Spicy Breakfast Muffins with Strawberries from The Wheel of Time

When it came, breakfast consisted of spicy muffins -- wrapped in a white cloth and still warm, and pleasant even so -- yellow pears, blue grapes that looked a bit wizened, and some sort of red things that the serving girl called strawberries, though they looked like no berry that Nynaeve had ever seen. They certainly did not taste anything like straw, especially with clotted cream spooned on top. Elayne claimed to have heard of them, but then she would. (...) It made a refreshing morning meal.

- Chapter 16, The Fires of Heaven (Book 5 of The Wheel of Time) by Robert Jordan

I love this Wheel of Time food vignette for Nynaeve's pragmatic assessment of strawberries and her little mental dig at Elayne. These moments are why Nynaeve is my favorite character. 

The idea of serving strawberries with some sort of spicy muffin also intrigued me. What sort of muffin is spicy?

Frankly, the Two Rivers crew seem to think any food made outside their home turf is spicy!

• Rand's first encounter with Cairhienin food nearly takes his breath away ("Rand took a hesitant mouthful, and almost gasped. It tasted just as it smelled, sweet and sharp together, the pork crisp on the outside and tender inside, a dozen different flavors, spices, all blending and contrasting. It tasted like nothing he had ever put in his mouth before. It tasted wonderful." Chapter 20, The Great Hunt). 
• While with the Aiel, Mat dines on “goat stew and a thick yellow mush that was spicier than it looked” (Chapter 37, The Shadow Rising), and Rand has a "dark spicy stew of goat with chopped peppers" (Chapter 49, The Shadow Rising). 
• While traveling with Valan Luca's show, Mat finds some food is so packed with spice that it is inedible. ("The harsh faced woman put so many spices into everything she prepared that it was all inedible in Mat’s estimation yet Luca always gobbled down whatever she set in front of him as if it were a feast. He must have a leather tongue." Chapter 6, Knife of Dreams)

So let's take it with a healthy grain of salt when Nynaeve thinks her breakfast muffins are spicy. Perhaps rather than a capsaicin sort of heat, these muffins are more of a gingerbread-y flavor-packed spicy.

Now what sort of muffin would Nynaeve encounter in Randland? Most of the food in The Wheel of Time would have been available in the medieval Old World. There are some exceptions - for example, the Seanchan have coffee ("darker and more bitter than tea" - A Crown of Swords), and the Aiel have corn and tomatoes ("a dish of bright yellow kernels and bits of pulpy red that Avienda called zemai or t'mat" - The Shadow Rising). But these cultures are particularly foreign, and I think these almost incongruously New World foods help to make the Aiel and the Seanchan seem more alien. This particular breakfast takes place in Amadicia, which is relatively familiar to the protagonists, and is likely more inspired by medieval Europe. 

Historically, the New World and the Old World developed different sorts of muffins. What we would recognize today as a muffin - a quick bread baked in small cups - is an American invention. On the other side of the pond, the muffin instead referenced a yeasted bread fried in a pan - the sort of thing we now call an English muffin. I think Amadician muffins are therefore probably some sort of spicy English muffin. 

To make Muffins:

Take two quarts of warm water, two spoonfuls of yeast, three pounds of flower; beat it well half an hour, and let it stand an hour or two; bake them on an iron bake-stove, (rub it well over with mutton-suet, as often as they are to be laid on) as soon as they begin to colour, turn them; when coloured on both sides they are baked enough.

- "The Lady's Assistant for Regulating and Supplying Her table" by Charlotte Mason (1777) [Archive link]

For historical inspiration, I drew from the oldest recipe I could find. This recipe was almost at the end of a 18th century British recipe book, squeezed between instructions for pineapple brandy and for "French rolls." 

For my first attempt at recreating this recipe, I faithfully followed the instructions (sizing down to make just a dozen muffins or so), and beat the mixture for a half hour by hand. I can therefore tell you with certainty that you can achieve the same results by using a hand mixer for just 5 minutes. Both these trials produced muffins with fantastic nooks and crannies, but they were also rather flat.

