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Cookbook Giveaway!

GUYS!

These magical boxes appeared on our porch today:

They were full of cookbooks!

And because we wouldn’t be here without all of you, we want to share.

We are giving away Four SIGNED copies of the cookbook before the release date! 

Enter by posting a comment below. Everyone is only allowed one entry, but you are allowed to comment more than once. The more banter, the better, as far as we’re concerned!

The entry deadline is Noon on Wednesday, May 16th, at which point two winners will be selected randomly.

UPDATE!

We have selected two winners for the blog drawing! However, you can still enter the giveaway for another two books on Goodreads. No harm in hedging your bets. ;) Open to all fans, everywhere.

Good Luck!

Strawberries and Sweetgrass

 “Tables and benches had been raised outside the pavilions, piled high with sweetgrass and strawberries and fresh-baked bread.” -A Game of Thrones

Strawberries and Sweetgrass | Inn at the Crossroads

 Strawberries & Sweetgrass

Thoughts:

The first taste of summer, for me, has always been strawberries. If there were a way to further improve upon their juicy goodness, this incredibly simple recipe is it. Each flavor enhances that of the strawberries without treading too heavily. Both lemongrass and ginger are distinct, but work together to compliment the basic goodness of fresh fruit, making strawberries and sweetgrass a winning dessert in my book.

Served alongside a glass of iced mead or cider, this is an instant favorite for warm summer evenings on the porch, or for a winning contribution to a picnic.

Strawberries & Sweetgrass Recipe

Total Prep Time: 10 minutes            Serves: 3-4

Ingredients:

  • 1/4 cup honey
  • 1/4 cup mead or hard cider
  • 1 tsp. grated ginger
  • 1 Tbs. minced lemongrass
  • 1 lb. strawberries

Combine all ingredients except the strawberries in a small saucepan. Cook over low heat for just long enough for the honey and mead to meld together, about 3-5 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool. Prepare the strawberries by removing the leafy tops, and slice into a large bowl in an assortment of shapes and sizes. Pour the sauce over the sliced fruit and toss to coat. Serve either at room temperature, or chilled. It is especially good with a glass of the same mead or cider with which you made the sauce.

Nettle Tea

“‘Found some nettles and brewed a tea,’ Shadd announced. ‘Will m’lady take a cup?’

‘Yes, with thanks.’ She cradled the tea in her scarred hands and blew on it to cool it.” -A Clash of Kings

Nettle Tea

Our Thoughts:

Somewhat lacking in fresh wild greens in Boston, we sadly had to default to dried nettle leaves to make this nettle tea. However, if you are lucky enough to have fresh leaves at your disposal, we recommend using those.  We’ve planted our own nettles, partly as a defensive wall around our garden, and will update this post once we’ve tried them fresh.

It’s high in iron and vitamins, making it a wonderful surprise infusion by the side of the road while travelling. We actually didn’t care for the addition of lemon to ours, although a good dollop of honey was more than welcome.

The tea tastes very green, without the sometimes unpleasant herbal quality present in many other infusions.

Nettle Tea Recipe

We have taken a few liberties with additional ingredients; it’s unlikely that Catelyn and her party would have had all of these items on hand, but it makes for a much better tea, so we hope you will indulge us. :)

Ingredients:

  • 1 Tbs. dried nettle leaves, or slightly less fresh
  • honey to taste
  • other additions: mint leaves, star anise, cinnamon stick, lemon, etc.
Steep leaves for a few minutes, then season to taste with honey and any additional ingredients you like. The color should be a dark green, and the flavor strong
*Fun Fact: Nettle Brew is also a good plant fertilizer, rinse for soft and sleek hair, and can be used to make beer. Stay tuned for that one… ;)

 

Suckling Pig in Plum Sauce

“Buy me a cup of Arbor gold, Hopfrog, and perhaps I won’t inform my father of your toast. The tiles turned against me at the Checkered Hazard, and I wasted my last stag on supper. Suckling pig in plum sauce, stuffed with chestnuts and white truffles. A man must eat.” -A Feast for Crows

 

Esteban, the suckling pig

Our Thoughts:

Since we started this blog, we have desperately wanted to make suckling pig in plum sauce. Our own roast pig, lovingly named “Esteban,” was the star of our premier party. Despite his needy nature, what with the days of brining, hours of slow and low roasting, and incremental basting, Esteban was delicious. The skin was crisp, and the meat incredibly tender and juicy. Serving with the plum sauce made an epic pairing.

We opted for a smaller suckling pig, as we didn’t have the option of roasting outside on a spit or in a pit. Generally, pigs above about 18 pounds do not fit in regular home ovens. Our pig was 16 pounds, and just fit in one of our ovens on a slight diagonal. Larger pigs obviously require a longer roasting time, and the roasting method changes the cook time as well.

