"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.
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.