In my third attempt, I reduced the water content slightly. The batter became thicker (so I was super grateful for the invention of the electric mixer), which meant the muffins spread less when added to the pan. The resulting muffins were fluffier, but still with beautiful nooks and crannies, a crunchy exterior and a chewy inside.

Look at those nooks and crannies. Gorgeous.

Happy with the 18th century muffins, I next moved onto the "spicy" part of the descriptor. Fortunately, The Lady's Assistant had some inspiration for me!

Kitchen Pepper.

One ounce of ginger; pepper, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg, half an ounce each; six ounces of salt: mix this well, keep it dry. It is a great addition to all brown sauces.

- "The Lady's Assistant for Regulating and Supplying Her table" by Charlotte Mason (1777) 

I added a few teaspoons of this mixture to my muffin recipe, and the results were fantastic. The spices complement the fruity sweetness of the strawberries and the rich creaminess of the clotted cream perfectly. I think Nynaeve would have been very satisfied with this breakfast.

Ingredients

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 Targaryen Madness or Greatness Chocolate Truffles

King Jaehaerys once told me that madness and greatness are two sides of the same coin. Every time a new Targaryen is born, he said, the gods toss the coin in the air and the world holds its breath to see how it will land.

- Daenerys VI, A Storm of Swords

This chocolate surprise was the final course in my Season 7 Game of Thrones party, in which I themed each of the courses around a family of Westeros. The Targaryen family's disposition to mad rulers like the Mad King and legendary monarchs like Aegon the Conqueror is an interesting part of Westerosi lore. While the stories and the quote above make it out to be an either/or phenomenon, I wonder if some of the Targaryens are a little of both? Either way, I wanted to represent this dichotomy in the Targaryen course.

I went with chocolate truffles, which are easy to make, and more importantly, easy to make look the same from the outside while secretly containing a flavor on the inside.  For the "greatness" of the Targaryens, I went with lavender - a soothing flavor, as well as the hereditary Targaryen eye color. For the "madness" of the Targaryens, I went with cayenne pepper and cinnamon - a surprising but still appetizing flavor, evocative of the "fire" portion of the "fire and blood" Targaryen words.

I served the chocolates in tiny gift boxes decorated with the Targaryen emblem, and a miniature scroll with a quote about the Targaryens.

Ingredients

House Lannister Wine and Cheesecake

"Podrick Payne edged his gelding closer. He was carrying the royal standard, Joffrey's great stag-and-lion, and struggling with its weight. Bronn bore Tyrion's own banner, the lion of Lannister gold on crimson."

- Tyrion V, A Storm of Swords

This decadent dessert was served as the dessert course for my Game of Thrones Season 7 party. Each of these courses was designed to look like the sigil for one of the Great Houses of Westeros. I also tried to capture some of the personality of the houses. Lannisters represent themselves with a gold lion on a field of crimson, but they are also recognizable for their prominent display of their considerable wealth. Many of the Lannisters - or at least Tyrion and Cersei - are particularly fond of wine. A rich dessert that incorporated wine therefore seemed fitting, so I went with Shinee's "Cheesecake Bars with Wine Gelée." I then decorated each little cheesecake bar with a golden lion made from stenciled Lustre Dust.

Lustre Dust is a fantastic ingredient to have up your sleeve for kicking your recipes up a notch. Available in many different colors, it is edible glitter. While it is edible, I am not sure if it is digestible. Do Lannisters shit gold? You'll find out! 

Ingredients

House Tyrell Artichoke Bud Salad

Near all the chivalry of the south had come to Renly's call, it seemed. The golden rose of Highgarden was seen everywhere: sewn on the right breast of armsmen and servants, flapping and fluttering from the green silk banners that adorned lance and pike, painted upon the shields hung outside the pavilions of the sons and brothers and cousins and uncles of House Tyrell.

- Catelyn II, A Clash of Kings

This salad was served at my Game of Thrones Season 7 party. At this dinner, I served 9 courses, each designed to look like the heraldry for one of the Westerosi Great Houses. House Tyrell, with their golden rose on a field of green was an obvious choice for the salad course.

