Pumpkin and Apple Rose Tart from The Fitz and The Fool

My father nodded back gravely. He looked at the serving boy. “What is that savory smell?” 

“It’s a beef shoulder, simmered until the meat fell off the bones, with three yellow onions and half a bushel of carrots, and two full measures of this year’s barley. If you order the soup here, sir, you will not get a bowl of brown water with a potato bit at the bottom! And the bread has just come from the oven, and we have summer butter, kept in the cold cellar and yellow as a daisy’s heart. But if you prefer mutton, there are mutton pies likewise stuffed with barley and carrot and onion, in brown crusts so flaky that we must put a plate under them, for they are so tender that otherwise you may end up wearing one! We have sliced pumpkin baked with apples and butter and cream, and …”

“Stop, stop,” my father begged him, “or my belly will burst just listening to you.”

- Fool's Assassin: Book I of the Fitz and the Fool Trilogy, by Robin Hobb

Wow. I quite agree with Fitz here; this mouthwatering passage on the menu at the tavern at Oaksbywater makes me too hungry. While I am tempted to recreate every dish described here, I started first with the baked pumpkin. With autumn arriving this week, irresistibly beautiful gourds have begun to fill the aisles of the grocery store.

The pumpkin and apple combination sounds fantastic for a fall or harvest celebration. But from the description, it isn't clear exactly what shape this dish takes. I considered roasting slices of apple and pumpkin lightly coated in melted butter, served with a cream sauce of some sort, but the passage does imply that the fruits are baked with the cream. After a couple attempts, I eventually settled on a pumpkin and apple tart - sure, the butter is all in the pie crust, but all four mentioned ingredients are baked together. I added a classic pumpkin spice mix, both because it complements the pumpkin and the apple so well, and because it seemed appropriate for the Winterfest setting in Fool's Assassin. I tried using a mandolin to make the thin ribbons of pumpkin and apple, but actually found that a vegetable peeler produced more flexible pieces that were easier to work with.

The spiral or rose petal shape of the pumpkin and apple slices makes for a beautiful dish that would be perfect to bring to a Thanksgiving potluck. The sliced pie pieces look nearly as gorgeous as the unsliced tart, with the alternating orange and cream stripes appearing. With all the spicy pumpkin-y goodness and a more interesting texture, I think I might prefer this pumpkin and apple spiral tart to the classic pumpkin pie.

Ingredients

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

Bingtown Cherry Preserves

It was a simple tray of carved wood, one that Grandfather had brought back from the Spice Isles long ago. On it were six little pots of homemade preserves. Malta knew that the gifts were largely symbolic, gestures of remembered bonds and kinship. Even so, she could remember when the gift had been lengths of rainbow hued silk so heavy that Papa had had to help Grandfather carry them. It did not matter, she told herself stoutly. As if her grandmother [Ronica Vestrit] sensed her uncertainty, she whispered, “The receiver of the gifts tonight is none other than our old friend Caolwn Festrew. She has always loved our sweet cherry preserves. She will know we thought especially of her when we prepared this gift. All will be well.” Malta lifted her eyes to the top of the steps. The smile that dawned on her face was genuine. All would be well.

- Mad Ship by Robin Hobb, Book 2 of the Liveship Trader Trilogy from the Realm of the Elderlings series

I spent most of 2017 either engrossed in Robin Hobb's world or engrossed in my PhD thesis. (The seas were not smooth sailing for myself nor for the Realm of the Elderlings protagonists.) Malta is a particularly memorable character from this series. Hobb did a fantastic job at portraying a highly privileged girl on the brink of womanhood, surrounded by even more privileged people - she is bratty, but in a sometimes embarrassingly relatable way, smart and impulsive. This passage demonstrates the growth Malta has undergone over the last book or two. She doesn't throw a melodramatic fit at the idea of showing up to the Summer Ball with just a few jars of homemade cherry preserves. While her family's recent economic misfortunes mean she is wearing a recycled ballgown rather than the decadent dress of her dreams, she enters the gathering feeling proud and beautiful.

So of course, I had to recreate these Vestrit Family cherry preserves for myself.

As a recipe starting point, I turned to Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management. I thought a Victorian-era cookbook might be a good approximation of Bingtown cuisine. Like Ronica Vestrit, Isabella Beeton would have had access to all sorts of foreign goods imported by ship through trading hubs. Beeton was described as "in the climate of her time she was brave, strong-minded and a tireless champion of her sisters everywhere," (G. Nown, 1986) which is also a fitting descriptor of Ronica Vestrit. (Take a moment to read Beeton's Wikipedia page, it's an interesting read.) Finally, I loved her little note that this recipe is "Very delicious." It is rare that she annotates a recipe with that sort of remark, and I quite agree with her assessment.

TO PRESERVE CHERRIES IN SYRUP.

(Very delicious.)

    1529. INGREDIENTS.--4 lbs. of cherries, 3 lbs. of sugar, 1 pint of white-currant juice.

    Mode.--Let the cherries be as clear and as transparent as possible, and perfectly ripe; pick off the stalks, and remove the stones, damaging the fruit as little as you can. Make a syrup with the above proportion of sugar, by recipe No. 1512; mix the cherries with it, and boil them for about 15 minutes, carefully skimming them; turn them gently into a pan, and let them remain till the next day; then drain the cherries on a sieve, and put the syrup and white-currant juice into the preserving-pan again. Boil these together until the syrup is somewhat reduced and rather thick; then put in the cherries, and let them boil for about 5 minutes; take them off the fire, skim the syrup, put the cherries into small pots or wide-mouthed bottles; pour the syrup over, and when quite cold, tie them down carefully, so that the air is quite excluded.

