Lord of the Rings - Foraged Herb & Rabbit Stew

Sam busied himself with his pans. “What a hobbit needs with coney,” he said to himself, “is some herbs and roots, especially taters. Herbs we can manage, seemingly.”

“Gollum!” he called softly. “I want some herbs." Gollum’s head peeped out of the fern, but his looks were neither helpful nor friendly. “A few bay-leaves, some thyme and sage, will do -- before the water boils,” said Sam.

“No!” said Gollum. “Sméagol is not please. And Sméagol doesn’t like smelly leaves. He doesn’t eat grasses or roots, no precious, not till he’s starving or very sick, poor Sméagol.”

“Smjagol’ll get into real true hot water, when this water boils, if he don’t do as he’s asked,” growled Sam. “Sam’ll put his head in it, yes precious. And I’d make him look for turnips and carrots, and taters too, if it was the time o’ the year.”

- "Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit," The Two Towers

Finally back around forest greenery, Sam and Gollum foraging for ingredients and cooking this stew takes up about half of this chapter from The Two Towers, appropriately named "Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit." It makes for a fun cooking challenge: can we develop a tasty recipe with only the ingredients the hobbits would have had on their journey to Mordor?

I did take a couple of liberties - since it is indeed the time of year here, I included the turnips, carrots and "taters" that Sam longed for. I also assumed that the hobbits might be carrying a few cooking supplies, like cooking oil, salt, pepper, and - perhaps most optimistically - chicken bouillon cubes. Finally, I thickened the stew with flour. Wandering hobbits would have had access to lembas bread, however I had to make do with what I had.

While the origins of this recipe are fantastical, this main course wouldn't be out of place at a Sunday night dinner. The root vegetables and woodsy herb flavors are perfect for a fall night.

Ingredients

House Baratheon Venison Meat Loaf & Mustard Sauce

The visitors poured through the castle gates in a river of gold and silver and polished steel, three hundred strong, a pride of bannermen and knights, of sworn swords and freeriders. Over their heads a dozen golden banners whipped back and forth in the northern wind, emblazoned with the crowned stag of Baratheon.

- Eddard I, A Game of Thrones

This venison dish was served as the Baratheon course for my Season 7 Game of Thrones party. Each of the nine courses was inspired by the heraldry of one of the Great Houses of Westeros. Game meats feature heavily in Westeros feasts, and Robert Baratheon was particularly fond of hunting, so it seemed fitting to represent the Baratheon crowned stag with venison.

Even though deer roam wild around my neighborhood, the only venison my local grocer stocks is ground. For last year's Game of Thrones party,  I incorporated ground venison into a Highgarden-themed venison stew, which was delicious. This year I decided to mix it up a bit, and make a meatloaf. Meatloaf can be a disappointing venture, sometimes turning out too dry or bland. Fortunately, J. Kenji Lopez-Alt has done some very thorough research on perfecting meatloaf so I started with that recipe. Because venison can be so lean, rather than replacing the beef with venison at a 1:1 ratio, I increased the quantity of pork slightly and increased the amount of gelatin. The texture turned out to be just about perfect.

I contrasted the dark brown of the meatloaf with a golden mustard cream sauce. I wouldn't have immediately thought to pair mustard and venison together, however I'd tried the combination this summer at Le Square in Montreal and found it delicious.

Ingredients

House Tully Trout and Rainbow Carrots

From the sandstone walls of the castle, soldiers and servants shouted down her name, and Robb's, and "Winterfell!" From every rampart waved the banner of House Tully: a leaping trout, silver, against a rippling blue-and-red field. It was a stirring sight, yet it did not lift her heart. She wondered if indeed her heart would ever lift again. Oh, Ned …

- Catelyn XI, A Game of Thrones

This fish dish served as the seafood course for my Season 7 Game of Thrones Feast. Each of the courses were designed to look like the banners of one of the Great Houses of Westeros. 

The Tully course seemed at first to be straightforward. There's a trout on the banner, so naturally a trout should be the centerpiece of the dish, right? A culinary representation of the Tully colors, red and blue, proved a little more tricky. There are not a lot of blue foods, and even fewer that I'd want to pair with fish. (A savory blueberry sauce, perhaps?) Since butterfly pea blossoms make an appearance in the poultry course, I decided to go with blue carrots for with the fish. I mixed these with red carrots, which my local grocery store had just started stocking.

I precooked the carrots to soften them so they can roast alongside the fish. I steamed the carrots rather than boiling them since the color leaches out easily and I wanted to retain as much blue as possible. In general, be careful to keep the blue carrots away from anything you don't want to be blue - that includes red carrots and favorite white tea towels.

The trout recipe is adapted from Inn At The Crossroad's Trout Wrapped In Bacon - also, appropriately, a Riverlands meal. I first made this a few years ago and haven't cooked trout any other way since. I stopped including the bacon long ago since I find it doesn't add much, and adapted a few other elements along the way. 

