Game of Thrones Cook-Off

If you read my post last week (6 Loving Years), then you knew that this one was inevitably coming and I hope you were looking forward to it because it was a fun experience. I have never been very adventurous when it comes to cooking. I have a few recipes that I know how to make well and I usually stick to them. Since living on my own, I have begun to appreciate cooking more as a way to bring family and friends together. As well, I believe that cooking with a partner and trying (sometimes failing) new recipes can be a great way to spend a romantic evening together. Blake and I are very different when it comes to how we work in the kitchen, so it has taken 6 whole years to finally find our groove together and work well ... at least well enough that no one ends up crying (me).

A few weekends ago, Blake wanted to spend the day trying out some new recipes. We were originally going to do "A Day of Appetizers", but I thought that it would be more fun to have a little competition. One thing you should know about me is that I am competitive in activities that you really shouldn't be competitive in (i.e. I made my mom cry once while playing Pictionary). I think it was for our first or second anniversary, I got Blake the Game of Thrones Cookbook: A Feast of Ice & Fire. The gift was complete with an inscription completely in Dothraki. It says:

Blake, shekh ma shieraki anni,

Ajjin kisha laz ray esinakh than qifo loin for the mithri of our atthirar

hajinaan, Blake, I zalat yer for the rest of my atthirar

I zhilat yer

There may be some mistakes in there, but you gotta give me a little credit - that took a while to translate! Google Translate doesn't have Dothraki as an option. Anyways, Blake has made a couple of recipes in it, but hasn't gotten a chance to really explore it so we figured we would give it a shot. Here's how the competition would work. The recipe book is filled with recipes that have both Medieval/Game of Thrones options and a modern version. Blake, who is definitely more experienced in the kitchen than me, was in charge of the Medieval recipes and I got the modern versions. The recipes included:

1. Lemonsweet (really just Lemonade)

2. Oatcakes

3. Flat Bread

4. Stewed Rabbit

Let's dive right into the Lemonsweet! Blake's recipe was a "17th-Century Lemonsweet". The recipe called for lemons, oranges, water, and A LOT of confectioners' sugar. It was definitely a lip-pucker kind of lemonade, but if you throw in a bit (or a lot, your choice) of alcohol, then you are on an express train to black-out town. So, if you're looking for a drink that will help you get drunk fast then this is the drink for you! Warning, you will probably wake up with a wicked hangover due to all of the sugar. My recipe was a "Modern Lemonsweet with Honey and Vanilla". It called for ... and yes you guessed it ... honey, water, vanilla and lemons! It was a simple recipe that involved making a sort of syrup with the honey and vanilla before combining it with the lemon juice. It was delicious and because the sugar was replaced with honey, it was the perfect amount of sweet. It is the perfect summer drink! With regards to the competition, I think we were both winners on this one, but we agreed that for an every-day drink, the Modern Lemonsweet was the top choice.

Next up are the oatcakes. Blake's Traditional-style Oatcake recipe was pretty simple. You combine all the ingredients to make a dough and make little flat cakes to bake at 350F for 30 minutes. They are great for an on-the-go breakfast, especially if you put on a little butter or jam. Blake's recipe called for: (makes about 10 oatcakes)

3 1/2 cups for oats

1 tsp of salt

2 tbsp of flour

3 tbsp honey

4 tbsp unsalted butter

1/2 cup of water

Handful of fresh berries (we used frozen blueberries)

My Modern Oatcakes were a little different. The recipe wanted me to make a sort of oatcake jam sandwich ... I just made the oatcakes. This recipe called for: (Makes about 14 oatcakes)

1/2 cup unsalted butter softened

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon and 1/2 tsp ground ginger

14 tsp baking powder

1 cup oats

1 1/2 cups flour

Again, all you had to do was combine the ingredients and bake at 350F for 20 minutes, but with an extra step of chilling the dough for an hour before you bake. Our oatcakes turned out completely different, yet both tasty. While Blake's oatcakes were definitely very traditional and tasted like what you would expect, my cakes turned out more like a cookie. They are perfect to be served with tea, but not what you would call an oatcake. Blake won on the basis that his oatcake was actually an oatcake.

