“The kid had been roasted with lemon and honey.  With it were grape leaves stuffed with a melange of raisins, onions, mushrooms, and fiery dragon peppers.  ’I am not hungry,’ Arianne said…After a while, hunger weakened her resolve, so she sat and ate.”

The Menu

Pide (flatbread), white cheese, olives, and fiery dragon peppers

Roast Kid with honey and lemon

Stuffed Grape Leaves

Sweetwine

Our Thoughts:

From the first bite, this dish will make you feel like a Dornish Prince.

The lamb is tender, juicy, rich, and spiced to perfection on a bed of pilaf. We served it with stuffed grape leaves, olives, pickled hot peppers, and sliced feta drizzled with balsamic vinegar and sprinkled with red pepper. We baked pide bread to eat on the side, with honey, to balance the spice of the peppers, and washed it all down with sweetwine.

The lamb and feta together in the same bite are intoxicatingly delicious. The transition from the saltyness of the olives and feta, to the spice of the peppers, to the sweetness of the honey and wine is shockingly luxurious. The grape leaves are addictive.

Keep in mind that this meal requires forethought since the lamb needs to be marinated; the grape leaves are simple, but labor intensive. Also, a lifetime of rich foods and sweet wines can result in gout.

Bottom Line? If you aren’t pressed for time, make this meal. Consider dressing in silks and eating out of doors, in hot weather, under trees heavy laden with overripe fruit.

Pide Bread

This is a modern recipe, but could easily grace a table in Dorne.

Algar, Ayla. Classical Turkish Cooking, Traditional Turkish Food for the American Kitchen. New York: HarperCollins, 1991, p. 187

Ingredients:

• 8 tsp. dry yeast
• 1 tsp. sugar
• 1 cup warm water
• 1 cup flour

To make the sponge, dissolve yeast and sugar in warm water and let stand in a warm place 10 minutes until frothy. Stir in the flour, cover with plastic wrap and let rise 30 minutes.

• 7 cups flour
• 2 tsp. salt
• 6 Tbs. olive oil
• 2 cups & 2 Tbs. lukewarm water
• black sesame or poppy seeds (optional)

Put flour in a large bowl, make a well in the center and add the sponge, salt olive oil and lukewarm water. Gradually work in the flour to make a soft and sticky dough. Knead the dough on a floured surface for 15 minutes. Put the dough in a buttered bowl, cover and let rise 1 hour. Divide dough into quarters and each qaurter into 10 pieces, shaping each into a ball. Cover and let rest 30 minutes. Shape each piece of dough with wet hands into a circle by flattening dough and stretching it. Glaze with a generous amount of egg, and sprinkle with dark seeds.  Press fingertips firmly into dough, creating divots.  Bake for 6-8 minutes or until golden at 550° F.

Medieval Roast Kid

Original Recipe:

Take a kydde, and slytte the skyn in þe throte, And seke the veyne, and kut him, and lete him blede to deth; and fle him, And larde him, And trusse his legges in the sides, and roste him, And reyse the shuldres and legges, and sauce hit with vinegre and salte. - Two Fifteenth-Century Cookery-Books. 

Our Changes:

We took the original medieval recipe and ran with it.  To the scant original three ingredients, we added the lemon and honey (two reasonably available items in a medieval royal kitchen), and a hit of chili pepper to better match the Dornish recipe.  We also opted for smaller portions of meat, since we were not planning to feed an army.  Kid is not readily available at most supermarkets, but sometimes may be found in up-scale supermarkets or some ethnic grocery stores. Lamb may be easily substituted, as we did.  Also, we did not “slyte hym on þe throte”, but rather purchased our lamb from the store.  Much tidier…

Ingredients:

• Your choice of lamb/kid meat, about 1 lb.
• 1/2 C wine vinegar
• Salt to taste
• 1 small chili pepper, deseeded and minced
• juice from 1 lemon
• 1/2 cup honey
• 2 tbs olive oil
• mint leaves (optional)

Method:

Cut your lamb into small bite-size pieces (unless you have a specific cut of meat that warrants other preparation).  Combine the  chilli, lemon juice, honey and oil in a small bowl.  If you have a food processor, blitz the marinade ingredients until smooth. Pour over the lamb, cover with cling film and marinate for at least three hours, although overnight is better.

