Dining With The Doctor: The Unauthorized Whovian Cookbook (14 page)

Now, you and I both know you’re going to pick up a box of spring mix at the grocery store along with a few pre-cooked drumsticks. I personally think that if you throw in a Slitheen egg and a couple of marble circuit board cucumbers, you have a nutritious and fetching bento-box worth taking to work or school.

On the off chance you want to cook this from scratch but have never baked chicken drumsticks before, you’re in for a surprisingly cheap and easy main course. Chicken legs tend to be one of the cheapest cuts available in most grocery stores, yet ironically the most forgiving to new cooks.

Preheat your oven to 450F/233C.

While your oven warms up, mix your Worcestershire, mustard, pepper, olive oil, and garlic in a large bowl. Give it a good, thorough whisking so the flavors play nicely together.

Now cover a baking sheet with aluminum foil and either butter it up or hose it down with nonstick spray. Roll each of your chicken legs in the sauce mix, taking care to get them as nicely coated as possible. If you’re lazy or busy, you can always do your best to coat all the chicken legs then leave them in the fridge to marinate for anywhere from a few hours to overnight. If you’re in a hurry, just coat them and pop them in the oven.

Let the chicken legs bake for about 25 minutes, or until the juices run clear when poked with a sharp knife. If there’s any evidence of pink in the juices, put your chicken legs back in the oven for another 5 minutes.

Once they’re baked, you can serve them either hot or cold. For presentation sake, I can vouch that putting these on a bed of lightly dressed salad greens and serving them in a metal box will leave your guests staring suspiciously at the shadows all night long.

River Song (S4E10 - Forest of the Dead)

6 hardboiled eggs
6 angel hair pasta nests
6 tbsp/180 g butter
6 garlic cloves, minced
2 tsp/10 g kosher salt or coarse sea salt
juice of 1 lemon
roasted red bell peppers
olives

I freaking love this dish. Making it is simplicity itself. Whovians crack up when they see it. Plus, as an extra bonus, it makes a good main course for octo-lavo vegetarians (people who eat eggs and butter but not meat.)

First, hardboil your eggs. This isn’t terribly exciting. Add half a dozen eggs to a pan of cold water (if any of them float they’ve gone bad. You’ll want to throw them away and get new eggs). Bring the water to a boil. As soon as it boils, promptly turn off the heat, put a lid on the pan, and leave it alone for the next 10 minutes. After that, just drain the eggs, refill your pot with cold water, and leave them to cool while you work on the rest of the recipe.

 If you can find angel hair pasta nests, they make this dish so easy. If you can't, seriously don't panic. Just pick up a regular box of angel hair pasta and prepare to get a little personal when twining it into shape.

If you can find the nests, the tricky part is making sure you use a gentle hand. Boil the angel hair pasta nests according to the package directions. When the package says not to stir the angel hair nests too heavily, believe it. You want to have nice, neat nests when you’re done, not carefully detangled strands of noodles. Just drop the nests into boiling water, maybe push them under a couple times if they bob to the surface, and otherwise leave them alone while they boil.

Once the pasta nests are finished, carefully lift them from the water with a slotted spoon. Leave them on a plate to cool. If you're using regular angel hair pasta, don't worry. It won't be quite the same, but no one other than me and your own Italian obsessed friend will know the difference.

While the pasta cools, make your nice, simple butter and garlic sauce. All you need to do is melt your butter over a medium heat, add your minced garlic and kosher salt, then cook the garlic for about 5 minutes, or until it starts to turn golden brown. After five minutes, quickly squeeze in your fresh lemon juice, being careful to ensure none of the bitter seeds end up in your sauce. Keep stirring for another minute, then take it off the heat.

Now, carefully arrange your cooled pasta on a serving plate or in a large oval ramekin. If you couldn't find angel hair nests, spin a generous portion of angel hair around a large fork and make a slightly curly, messy pile in the middle of a plate. You don't want the pasta to be too smooth and neat. After all, it represents her hair.

 Spoon 1/6th (about a tablespoon) of the sauce over your pasta. Snuggle a peeled hard boiled egg in the middle. Go ahead and bury it in the pasta so it looks like the hair is curling all around her face. It already looks a little like River Song. To complete the effect, simply add two small slivers of black olive for the eyes and a bright stripe of roasted red bell pepper for the mouth.

A lot of diners these days are used to the thick, heavy sauces you find at chain restaurants, so you might want to double the sauce and leave the rest on the table so people can ladle more on once they start eating. Extra bell peppers and fresh black pepper also go over well, though everyone agrees they’re best added after you stab poor River in the face. If you have to go zombie on anyone, hers is the no doubt the best possible brain to eat.

This recipe comes with the added bonus of having some protein in it just in case you need to test a shadow for Vashta Nerada while eating your pasta.