Following the oatcakes, we have the flatbreads. These were the recipes that impressed us the least. Neither flatbread turned out well. I mean, they look exactly like the cookbook pictures, but taste-wise ... blah. The Traditional Flatbread is a traditional Turkish recipe. The recipe takes about 2 1/2 hours (2 hours to rise, 30 minutes to do everything else) and makes about 4 flat loaves. We preheated the oven to 550F (our oven only goes to 500F so we had to bake for a little longer) and set out to bake our first flatbreads. The ingredients included:

1/2 cup of water combined with 4 1/2 tsp of yeast, 1 tsp sugar, and 1/2 cup of flour into a frothy sponge mixture and set aside to rise for 30 minutes.

In a separate bowl: 3 1/2 cups flour, 1 tsp salt, 3 tbsp olive oil, and the frothy sponge combined to make a dough. Let rise for an hour.

After the hour: make dough-balls and let rest for an additional 30 minutes.

After all of the rising and resting, you're ready to make flattened dough-balls which you will glaze with an egg wash and sprinkle poppy seeds on top. You will want to press your fingers into the bread to create the indented surface that you typically see with flatbreads.

Bake until golden (about 6-8 minutes if your oven is preheated at 550F)

Here's the final product (pictured on the right) -- Blake was quite proud of the presentation. The top probably would have had more of that golden colour had our oven been the right temperature, but I still think it looks pretty good!

My flatbread on the other hand ... turned out more like a bun and less flat. The first line in the cookbook for this recipe states, "This is a straightforward recipe for pita bread and is easy to make" ... so what did I do wrong? Blake and I concluded that our second teaspoon measurement is somewhere between a teaspoon and a tablespoon, so I had gone a little overboard with the yeast because this bread tasted like a mouthful of yeast. The recipe called for:

2 1/2 tsp yeast

1 tsp honey

1 1/2 cups warm water

3 cups flour

1 tsp salt

That's it! The recipe seemed easy enough. Combine everything except for the flour into a frothy mixture then create, what I like to call, a "flour volcano" and pour the lava/yeast mixture into the centre. Combine to make the dough and let rise for an hour. Then all I had to do was bake it in a 500F preheated oven for "just a few minutes". That's literally what the recipe says, "bake each pita for just a few minutes". Very specific... and here's what I got...

Like I said, both flatbreads look good, but I'm sure you can easily find a better (and more tasty ... less yeasty) recipe for bread. The final recipe was the Stewed Rabbit. Blake and I were concerned about finding rabbit on such short notice, but apparently rabbit it quite easy to find. We bought a rabbit from Franz's Butchershop in Peterborough. Blake had the unfortunate job of chopping the rabbit in half so that we could split it between our two recipes. My recipe was, as followed:

1 (half) rabbit

3 tbsp olive oil

1/2 cup red wine

1/2 onion chopped

1 chopped carrot

1 chopped celery stalk

1 tbsp tomato paste (I used tomato sauce)

Rosemary

1 1/2 cups chicken stock

3/4 cups Nicoise olives (I used basic sliced olives)

It was a surprisingly simple recipe. I started with browning the rabbit pieces in the olive oil for 10 minutes (or so). After it browned, I removed it from the pan and put aside. In the skillet, I added the wine and scraped all of the rabbit bits; then put aside. Then, you cook the vegetables until softened, add the tomato paste and rosemary until combined. Add the rabbit, wine, and 1/2 of the stock. Season with salt and pepper and cook on low for 30 minutes. Add the olives and the rest of the stock; then cook for 20 minutes. Voila!

The Medieval Stewed Rabbit recipe that Blake had to follow was, definitely, a time-consuming recipe. I have to be honest ... I left the recipe

book at the Aylward's house, so you'll have to buy the cookbook if you want the recipe. The recipe had to cook for a couple of hours and, by the time we ate it, all of the liquid had boiled away. It was hard to categorize it as a "stew" without any broth. With regards to the taste, the Modern stew was the winner! Surprisingly, the olives really added to the taste. The broth was very flavourful and the rabbit wasn't that bad! Although, I don't think I'd make the recipe with rabbit again, but the broth is something that I'll keep in my back pocket. I wonder how it would taste with another sort of dark meat; turkey perhaps?

At the end of the day, we had made a few delicious recipes and others that are best left in the past. It was a fun way to spend the day with together with Blake.

What cookbook should we try next?