Tag Archives: domestic fu

OmNoms of Ice and Fire! I created foods of Westeros

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11

My Game of Thrones main feast.jpgTonight was the premier of Game of Thrones on HBO. As many of you know I have been looking forward to this series for a very long time.  Rather then go into detail about the show (I’m saving that one for The Beyond the Wall Podcast and for two I have vowed to be spoiler free as some people important to me have not seen the show yet) I will discuss my celebration of the show.

 

Tonight I decided to make a feast fit for Westeros, but rather then go crazy like the awesome gourmet chef Tom Colicchio of the Game of Thrones food trucks I had decided to make the food as simply as I do most dishes.  First off I was sad I don’t have a source for some good game meat, not the first time I have lamented this, so when I went shopping I looked for Cornish Game Hens, I couldn’t find any.  It is a good thing I couldn’t, when I told my husband this he turned his nose up at the idea, he would much prefer having a whole chicken… I can do that, and it’s cheaper.  For tonight though I bough some pork, while I can’t make a suckling pig I can make roasted pork.  I used a sauce we just discovered thanks to a friend and roasted it slowly in the oven leaving the center tender and moist.  The CousCous I bought ages ago was perfect, it had walnuts in it and field mushrooms and while I thought I was off mushrooms for a while, I can’t resist the tasty things.  Most importantly you tasted more of the walnut then the mushroom so that’s good.  Then (for me only as my husband shakes his head at my obsession for cheese and fruit) I sliced up a Gala apple and spread herbed goat cheese on it.  I swear this dinner was stupid simple.

LEMON CAKES.jpg

 

Next up was dessert.  Lemon Cakes are the signature dessert in Westeros, I swear GRRM must have a lemon fetish.  I looked for  Tom Colicchio’s lemon cake recipe and while it looks tasty it looks like a lot of work for something that will only last a day.  I wanted to come up with something I could transport and bring places, like Balticon.  Viv, one of my co-hosts on the Beyond the Wall podcast teasingly challenged me to come up with something for our Live Game of Thrones viewing.  So I tried it out.  This is stupid simply, anyone can make it.  I bought some generic lemon cake mix and mixed that with a can of seltzer till it was nice and creamy.  I poured that into a cupcake tin and baked on 350 for 20 minutes.  After they cooled I filled them with store bought lemon filling, yeah store bought.  I could have made it myself but why?  Even when I worked in a bakery we used the premade stuff.  To fill them I used a pastry bag, if you don’t have one just take some wax paper or a ziploc baggie, make a cone and cut the end off.  Insert the tip into each cake and squeeze out a little filling.  Don’t do too much or you will make the cake burst.  I then sprinkled confectioner sugar over then.  These look a touch rough, but it was my first time.  Next time I will not fill them so high and I will find my sifter for the sugar.

 

Before the show we ate the main course, it was delish!  You will notice the difference between my food and the food truck food is that it is in proper Westeros proportions :)  We ate the lemon cakes during the show, they were insanely good.  My husband said “Yellow is my favorite flavor!” and gobbled his down.  It was far too tempting to go and eat them all, but neither of us wanted to tear ourselves away from the show to get more, so I think it might be wise to only eat these while distracted hee hee.  I put two aside and plan to open their Tupperware in two days time to see how they kept.

 

What did you do special for the premiere?  Or am I the only crazy one?  I can’t be the ONLY crazy one.

mmmm Bread

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21

oat and cran bread i made mixing two recipes.jpgSo I live in Canada, I’m originally from New York but I married a Canadian and moved up to the great white north.  What does living in Canada have to do with bread?  Quite a bit, you see in the two plus years I have lived here I have been searching for good bread.  I love bread, I really do, I love variety in my bread too.  Up here I feel limited.  The only bread I like that can be bought at the grocery store is either d’Italiano or the frozen Italian bread you bake to go with lasagna. (Oddly enough, one of the two brands I like is also d’Italiano, the other is the M&Ms Meat Shop brand)  The bakeries aren’t that helpful either, I have bought some bakery bread at the farmers market and while it was good, it was too expensive to buy on a regular basis.

I have been wanting to bake my own, I used to work in a bakery and I know it’s time consuming but how hard could it be?  I have the kneading tool for my mix master so that part, the really hard part would be done for me.  Three people I think are kinda awesome both make bread a lot, (@vividmuse, @encaf1 & Sport) and when I hear about them making their own bread my mouth waters and I just want to try it.  Then I found out that my sister got a new bread machine for Christmas.  She was happy because she couldn’t use her old one anymore because she had used it before her daughter was diagnosed Coeliac disease, since the flour gets into all the parts of the machine, she can’t use it to make Gluten free bread.  So I of course ask what is she going to do with her old machine.  She didn’t imagine making any Gluten bread so she said I could have it.  Now my sister hasn’t been making her own bread recently (meaning the last few years) but since her daughter has been diagnosed the idea of baking her own was appealing since the store alternatives are not that great.  When I went to visit I saw her whole family just in love with the gluten free bread, and that bread was really good.  So thanks @caelann for the bread maker.

My first loaf was a basic white bread that I used the recipe from the manual.  It came out really good, so today I experimented, I combined two recipes to make an oat cranberry bread and it turned out mostly amazing.  I added the cranberries a little late, the machine didn’t beep when I thought it would, to let me know when the kneading was close to done.  Next time I will get it right.  As it is now though it is damn tasty.  Each time I took the bread out of the machine I gave the first slices to my husband, my gunia pig, and he loved them both.  This time though, the oat cranberry time he kept going back for more, so I take that as a win.

So now I need some more fun recipes, got one for potato bread, I plan on trying that one.

Does anyone have tips for me?  How to make the crust softer?  Good recipes? How to keep the bread softer for longer? (I have been wrapping it in a towel for now.  Anyone out there making bread too?  Got stories to share?  Please, share them.