I thought about a few ways to make a rose shape. I'd previously made apple roses pastries, however there is an unfortunate dearth of Westeros sigils that honor vegetables and I wanted to at least attempt to create a balanced meal. Vegetables cut in the shape of flowers seemed either too cutesy or too finicky. In the end, I went with an edible flower - the artichoke.

Although closer to green than to the desired golden hue to begin with, the yellow tones become stronger once roasted. I flavored the artichokes with lemon, olive oil and garlic, and kept the "field of green" field greens simple. 

Ingredients

House Stark Direwolf Pies

"It was too far to make out the banners clearly, but even through the drifting fog she could see that they were white, with a dark smudge in their center that could only be the direwolf of Stark, grey upon its icy field. When she saw it with her own eyes, Catelyn reined up her horse and bowed her head in thanks."

- Catelyn VIII, A Game of Thrones

This adorable mini personal pie was the meat course of my Season 7 Game of Thrones Party. For this event, I made each course resemble the banners of one of the Great Houses of Westeros. For some Houses, like Tully or Baratheon, I could serve the actual emblem. This approach was a dead end for House Stark, since wolfmeat is not widely available...

I instead chose to recreate the direwolf shape. I ordered a Stark cookie cutter from Etsy however USPS lost it and it didn't arrive on time! As a back-up plan, I ordered a full-sized wolf (well, coyote) cookie cutter from Amazon and used just the head portion to cut the dough.

Because wolves are carnivores, it seemed appropriate to make the Stark course a meat course, so I used my cookie cutter to shape a pie crust for a meat pie. I'd previously made Inn At The Crossroads' Beef and Bacon pie and liked it; the dried fruits are an unusual touch that tastes medieval. I can imagine much of the fare at Winterfell incorporating preserved fruits and vegetables due to its short growing season, so it seemed like a great starting point for a recipe. I made a few changes to the original medieval-inspired recipe. For example, soy sauce is an excellent way to add depth to a recipe but wouldn't have been available to medieval Britons.

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 Greyjoy Squid in its Ink

"Above the Sea Tower snapped his father's banner. The Myraham was too far off for Theon to see more than the cloth itself, but he knew the device it bore: the golden kraken of House Greyjoy, arms writhing and reaching against a black field. The banner streamed from an iron mast, shivering and twisting as the wind gusted, like a bird struggling to take flight."

 - Theon I, A Clash of Kings

This Iron Island appetizer was conceived for my Game of Thrones Season 7 Party. For this menu, I served nine courses, each inspired by one of the Great Houses. This course was one of the first that I finalized; when something so obviously edible as the Greyjoy's squid (well, Kraken...) is on the banner, the choice is easy!

The Greyjoy colors are black and gold, which also translate straightforwardly into a squid-based dish. Raw squid like you might encounter is sushi is an off-white color, but in its deep-fried state - perhaps more commonly known as calamari - the breading lends the squid the golden hue I desired. While black food is not particularly common, one of the blackest foods just happens to be perfectly thematic: squid ink!

Squid ink has a salty and faintly marine flavor without being strongly fishy. I was able to find it at my local grocery store in the frozen fish section, but it is also available on Amazon and at specialty fish shops. The color is powerful - I bought more than I needed to color the sauce appropriately.

For the rest of the sauce, I chose to keep it simple. I added lemon juice, which I really like with calamari. I shied away from using a roux to thicken the squid sauce; I didn't want to wind up with a grey sauce. Instead, I used gelatin to thicken the sauce. Gelatin is easy to work with, won't alter the color of the sauce, and adds a rich mouthfeel.

The presentation of the dish is very striking, and certainly evocative of the Greyjoy banners flying in the iron isles.

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

Dota 2 The International 7 Viewing Party

"The Echo Slam is there from Gh, the Omnislash - the damage output is too big! With the scythe, Sccc is gone for 2 minutes! The chain frost is bouncing back, Kaka is trying to hide himself but right now it's all Liquid, Liquid, LIQUID! They have taken down four,  you'll get the buyback from the Venomancer. Gh with the force staff - he won't even die for this! Liquid lose nothing but take everything from Newbee!"

