The Ultimate Final Fantasy XIV Cookbook: Release Day

It is release day for The Ultimate Final Fantasy XIV Cookbook: The Essential Culinarian Guide to Hydaelyn. I figured this would be the perfect time to write a post about the book, my process, and general nonsense I’m up to in Final Fantasy XIV. I am really excited that this book is out and I hope you all enjoy the recipes I’ve come up with.

Before I go into all the details about the book, I’ll talk a bit about what I have been up to in the game. This past month, I finally finished my quest to get the Ozma mount from Baldesion Arsenal. After finishing that up, I dove into unlocking all the spells for Blue Mage, maybe in hopes of eventually getting the Morbol mount.

Last thing I’ve been working on is slowly making my way through the current extreme trials. My friends and I have successfully done The Dancing Plague Ex, The Crown of the Immaculate Ex, The Dying Gasp Ex, and Cinder Drift Ex. Honestly, I wasn’t planning on ever doing the more current difficult content, but I’ve been having a lot of fun doing these with my friends. I know a lot of them are a bit easier than when they came out. I will not be attempting Eden 12 Savage anytime soon.

Now time to dive into the book. Let us start with a high level view of the book:

Publication Date: November 16, 2021
Publisher: Insight Editions
Game Publisher: Square Enix
Number of Pages: 192
Number of Recipes: 78
My Contributions: Recipe Selection & Development, Photography, and Lore Text Writing

My Process

Out of all my cookbooks, this project was the easiest one for me to put together. I’ve been playing FFXIV for a pretty long time now and had a few recipes on the site prior to working on this project. Many of those recipes have been updated and adapted into the book, while the remaining recipes that didn’t make the cut will be returning to the site in the near future (this includes the FFXV recipes that many of you have been asking about).

The hardest part of this project was deciding which recipes to include in the book. There were a lot of options, but I couldn’t include everything. I wanted to be sure that all the expansions and areas were well represented and kept a spreadsheet in the planning phase to be sure I met that goal. I still have it, and I’m a little sad about a few of the items that didn’t make the list. There is a lot of food in this game!

While working on the recipe list, I was also working back and forth with the Insight and the Square Enix team about how to structure the book. We all agreed that highlighting the different regions in the game was a wonderful way to categorize and fit lore bits to each recipe. The voice of the book was the part that required a lot of discussion. I pitched a few ideas, but there was a request to keep important story characters out of the role of the narrator. Eventually, we all landed on our wonderful Namazu and Moogle duo, Gyohan and Mogria, to lead us through the recipes.

With the help of my husband, Jeff, we worked on developing these characters and bringing them to life. We would have a lot of writing sessions coming up with ideas about how to bring each character to life. Gyohan fits the bill of a Namazu: helpful and optimistic, but a little bit clumsy and naive. Thankfully, he’s balanced by his teammate Mogria, a moogle that would rather spend her time keeping up with the latest news about the Warrior of Light than doing anything helpful. But she’s excited to travel the world and bring these recipes to life, so she’s always there to lend a hand or “permanently borrow” an ingredient when needed. I do hope you all enjoy the recipe lore entries as much as we did writing them. 

While we were working on the writing for lore, I began working on the recipes of the game. I tried to include ingredients that matched those found in the game. There are a handful that I took the liberty to adjust into something that would enhance the recipe. I know, many of you were hoping for peppermint on your pizza. But I find mint to be an overpowering ingredient. Feel free to replace the basil for mint if you are feeling frisky!

After that, it was all photography and making sure the photographs looked like they would come out of somewhere in FFXIV. Even though this project was a pretty rushed one (I did all this in about 2 months), I loved every moment of it.

Are there Vegan, Vegetarian, Gluten Free, etc recipes in the book?

Yes! In the very back of the book, there is a nice chart that calls out which recipes are vegan, vegetarian, and gluten-free. There is also a note about adjusting the recipes in the book to adapt them to your dietary needs. As I always say, feel free to adapt recipes to make them work for you.

My Favorite Recipes

I like a lot of the recipes in this book. Several of the recipes have made it into my normal meal rotation. First, the Pizza (pg 118) recipe in this book has become my go-to for making homemade pizza. I think one of the nice things with this recipe is you can put any of your favorite pizza toppings and it will work perfectly. The Papanasi (pg 162) is a doughnut recipe that I had no idea about before playing FFXIV. These doughnuts use ricotta cheese and are topped with sour cream and jam. These are so wonderful and honestly I don’t know why I haven’t made them in a while. 

I think lotus root is underrated and I was happy to highlight it in the Steppe Salad (pg 60). This recipe is super easy to put together. I loved this recipe so much that I made sure it made an appearance on the cover. Finally, the Farmer’s Breakfast (pg 24) is my favorite breakfast recipe in the book. I love any excuse to make this recipe. I just finished the batch I made last week on stream and it was still tasty.