Ingredients

House Arryn Chicken with Butterfly Pea Blossom Sauce

"The dwarf had been whetting the edge of his axe and making some mordant jest when Bronn spotted the banner the riders carried before them, the moon-and-falcon of House Arryn, sky-blue and white. Catelyn had never seen a more welcome sight."

- Catelyn VI, A Game of Thrones

I made this Vale-themed entree for my Game of Thrones Season 7 Party. For each course, I tried to craft a dish that both visually and thematically represented one of the Great Houses of Westeros. House Arryn was one of the more challenging sigils to translate into something edible. Blue is not a color you eat often (although I've cooked blue food a remarkable number of times). I considered doing something like a blueberry cheese cake, but even blueberries are more purple than blue. I wanted to incorporate the falcon imagery into the dish too, which suggested some sort of fowl course.

My mindless browsing of reddit's mead forum fortuitously showed me the power of butterfly pea blossoms, which mead makers use to naturally dye their brews a beautiful bright blue. I played around with it for a bit to figure out the best way to incorporate this into a savory sauce. 

The color is strong, but pH sensitive - acid like lemon juice will turn the dye purple. Mixing the tea from the flowers into an opaque white medium helps make the vibrant color more apparent. A cream sauce seemed like a good starting point. I tried making a mushroom cream sauce, but the grey of the mushroom muddied the sky blue of the blossoms to produce a rather unappetizing indigo mess. I concluded I needed an even whiter base sauce.

I decided to go with a roasted garlic sauce. The blossoms themselves have a very mild vegetable flavor, so roasted garlic rounds out the sauce nicely by packing a lot of flavor without changing the color much. I added in a roux to thicken the roasted garlic and cream sauce. The result was very tasty, and, importantly, very blue.

For the falcon part of the sigil, I went with chicken. Because I was prepping and serving nine different courses at my Game of Thrones dinner party, I wanted a way of cooking the chicken that required the least possible oven space and monitoring. I therefore chose to sous-vide the chicken, and quickly browned the chicken in a skillet before serving.

The sauce can easily be adapted for whatever method of cooking chicken you like best, or even alternative protein sources! I had a few vegetarian guests over, and I served the sauce with cloud eggs. Eggs match the avian theme of the Arryn sigil, while clouds are a nod towards the Eyrie's high perch. 

Ingredients

Princess Carolyn's "Save The Day" Mushroom Risotto

Recently-Hired-Waitress: "[The food critic] still wants her mushroom risotto."

Recently-Promoted-Chef: "I don't know how to make risotto."

Princess Carolyn: "I know how."

- "Best Thing That Ever Happened," BoJack Horseman

It's #Nyanuary over at Fandom Foodies so I thought I would celebrate with the fictional anthropomorphic cat I perhaps identify with the most, Princess Carolyn from BoJack Horseman. (I also give myself "you are now a robot" pep-talks!)

Marsh-wiggle Eel Stew

“I’m trying to catch a few eels to make an eel stew for our dinner,” said Puddleglum. “Though I shouldn’t wonder if I didn’t get anything. And you won’t like them much if I do.”

- The Silver Chair, by C.S. Lewis

The Chronicles of Narnia were the first chapter books my father read to me as bed-time stories. The Silver Chair was my favorite as a kid - due entirely, I think, to my father's excellent voice impressions of Puddleglum the Marsh-wiggle. When Fandom Foodies announced their  December theme would be Aslan's Feast, Puddleglum's freshly-caught fishy fare was the first thing that came to my mind!

When developing the recipe for Marsh-wiggle Eel Stew, I drew inspiration from the Flemish stew-like eel entree Paling in 't Groen, which is essentially eel simmered in a white wine sauce flavored with an assortment of fresh herbs. However, eels stewed in fresh herbs is a tradition reaching far back; it appears in the 14th century recipe book Forme of Cury as well as in the 1861 cookbook The Housekeeper's Encyclopedia. This recipe captures the feel of Eustace and Jill's meal with the marsh-wiggle well - the herbs and shallot could all be gathered from along the river bank where Puddleglum catches the eels.

Dota 2 Sheepstick Lamb Kabobs

Turns a target unit into a harmless critter for 3.5 seconds.

- Dota 2 item description text for Scythe of Vyse

In the words of my friend (imagine, if you can, that these words are being said through a mouthful of lamb), "Oh, I get it, sheepstick because it's sheep on a stick." As far as Dota 2 food puns go (and I've cooked many), this one was pretty tasty.

Game of Thrones Venison, Beer & Barley Stew

“The war had not touched the fabled bounty of Highgarden. While singers sang & tumblers tumbled, they began with pears poached in wine, and went onto tiny savory fish rolled in salt and cooked crisp, and capons stuffed with onions and mushrooms. There were great loaves of brown bread, mounds of turnips and sweetcorn and pease, immense hams and roast geese and trenchers dripping full of venison stewed with beer and barley.”

– A Clash of Kings

The venison stew was one of the dishes I was most looking forward to making for my Highgarden-themed Game of Thrones season 6 finale dinner, which was based on the above passage from A Clash of Kings. I haven’t had a good excuse to cook venison before, and incorporating trenchers seemed fun and memorable.