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

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

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

‘Unnymoles – a pastry from Redwall Abbey

“Doan’t knoaw wot ee ‘unnymole is? Lukk an’ oi’ll show ee, you’m pay ‘tenshun naow!”

The molebabe rolled out a small patch of pastry, spread it thick with honey and placed on it a strawberry and a raspberry. Wrapping the pastry carefully over the fruit, he coated the lot with a mixture of honey and damson juice. It looked nothing like a honeyed mole, but the molebabes thought it did. Gurrbowl licked his digging claws proudly and added his ‘’unnymole’ to several others on a tray, ready the go into the oven. He wrinkled his nose proudly at skipper.

“Hurr, that’n be ‘ow t’make ‘unnymoles, zurr!”

– Pearls of Lutra, by Brian Jacques

When I was about nine or ten, I raced my way through the Redwall books, devouring each one I could get my paws on. When I didn’t have a new one to read, I re-read my favorite tales of Redwall – perhaps none more than Pearls of Lutra. I loved the riddles and puzzles the abbeyfolk had to solve to save the day – it was a little bit like The Da Vinci Code starring rodents. So, for inspiration for a Redwall August recipe, I went first to Pearls of Lutra.

Pokemon Poffins: Keep Stirring!

What I like best about creating food from fictional sources is trying to figure out how to faithfully translate the fantasy world into a real life or modern kitchen’s methods and ingredients. For example, for my Game of Thrones Venison Stew I avoided using flavor-boosting additives like tomato paste or soy sauce that would not have been present in a Westeros castle kitchen. I got a kick out of making Redwall ‘Unnymoles, because the general recipe is laid out clearly in the books. I think these restrictions pose a fun problem to solve.

When I heard about Pokenom, a Pokemon-themed month-long recipe link-up, I searched for some sort of Pokemon food inspiration. Most of the Pokeverse food is fairly simple – fruits, juices, honey… Poffins struck me as a fun project to try because there is an entire Pokemon episode where the gang goes to a poffin cooking class!