Most Difficult Recipes

First, let’s talk about the most difficult recipe in the book. That would be The Minstrel’s Ballad: Almond Cream Croissants (pg 20). This was a recipe that got added to the book near the back half of the project. I thought it would be a nice touch to have at least one recipe with the difficulty of either Extreme or Savage. I also wanted to have a recipe that called out the Wandering Minstrel. After taking a look at all the recipes in the book, the Almond Cream Croissants (pg 18) were the perfect candidate to be made Extreme. 

Instead of using premade croissants, it goes through the 2 day process of making homemade croissants. Make sure when you make this recipe that you use good, high quality butter. Butter is a major player when making croissants. Don’t cheap out on this. Biggest tip with doing this recipe is to read the instructions a few times before you dive into it and make sure your butter is chilled. If the butter starts to get too warm while you are working with the dough, pop it in the refrigerator to rest before continuing with it.

Recipe That Gave Me The Most Trouble

I was very confused, and honestly shocked, that the recipe I had to attempt the most was the Honey Muffins (pg 71). This was one of the first recipes I started with and, honestly, assumed I’d make it once and nail it. I think I made these 5 times until I was happy with the results. The end result is a very easy recipe to put together. One of the major issues was I was overmixing the batter and the honey flavor wasn’t really standing out. After several attempts, I finally hit the right balance of honey flavor and texture to call these muffins cookbook ready.

Level 1 Culinarians: Where to Start?

If you are a sprout in the kitchen, I’m sure you are wondering which recipes would help you level up your culinarian skills. I’ll go ahead and give you a recommendation from each section to give you a variety of options.

Any of the drinks are beginner friendly if you are looking for an easy starting point.

For breakfast, I would recommend trying either the Farmer’s Breakfast (pg 24) or Wildwood Scrambled Eggs (pg 38). Both of these recipes are a great way to start learning how to cook eggs for breakfast. They are both simple and the focus on them is preparing the vegetables (or meat) that are a part of these dishes. 

In the appetizer section, I would start with the Popoto Salad (pg 56). There are a handful of cooking methods you will be using to make this dish (roasting, boiling, and mixing). This is a great recipe that can be prepared ahead of time and accompanies main dishes wonderfully.

Bread recipes can be pretty daunting to a new cook. The Knight’s Bread (pg 74) is a great way to try and make your first loaf of bread. This one does require you to let the dough rest overnight, but you don’t need to do a lot of manual work to get this bread to work. I think this could be the recipe that inspires you to look into making more bread in your kitchen.

For entrees, there are a lot of really great options for starting culinarians. The easiest would be either the Boscaiola (pg 102) or Creamy Salmon Pasta (pg 104). Pasta is a great way to get comfortable with cooking. These two recipes do require a decent amount of ingredients, but the work you have to do to get everything put together is not too difficult. 

Side dishes are always the unsung heroes of the dinner table. Personally, I always load up on the sides over the main proteins when it comes to big feast. The Ratatouille (pg 140) is a great starter recipe. The most work you have to do is cutting the vegetables. The oven does the rest of the work. 

Finally, I’m gonna cover dessert. A lot of people new to the kitchen will try to dive into baking. Baking is difficult and, a lot of the time, does not allow for wiggle room unless you’ve been baking for a while. If you want to dip your toes into baking, the Coffee Biscuits (pg 156) are a perfect option. These do not require you to do anything too fancy to achieve delicious results.

Thank You

First, a really big thank you to both Insight Editions and Square Enix for giving me the opportunity to work on this project. I was able to work on a game that I adore so much and contribute to its world. It really means a lot to me. Thank you to those I worked with directly on this project. I think we truly made a wonderful cookbook together. This book is one of the most gorgeous books I’ve worked on to date!

Thank you to my husband, Jeff, for all the help he provides with these projects. He really helped develop the voices of Gyohan and Mogria. He also was an honest critic when it came to the recipes and helped me decide if they were good enough to make it in the book. Without him, these cookbooks wouldn’t be as amazing as they are. Kanji (my corgi) also deserves a shout out. During the whole process, he was keeping an eye on me in the kitchen as I worked. It is nice to have his little fluffy butt in the kitchen supervising.

Thank you to my agent, Kate McKean. You make my life so much easier with each of these projects and I’m happy for all the work you do! Without you, I would be getting confused reading all the contract legal speak.

Big thank you to my friends Nick and Kevin that helped make sure all the information we were putting into the book was accurate. There is so much content in Final Fantasy XIV and both of your excellent memories of the games story and locations helped a ton. I owe you two a meal cooked from this book.

Another shout out to all my friends that played the game with me and were always patient with me taking notes of food. Many of you had no idea what I was working on, but the times we’ve spent in FFXIV have been so great.

Finally, thank you to everyone who has supported me and the blog. All of you visiting the blog, joining me on streams, liking my content on social media, and everyone cooking my recipes brings a lot of joy in my life. Without you all, I would not have continued my journey in food found in video games. It has been such a fun adventure and who knows what we have in store next. 

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