?.

Okay, he's inhaling. He's exhaling. The hat has now left the building. Yep, I think he likes it. – Thanks again to Squarespace for sponsoring today's episode. They've been a great partner in supporting the Babish culinary universe and bringing my websites to life.

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