- TI7 Grand Finals, Game 3

Not going to lie, I'd been looking forward to TI7 pretty much since TI6 ended. Not just for the great games (which were awesome), but because I think making dota 2 themed food is really fun, and it's nice to have friends understand what my weird-looking desserts are supposed to be. (Check out my TI5 and TI6 posts!)

My favorite from this year ended up being the Lotus Orbs, which are little puff pastry rolls with apple and cherry.  (Get the recipe here!)

The most time consuming dish was definitely the Monkey King Mischief Cupcakes, but I loved how these turned out! I made vanilla cupcakes topped with green vanilla buttercream for the radiant side of the map, and chocolate cupcakes topped with chocolate buttercream frosting for the dire side of the map. I topped them with little edible Monkey King disguises - clarities, couriers, iron branches and trees. Half of the cupcakes are secretly stuffed with banana ganache - if you eat a banana stuffed cupcake, congratulations, you found Monkey King!! (If you're up for the challenge, I have a somewhat more detailed set of instructions and more photos here!)

Dota 2 Monkey King Mischief Cupcakes

"But the Monkey King was born for mischief...and offending the gods never gets old."

- Monkey King hero bio, Dota 2

"Does that clarity look suspicious to you?"

Don't you hate those games where you're chasing down the enemy Monkey King who is at 100 HP, you turn the corner, and then he's gone? Is he on top of that tree? Is he the tree?

For the Dota 2 players who have spent far too long trying to get flying vision of Monkey King, and for the Monkey King spammers who love chilling out in iron branch form for the fun of it, these cupcakes are for you.



Each of these cupcakes is topped with an edible version of some sort of Monkey King mischief disguise: a hard candy clarity, a chocolate and pretzel tree, or fondant couriers and iron branches. But how do you know which of these are just innocent iron branches abandoned on the ground, and which are actually Monkey King in sneaky disguise?

Half the cupcakes are secretly stuffed with banana ganache.

Which was delicious. I was unlucky enough that neither of the two cupcakes I ate during my TI7 Grand Finals viewing party contained a Monkey King filling, but as the chef I got to lick the bowl after stuffing the cupcakes, at least. I suppose I could have stuffed all the cupcakes, but I think that would have defeated the purpose of the cupcake.

We arranged the cupcakes in the shape of the Dota 2 map. Half the cupcakes are vanilla topped with green buttercream frosting. The other half are chocolate cupcakes topped with chocolate buttercream frosting.

Assembling the Cupcakes

Dota 2 Chocolate Pretzel Wards

"A form of half-sentient plant, often cultivated by apprentice wizards."
- Dota 2 flavor text

Full disclosure, this is my third attempt at making something that looks like observers and sentries. For the fifth Dota 2 The International (TI5) tournament, I made yellow and blue cake pops, with little eye balls. They were pretty cute, but - confession - I discovered I don't actually like cake pops. I found them a little too sweet, especially since my Dota 2 spread already included a bunch of sweets that I thought tasted better and more closely resembled the in-game item, like the lotus orb apple pastries and the aghanim's scepter madeleines. 

For the sixth The International (TI6) I tried to go healthier. I candy-coated apples in yellow and blue. Again, the aesthetic was sort of eyeball-on-a-stick, which isn't all that accurate for most ward cosmetics. The apples probably had better nutritional content, but I found it difficult to get a sufficiently bright candy coating, so I think they looked more like eyeballs-on-an-apple than proper wards. 

This year, I decided to throw out the USDA's nutrition guidelines. I wanted to mimic the default ward cosmetics with multiple little yellow or blue eyeballs on a single twisty sort of branch. I didn't want them to be too finicky since I had a few other time-consuming Dota 2 food projects to work on, so I came up with these chocolate and pretzel wards. M&Ms are about the right size and color, taking out a lot of the work from my previous attempts. Also, as far as I can tell from streaming Sumail and Arteezy, Eminems are very appropriate for Dota 2. 

