Category Archives: Potatoes

Theme meal thwarted – The Hobbit

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Sorry for the silence of late.  I was being a bit superstitious… and it turned out to not matter anyway.

There was a local store that had this great idea – it’d do a contest for dishes inspired by Middle Earth, in conjunction with the upcoming film of The Hobbit.  Perfect for me – I love Tolkien’s work, and I love to cook.  So I signed up to actually make dishes inspired by hobbits, dwarves, and orcs.

And then the contest got canceled because only one other person signed up.  Sigh.

I hadn’t talked about it until now because I thought that I’d either jinx it by discussing it online or possibly give someone ideas to compete against me.  Well, little fear of that now.  So, here were my thoughts.

Orcs – Black heart stew

Truth be told, there’s not a very wide discussion of orcish dietary habits in any of the books.  The closest I have to any of that would be the fiery drink that they used on Pippin and Merry to get them up and marching in The Two Towers.

Enough for me to work with.

I was going to make a spicy soup – allow spicy peppers to steep in beef stock for 24 hours.  I was probably going to use dried ancho chilies, because I don’t think too many folks besides myself are going to give the ghost pepper a chance (oh, the stories I have).  To go with that, I was going to add cumin, bay leaf, and sage to the seasoning mix to give a rich and powerful kick to it.

With this broth, my hope was to combine it with black lentils and black mushrooms.  These would serve to both give further body to the soup as well as serve as a nice thematic component.

Dwarves – mountain potatoes

Thinking about it, the dietary habits of a species of sentient creatures that live primarily in mountain caves are more than a bit limited.  While there certainly is a biome that can support life, much of what a dwarf would have access to is pretty limited without trade.  And I was thinking that the most famous story about dwarves by Tolkien involved dwarves who were refugees and thus probably stuck eating what was native.

To be honest, I think mushrooms are a bit too cliche, plus I honestly don’t know just how well mushrooms grow in high mountains and mines – since they typically need moisture to grow, it seemed like a more sea-level food.  However, various types of edible taproots and culinary herbs do grow in mountainous terrain.

With that said, I imagine a good side dish for dwarves that would be extremely native would involve potatoes, sage, rosemary, thyme, and lavendar – all very tasty in combination as well as capable of growing heartily in mountainous regions.  They’d have to be tossed in some kind of fat – I bet the traditional dwarven method would be rendered goat or sheep fat. That said, olive oil would be tastier, vegetarian, and olives can grow in pretty hearty areas as well.

Hobbits – Cherry mead cake

I do make tons of different foods, but I will always admit to having a weakness for experimenting with different kinds of cake.  Also, given their dietary habits, if anyone could appreciate a soft and rich cake in Middle Earth, it would be those irrepressible hobbits.

In this case, I would start with a spice cake base.  Hobbits strike me as the sort that would just swoon at the scent of freshly ground cloves, grated nutmeg, powdered allspice, and any other spice that would make a spice cake stand out.

 

Also, I think that the spice mix goes quite well with mead.  Of course, I had to make this a booze cake, and while plenty of drinking of all sorts happens in the story, a strong yet sweet honey mead is the one that I always come back to when I imagine hobbits.  I think the combination of the two would be fabulous.

Also, I would include cherries in two steps.  One, I would take dried cherries and mix them into the cake batter.  I don’t have a good story reason as to why (a classic carrot cake really does seem like something hobbits would make and eat), but I thought it’d be a bit more playful and unexpected, which is always what Tolkien showed with them.

Also, I would add a bit of cherry juice to the frosting.  Making a basic cherry simple syrup, I’d add just a touch to a good cream cheese frosting, in order to give it a light but unmistakable complimentary cherry flavor.  A good finish to a hearty meal.

I will eventually make this, but probably not for at least a week.  While I didn’t do any experiments over Thanksgiving, I did make a ton of classics.  I have a lot of leftovers to clear.

Requested recipe – Phanton of the Opera dish

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I got my first request for a dish online yesterday – Dryunya wanted to know if I could come up with a dish inspired by his recent viewing of Phantom of the Opera.  I suppose I should have asked which version, but I was too caught up in the idea to really bother (sorry, Dryunya).

I decided that it should be a meal, and the meal should have three parts – one representing the Phantom, one representing Christine, and one representing Raoul.  It’s not necessarily the fanciest meal, but it’s one that I feel fits the feel and theme of the story.

Phantom: Dusted steak with bleu cheese.

The Phantom feels like a rare steak to me – perhaps not the prettiest to look at, and bloody  when the truth is revealed, but dark and mysterious, something you can’t pull away from even with all that blood.  I think the proper coating is about a teaspoon of cocoa powder (not the Dutch stuff; we want the acidity) mixed with about a tablespoon of ground coffee.  This will develop a very rich and dark flavor that will go well with the caramelization of a  rare steak.

The mask of the Phantom is represented by the bleu cheese, which can be turned into a sauce by melting about 2 ounces of bleu cheese in about 1 tablespoon of milk or cream. Any variety of such cheese would work – in fact, if not for the fact that the story is French and is screaming for a French bleu like Roquefort, I’d probably use Gorgonzola.  At any rate, I would specifically wait until it was done cooking, then put the cheese on one half of the steak and then cover it while it rests, to create sort of a half-mask effect as it melts from the steak’s heat.

Christine: Champagne squash soup

Christine was tricky at first, because I needed her to be able to accompany both of the other dishes well.  Moreover, given her status as a rising star of the opera, she needed to have an ingredient that screamed glamor.  This idea came to me, since it all seemed to come together.

3 pounds butternut squash, peeled and seeded
4 shallots
2 Granny Smith apples, peeled and cored
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 cups chicken stock
1 cup white wine (preferrably champagne)
1 teaspoon salt

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Cut the butternut squash, shallots and apples into medium-sized cubes. Place them on a sheet pan and toss with the olive oil and salt. Divide the squash mix between 2 sheet pans and spread it in a single layer. Roast for 35 to 45 minutes, until very tender.

Meanwhile, heat the chicken stock and white wine until it starts to simmer. When the vegetables are done, put them through a blender. (Alternatively, you can place the roasted vegetables in batches in a food processor with some of the chicken stock/wine and coarsely puree.) When all of the vegetables are processed, place them in a large pot and add the chicken stock/wine mix, stirring well.

Raoul: Mustard dill potatoes

Poor Raoul, the boring part of the love triangle.  That said, he’s a solid, dependable guy, and just as the story wouldn’t be complete without him, a dish feels incomplete without a starch.  Also, since we’re going with a bit of a French theme here, it’d be a shame to not involve Dijon mustard, one of France’s greatest culinary gifts.

I prefer to use Yukon Gold potatoes whenever possible, but you may want to switch to a different cultivar if you prefer something else (or you just don’t have Yukon Golds in your area).  One or two potatoes is enough for a single person.  For the baking, merely make large cubes of the potatoes, toss with some oil, and roast at 425 for about a half hour.

When the potatoes come out, toss them in a mixture of the following:

2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon honey
2 teaspoons dill (preferrably fresh)
1 teaspoon olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste.

Mind you, I’ve not actually made this dish yet; I cannot vouch for how well the experiment will work.  But I do plan on giving it a spin soon – thanks for getting my mind working on it, Dryunya.