    Time.--15 minutes to boil the cherries in the syrup; 10 minutes to boil the syrup and currant-juice; 6 minutes to boil the cherries the second time.

    Average cost for this quantity, 3s. 6d.

    Seasonable.--Make this in July or August.

- Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management by Isabella Beeton

(1863)

TO MAKE SYRUP FOR COMPOTES, &c.

    1512. INGREDIENTS.--To every lb. of sugar allow 1-1/2 pint of water.
    Mode.--Boil the sugar and water together for 1/4 hour, carefully removing the scum as it rises: the syrup is then ready for the fruit. The articles boiled in this syrup will not keep for any length of time, it being suitable only for dishes intended to be eaten immediately. A larger proportion of sugar must be added for a syrup intended to keep.
    Time.--1/4 hour.

- Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management by Isabella Beeton

(1863)

I wanted to adapt this recipe to something that Ronica Vestrit might be known for. Ronica proudly tends her garden, and on a few occasions incorporates flowers from her garden into food. Of the edible flowers I found readily available, hibiscus and violet seemed the best matches for cherry. While the hibiscus initially added a promising tartness to the preserves, this became a bit redundant once the currant juice was added and the hibiscus flavor itself became a bit too subtle. My first attempt with lavender was a little overpowering, and so I titrated it down a few times before I was happy with the effect. (This is the opposite of my experience with making lavender chocolate truffles - perhaps lavender flavors extract better in water than in cream!) I also wanted to reflect Bingtown in the preserves. As such an important trading port, it has access to spices from all over the place. I tried a few spice combinations, ultimately settling on black pepper and cinnamon. The black pepper adds just the tiniest bit of heat. Together, the three flavorings make the jam taste elegant, and just a little bit exotic. A great match for a Trader family.

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 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 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 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

Popcornelius Fudge

"Come now Harry, the Ministry doesn't send people to Azkaban for blowing up their aunts."

- Minister for Magic Cornelius Fudge, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

This recipe came about as a literal shower thought. There I was, washing my hair like a normal muggle, when the idea of a Harry Potter dessert pun came to mind. Popcornelius Fudge. Does that ever happen to you? A pun so fun you can't not make it?

In developing the recipe, I started with the popcorn. Stale or soggy popcorn is terribly unappealing, so I kept it crisp by coating it in caramel. Building on the "sweet and salty" theme, I thought sea salt and dark chocolate fudge would be the perfect complement for the base. So here it is - a smooth, rich dark chocolate fudge, topped with the salty crunch of caramel popcorn.

Not an experienced candy maker or baker? Not a problem - this 8-ingredient recipe comes together easily and without specialized equipment. Short on time? Want to cut it down to a 4-ingredient dessert? Use store-bought caramel popcorn! Makes for a very fast Harry Potter potluck dish.

Sweet Cakes Soaked With Honey

Catelyn still remembered the innkeep, a fat woman named Masha Heddle who chewed sourleaf night and day and seemed to have an endless supply of smiles and sweet cakes for the children. The sweet cakes had been soaked with honey, rich and heavy on the tongue, but how Catelyn had dreaded those smiles.

- A Game of Thrones, Catelyn V, George R.R. Martin

My re-read of A Game of Thrones last year added many new recipes ideas to my "to-do" list. This one topped the list, because who doesn't love honey? I poked around various medieval recipe sites to see if "sweet cakes" referred to any sort of dish in particular, but this might have been a George R.R. Martin creation. In the end, I selected this recipe from the Receipt Book of Sarah Longe, a beautifully penned cookbook dated to around 1610, because "sugar cakes" seemed to be about as close to "sweet cakes" as I could get.

Teamosas: Mad Hatter Mimosas

'Have some wine,' the March Hare said in an encouraging tone.

'I don't see any wine,' Alice remarked.

'There isn't any,' said the March Hare.

'Then it wasn't very civil for you to offer it,' said Alice angrily.
― Alice in Wonderland, Chapter VII, Lewis Carroll

Unlike the tea party Alice stumbled into, my Mad Hatter Tea Party certainly had wine. I was torn between making a tea version of sangria and a tea version of mimosas, so I made both! Because I was looking for a caffeine-free alternative to all the other tea drinks at my tea party, this one is technically a tisane. "Tisane-mosa" just doesn't have the same ring to it as teamosa, so I'll stick with the technically-incorrect name.

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.

Ms Scarlett's Scarlett Spice Cocktail

For my Clue cocktail party, I served one drink and one hors d'oeuvre for each of the six murder suspects in the boardgame. Ms Scarlett is based on the femme fatale archetype, so I wanted something a little bubbly, a little sweet, and a little spicy. My party was held in October, so something with fall flavors also seemed appealing to me.

Ms Scarlett, put down that candlestick! I think you've had quite enough to drink!

Colonel Mustard's Mustard Punch

Yes, there's actually mustard in this cocktail.

Yes, it tastes good.

It was Colonel Mustard, in the Conservatory, drinking a cocktail next to the Candlestick.

For my Clue cocktail party, I set out to make one cocktail and one appetizer for each of the six murder suspects in the boardgame. While Colonel Mustard's appetizer was within the realm of normal cocktail party spreads, the idea of a cocktail with mustard was a little more unusual.

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.