Esteban was born and raised on the pastures of Sugar Mountain Farm, in Vermont. Sugar Mountain is currently raising money through Kickstarter to build their own abattoir. Be sure to support their great project! Many thanks to Walter and Holly, as well as our fearless courier and pig christener, Gavi.

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Emptins / Ale Barm

Emptins, from “emptyings”, are the colonial American equivalent to the older Ale Barm. Both are made from the leftover yeasty dregs of the brewing process, and used in either baking or to start fermentation in new brewing projects.

Ingredients: Original Batch                                   More Manageable Batch

  • handful hops                                   ~1/4 oz. loose leaf hops
  • 3 quarts water                                6 cups water
  • Flour                                                  ~3 cups flour
  • emptins                                             1 Tbs. Emptins / sourdough starter

 Boil the hops in the water for 15 minutes. Strain out the hops, and put the liquid in a large bowl. Whisk in flour until the mixture resembles a sort of slurry, similar to the texture of pancake batter. When this goop is no longer hot, add the emptins or starter, and allow to sit overnight.

Provided your yeast mixture is warm and happy, it will go crazy in the hoppy-flour mixture. Mine doubled overnight, overflowing the large mason jar I had it in. Lesson learned. The final mixture will be thick and bubbly.  

Cover the mixture with a loose lid, and place in the fridge, as you would a normal sourdough starter. The yeast solution will begin to look like an eldritch creature, putting down tendrils in the jar until the whole thing separates into the heavier starter on the bottom, and the hops water on top. 

When you want to use the starter, simply stir up the solution, adding a hearty dash of new flour into the mix. This will feed the starter and help perk it back up. For best results, feed the starter the day before you wish to use it. Otherwise, feed your starter a handful of flour every week or so. 

Oxtail Soup

Medieval Oxtail Soup

“This evening they had supped on oxtail soup, summer greens tossed with pecans, grapes, red fennel, and crmbled cheese, hot crab pie, spiced squash, and quails drowned in butter. Each dish had come with its own wine. Lord Janos allowed that he had never eaten half so well.” (A Clash of Kings)

Modern Oxtail Soup

Our Thoughts:

Rich and savory, this is the medieval-soup version of brisket. The recipe is different from other oxtail soups in that it doesn’t have New World tomato in it, so it lacks that distinctive acidic tang. The broth is very savory and beefy with a bite from all the spices, while the meat is tender from long boiling. It is delicious with a slice of buttered bread and a mug of ale.

This modern twist, an oxtail and Gruyère ravioli in a clarified oxtail stock, is elegant and fantastic. The cheese melts into the oxtail, adding just a slight bite to the flavorful meat. The stock, though similar to that in the medieval recipe, has a more intense flavor, due to the additional simmering time, and is simply beautiful in presentation.

The best part about these recipes is you don’t have to choose- simply use leftovers from the medieval recipe to cook the modern!

Make it at Home!

Venison Pies

Medieval Venison Pies 

“Such food Bran had never seen… venison pies chunky with carrots, bacon and mushrooms…” –A Clash of Kings

Modern Venison Pies

Thoughts:

In a slight break from our usual style, I’ve actually stayed true to the medieval recipe, not adding the extra ingredients detailed in the book; the medieval recipe is just so quirky and specific that I wanted to try it as it was meant to be eaten. In the modern version, however, I’ve added in the carrots, bacon, and mushrooms to match the description.

The medieval version is quite strange. However, take a delicious meat, and smother it with butter, and there’s only so much that time can alter. The spices are quite a bit sweeter than those in the modern version, and go well with the butter. The rye crust, we decided, is like many medieval crusts, and is meant more as a container than it is meant to be eaten. I’d be curious (and may try it at some point) just how long it would keep, as it is essentially potted venison in a pastry container.

In contrast, the modern version is savory, bursting at the seams with venison, veg, and bacon. With such a variety of ingredients, each bite is different from the last in composition. The crust is wonderfully delicate and flaky, making it as enjoyable to eat as the filling. To be fair, though, this isn’t the best way to showcase venison, as it is just an element of the pie instead of the star of the dish. Also, rather than make a whole venison pie, we opted for this recipe to make several smaller hand pies. They might not fit in as well at a feast in Winterfell, but they’re ideal for snacks and lunches.

 The Winner? I’d give it to the modern pasties, but the old version is fun to try.

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Magister Illyrio’s Dubious Mushrooms

“Mushrooms,” the magister announced, as the smell wafted up. “Kissed with garlic and bathed in butter. I am told the taste is exquisite. Have one, my friend. Have two.”  -A Dance with Dragons

Yeah...misplaced the real camera...

Black Mushrooms, take 2

Our Thoughts:

This dish proved to be more of an adventure than we anticipated.