Sapphire Cliff Cocktail (S4E11 - Midnight)

1 shot/45 ml Bombay Sapphire gin
½ shot/22 ml blue curacao
½ shot/22 ml creme de banana
½ shot/22 ml pomegranate juice
ginger ale
banana

If, by luck, your local farmer’s market, health food store, or upscale grocery happens to stock fresh blue corn, you have a perfect, easy solution to the sapphire waterfall. Simply cut the wide ends of the cobs flat before boiling then neatly arrange them like skyscrapers, surrounded by a few fallen kernels to show how rocks have succumbed to gravity over time. Since blue corn is hard to find even when it is in season, you can drown your sorrows in this Sapphire Cliff Cocktail. Fill a cocktail shaker with ice. Add the pomegranate juice, creme de banana, blue curacao, and gin (you don’t have to use Bombay Sapphire, but it fits well with the name and gives you a blue rectangular bottle. Imagine the decorating uses). Top the shaker off with a handful of ice. Pound it like you’re an undiscovered alien trying to beat your way into a hermetically sealed space bus.

You now have a choice. You can pour your drink into a martini glass or, if you want something to nurse for a little while, pour it into a highball glass. Either way, after you’ve strained the contents of your shaker into a glass, top it off with ginger ale and stir gently. Garnish the glass with a wedge of banana. After a couple of these, you’ll feel like stealing the voice of the coolest person in the room.

Donna’s Time Beetle (S4E12 - Turn Left)

1 large white onions
2 large red onions
3 tbsp/45 ml olive oil
3 tsp/15 g thyme
3 tsp/15 g basil
1 tsp/5 g salt
3 cloves garlic, minced

There’s something on your back. It may be a time beetle, or it may be the pressure of knowing you don’t have any good side dishes for your Doctor Who themed party. Either way, this easy, aromatic side dish is a great accompaniment to anything from a Tardis Wellington to Professor Yana’s Gluten Neutrino Map Binder.

Let’s be honest. All you’re doing here is roasting onions then arranging them into the shape of a big scary beetle. It's both easy and tasty.

Preheat your oven to 425F/220C.

Mix your olive oil, thyme, basil, salt, and minced garlic in a large bowl. Set that aside while you peel your onions. Cut the onions into one inch/2.5 cm wide rings. The goal here is to create a nice thick circle of oniony goodness.

Cover a baking sheet with aluminum foil and spritz it generously with nonstick spray. Next, carefully dip each round cross section of your onion into the olive oil and spice mix, making sure to get both sides. Arrange each of your onion rounds on your baking sheet. When you run out of onions, bake them all for an hour.

Now comes the fun part.

Find a nice serving platter. Cut two of the thickest red onion slices in half. Use the largest two halves as the top and bottom of your beetle’s body. Fill in the middle with a smaller wedge of red onion to bulk up the body. Now cut one of your medium sized slices of white onion in half. Carefully arrange it at the front of your beetle to create the sharp front antenna portion of the beetle. Cut a large section of either color onion in half. Use the slices to make three legs on each side. You should have enough onions to make two beetles. Pile any excess onions onto the middle of each insect body in order to form a larger, more rounded carapace.

This won’t change the direction of your life for the worse, but it may change the direction of your other dishes for the better.

Dalek Invasion Ships (S4E13 - The Stolen Earth)

tube of 10 refrigerated biscuits
10 meatballs
catsup
mustard

By order of the Shadow Proclamation, this recipe is disgustingly easy. Oh, sure, you can muck about and complicate it all you want, but if you’re in a bind and desperately need some kind of fast party food, you can have this on the table in 15 minutes with the added bonus of looking like you put actual work (or at least some clever thought) into it.

When we’re faking it, I usually give you a real recipe I know you’ll ignore (for example, Weeping Angel Wings) while also providing directions on how to make your store bought purchases look like you slaved away in a kitchen.

 Not this time. We’re in a rush here. People are on their way over to your apartment for an unexpected viewing party and all you have in the fridge is some biscuit dough, a bunch of random condiments, and some leftover frozen meatballs.

You’ll be fine. You have everything you need to make a batch of Dalek battle ships.

If your meatballs aren’t fully cooked, go ahead and cook them according to the package directions. Once they’re fully cooked, spritz a baking sheet with non-stick spray and spread out each of your refrigerated biscuits so they’re not touching. Cut off the bottom ⅓ of each meatball so it’ll rest flatter. Now push the meatballs, cut side down, into the middle of each biscuit. Ta-da! You now have an edible old school UFO! I always pictured the Daleks in something pointier, but hey, this was the shape of their invasion fleet in the episode.

Bake the biscuits according to package directions. Having a meatball in the middle won’t hurt them any more than having a Hershey’s Kiss or the poached horn of a Judoon in the middle. When they’re finished baking, decorate the golden brown surfaces with dots of red and yellow from the mustard and catsup. Marvel at how much these look like the actual invasion ships. You might have to load up the episode to prove it to people while they stuff their faces. It'll be a tasty surprise for everyone.