Preheat the oven to 375°F. Place the marinated lamb in a pan and roast until cooked but still a little pink in the middle.

Medieval stuffed Grapeleaves

Original Recipe

This recipe is primarily based on a reference made by Hans Derschwam in his travelogue to Turkey in the 16th Century. The young German visitor describes a dish of grape leaves filled with meat and plums:  “Item mutton.  Chopped small, a spoonful is put on a wine leaf and put together like a krapfen (stuffed fritter).  In it, one also puts cut sour plums, and boils the whole thing simply in water.  Serve hot.”

Our Changes:

We took this historical recipe (of sorts) and added what was needed in order to make it a proper Dornish dish.  We swapped raisins for the prunes of the original recipe, and added the mushrooms and “fiery dragon peppers”, as well as some onion.

Ingredients:

• 1 pint jar brined grape leaves- drained
• handful chopped raisins
• 1/2 tspn sea salt- divided
• 1 medium onion, minced
• 7-10 Bella Mushrooms, minced
• tsp hot pepper, minced fine
• 1/4  tsp freshly cracked black pepper- fine
• 1/4 pound ground lamb
• 1/2 freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1/4 cup chicken stock
• 1/2 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

Preparation:

Carefully remove the leaves from the jar. They are tightly rolled and squeezed into the jar and can rip when you are pulling them out. Unroll the leaves and gently peel the leaves apart.  The best leaves to use are those about the size of your palm.

Soak leaves lace them in a large bowl, cover with boiling water and soak for 30 minutes and rinse with cold water very well to remove some of the brine. If they are very salty you may wish to soak them again.

Cooking Instructions:

In a skillet, over medium heat, sauté the onions until they begin to caramelize. Add herbs, salt, and mushrooms. Remove from heat and add the raw ground lamb and raisins, mixing everything together in a bowl. Add the second teaspoon of salt. Don’t cook this mixture but simply blend well. Use clean hands to blend if necessary.

Place a grape leave on a work surface, veiny side up.  Place about 1 1/ 2 tablespoons of the meat mixture near the stem end, then fold in the end and sides and roll up neatly. Repeat this process until all the leaves are stuffed.

Line the bottom of a large, heavy based pot with several grape leaves, then arrange the filled rolls in snug layers, seam side down. Make one layer of dolmas and then place the next layer perpendicular to the first. Pour in the stock, squeeze lemon or pour juice over the dolmas.  When you are finished with the layering, if you have any extra leaves, place them on top of the rolls. Place a heat proof dish on top to keep the rolls pressed down.

Cover with a lid and simmer slowly for 45 minutes to 1 hour, or until the leaves are tender and the meat is cooked. Take one of the dolmas out of the pot, test it for doneness (you want the leaves tender and the filling soft). You may need to add more liquid, if so, add 1/ 2 cup water and continue to simmer another 15 minutes. Check again.   Let cool. Serve at room temp.

Makes approximately 20  dolmas depending on the size of the leaves. You can make these up to 3 days in advance, then remove from fridge about 1-2 hours before serving. You can also reheat them gently in a microwave.

Sweetwine

This is a delicious fortified wine, best served in late spring or summer.  Sweetwine is similar in flavor to port, but neither as strong nor as heavy. The Dornish favor strong wines, and the Orphans of the Greenblood in particular favor sweetwine.

For our sweetwine, we selected a sweet Greek red wine from our local purveyor of adult beverages.   You should be able to pick up a bottle from the desert wine section of any liquor store with a reasonably extensive selection.