We looked in several markets for black mushrooms, without success. Then, brilliance. I went to our local Asian supermarket, and cast about until I found an entire aisle filled with dried mushrooms. This, surely, was the perfect place to obtain suitably sketchy mushrooms. The winning bag reads, “Superior Quality Dried Fungus”, and beat out both the “AAA Dried Fungus” and the merely “High Quality Dried Fungus”.

Having obtained my dubious black mushrooms, I returned home to experiment.

They were horrible. I tried to prepare them many different ways, only to be met with the incontrovertable fact that the texture is simply unbearable. The butter and garlic just slipped right off the rubbery mushrooms, leaving us with a wholly unappetizing dish.

The second take is what you see above, and is wholly delicious. They might not have the same dubious backstory to go with them, but the trade off for great flavor is well worth it. Plump mushrooms bursting with butter and garlic- does it get better?

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Sister’s Stew – Guest Post from Outlander Kitchen

This week we are doing a guest post swap with Outlander Kitchen, the fabulous blog that does for Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series what we do for Game of Thrones. We might wish we’d thought of it first, but she’s doing a terrific job, and every one of her recipes looks delicious. Naturally, we jumped at the chance to get in on the action. She chose to make some Sister’s Stew, and we sent her a venison stew recipe fit for the wilds of Revolutionary War era North Carolina, which you can read about here.

“The beer was brown, the bread black, the stew a creamy white. She served it in a trencher hollowed out of a stale loaf. It was thick with leeks, carrots, barley, and turnips white and yellow, along with clams and chunks of cod and crabmeat, swimming in a stock of heavy cream and butter. It was the sort of stew that warmed a man right down to his bones, just the thing for a wet, cold night…”

-George R.R. Martin, Dance with Dragons


Davos may be down on his luck, but a bowl of this saffron-kissed, creamy white chowder-on-steroids is bound to give him a little strength along with a flicker of hope.  Thick with barley and hearty with cod, crab and clams, the stew is finished with butter, a classic french technique used to add richness and gloss.

Many thanks to my hosts, Chelsea and Sariann for their welcome at the Inn.

(Click on the title below for a printable version of the recipe.)

Sister’s Stew from Dance with Dragons

Yield:  Serves 4-6

  • Olive Oil – 2 Tble
  • Leek, white & light green only, well rinsed & diced – 1 Cup
  • Carrot, peeled & diced – ½ Cup
  • Celery, diced – ½ Cup
  • Garlic, minced – 2 cloves
  • Pearl Barley – ¼ Cup
  • White Wine/Vermouth – ½ Cup
  • Clam Nectar – 1 Cup
  • Water – 3 Cups
  • White Turnip, peeled & diced – ½ Cup
  • Yellow Turnip (Rutabaga), peeled & diced – ½ Cup
  • Fresh Thyme – 2 sprigs
  • Whipping Cream – 1 Cup
  • Saffon Threads – pinch
  • Fresh Cod, in small chunks – 1 lb
  • Crab Meat – ½ lb
  • Clam Meat – 1 Cup
  • Butter – ¼ Cup
  • s+p – to taste

Heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium heat until shimmering.  Add the leeks, carrots and celery, and sweat until translucent, 5-7 minutes.  Add the garlic and barley.  Stir constantly until fragrant, about 2 minutes.  Deglaze with wine/vermouth and reduce until almost dry.

Add the clam nectar, water, turnips and thyme.  Increase the heat to medium-high and bring to the boil.  Reduce to medium-low and simmer until the vegetables and barley are tender, 30-40 minutes.  Remove the woody thyme stems.

Warm the cream gently in a small saucepan then add the saffron, rubbing the threads between your finger tips to break them up slightly. Stir the cream into the stew, then add the chunks of cod, crab and clam meat, as well as the butter.  Cook for another 5 minutes, stirring gently once or twice, until the fish is opaque and the butter is melted.  Season with salt and pepper.

Serve hot with plenty of freshly ground pepper and black bread.

Ham with Cloves, Honey, and Dried Cherries

“Sad to say, the kitchens proved to have no wild boar on hand, and there was not time enough to send out hunters. Instead, the cooks butchered one of the castle sows, and served them ham studded with cloves and basted with honey and dried cherries. It was not what Cersei wanted, but she made do.” -A Feast for Crows

Ham with cloves, honey, and dried cherries

Our Thoughts:

Salty, juicy goodness. The sweet punch of a cherry. Slow drips of honey.

All this can be yours.

This recipe is so good that it nearly defies description. Even as someone for whom ham and pork generally hold little appeal,  I still had 3 servings. It’s the kind of flavor combination that will keep you eating in an effort to really nail down a description. We at least had the excuse of writing this post, but you’ll have to come up with your own.

What’s more, this is a great way to sneak a little Westeros into your otherwise normal family holidays.

This tasty ham, followed by episode 2.2, and chocolate Easter eggs? WIN.

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