I'm really pleased with how these turned out. They are super quick to put together and look quite recognizable! To really get the wizened wood effect, I probably should have used milk chocolate instead, but I think dark chocolate is so much tastier! 

Ingredients

Dota 2 Lotus Orb Apple Pastries

"The jewel at its center still reflects a pale image of its creator."

- Flavor text from Dota 2 item descriptions

This imagining of an edible lotus orb is actually my second attempt. Last year I made "Lotus Root Orbs," which were little spheres made out of lotus roots. They were finicky, and not particularly tasty, but I thought the name was pretty funny (and I love creating pun-based foods).

For this year's The International, I decided to go with an approach more similar to the Magic Sticks or the Aghanim's Scepters, where the dish in question looks visually like the in-game Dota 2 item. Lotus Orbs appear to be white petals surrounding a shiny pink core. I toyed around with a couple of ways to make edible flower structures - I even considered savory lotus orbs made from onion flowers. I wanted an option that would be relatively easy to serve at a buffet-style snack table over the course of a 3-6 hour Grand Finals series, and that would consistently produce an attractive dish without being too finicky. In the end, this laundry list of criteria turned out to be best served by apple roses.

If you've ever watched a recipe gif, you've probably seen one for apple roses. There's good reason for their popularity - they look impressive, they're easy to make, and they only require a handful of ingredients. To turn these into lotus orbs, I dusted the "petals" with powder sugar to lighten the petals and added maraschino cherries to the center. With the added pop of color, I think the resulting dish actually looks more adorable than your run-of-the-mill apple roses, and is a pretty good match for a Lotus Orb. And is, of course, delicious.

Lotus Orbs may just be a situational item for most heroes, but I think these are core for any Dota 2 menu.

Ingredients

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.

Clue-Themed Cocktail Party

"It was Ms Scarlett, in The Lounge, with The Candlestick"

I hosted a Clue-themed cocktail party for my birthday this autumn. I decorated my apartment with murder weapons and signs denoting murder locations, and I served one appetizer or dessert and one cocktail for each of the six murder suspects in the classic board game.

Why a Clue-themed party, you ask? Well, other than having fond childhood memories of sitting around the kitchen table, sleuthing with my family, I was at a thrift store and I happened to find a truly ostentatious candlestick (it's even customizable! This is actually only about two-thirds its maximum size!).

Currently taking suggestions for more theme parties where I can use this fabulous candlestick

Colonel Mustard's Charcuterie & Mostarda

I threw a Clue-themed cocktail party, with one food item and one drink themed around each of the six murder suspects from the boardgame. Colonel Mustard lends himself exceptionally well to food items (although was a rather more unusual muse for cocktails). I went with a selection of mustards, mostarda (an Italian fruit and mustard condiment), and a variety of charcuterie.

Mr Green's Basil Zucchini Spirals

For my Clue-themed cocktail party, I based one appetizer or dessert and one cocktail around each of the six murder suspects in the board game. Mr Green's appetizer was an easy choice - I needed something vegetable-based to complement the other heavier dishes like Mrs Peacock's Party Fowl Crostinis, and I love the flavor combination of basil and zucchini!

Dota 2 The International 6 Viewing Party

I had so much fun making Dota 2 snacks for The International 5 last year, so I had many months of anticipation building up for the TI6 finals (not least because of the amazing games in the preceding two weeks!).See what we came up with below!

Dota 2 The International 5 Viewing Party

They're all together. PPD - here comes the ice blast, ready for the dunk in from Universe, it's a disastah! CDEC, they're going to get wiped from the face of the earth -except for Aggresif, he'll jump out. But the wombo combo perfectly hits from Evil Geniuses and they will take Roshan.

- Six million dollar Echo Slam & Ice Blast, EG vs CDEC, TI5 Game Finals game 4

What's a Dota viewing party without Dota consumables? On the menu, we had all your basic starting items: wards, clarities, salves, tangoes and magic sticks. For those brave enough to conquer Roshan, there was of course cheese!