Dining With The Doctor: The Unauthorized Whovian Cookbook (17 page)

BOOK: Dining With The Doctor: The Unauthorized Whovian Cookbook

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1 cup/230 g cold butter, cubed
1.5 cups/200 g flour
1/2 cup/115 g sour cream
10 tbsp/150 g sugar
3 tsp/15 g ground cinnamon

Human beings are incredible omnivores. We’ll eat darn near anything that isn’t a rock - and if the rock is made of salt, we’ll make an exception. Unsurprisingly, it’s not easy to make food that looks like stones.

These classic cookies have a coarse, rough hewn texture that, if you squint right after a couple drinks, will remind you a little of cheap rock. While you’re drunkenly squinting, remind yourself that they’re also wing shaped.

To get started, make your life easier by cutting your butter into cubes.Toss the butter cubes and your flour into a large bowl and use your fingers to mash them together until you end up with a buttery mix that looks like coarse crumbs. This is deliciousness in the making. Now dump in your sour cream and give it an enthusiastic stir. The flour and butter should absorb the sour cream pretty quickly, giving you an actual dough. Knead it together about half a dozen times to make sure it all holds together.

Once you have achieved a solid, shape the dough into four balls and flatten them slightly. Wrap your balls in plastic wrap and put them in the fridge for at least four hours. You can always leave the cookie dough overnight and come back the next day.

Whenever you’re ready, sprinkle a sheet of waxed paper with two tablespoons of sugar. Unwrap one of your dough balls and just roll it around on the sugar until it’s nicely coated. Put another piece of waxed paper on top and get out your rolling pin. If you don’t have a rolling pin, get your largest canned goods. It really doesn’t matter what you use as long as you roll the dough into a big 12 x 5 inch (30.5 x 13 cm) rectangle.

Sprinkle your rectangle with 1 teaspoon/5 grams of cinnamon.

Now for the fun part.

When I was a kid, I thought each of these cookies had to be individually rolled into shape. Learning this trick was like baking magic. Start at the short end of the dough and roll it towards the middle, like you’re making a jelly roll. Stop halfway. Go to the other end and roll it towards the middle in the same way. The dough should meet as two spirals linked in the middle. Look at it from the side and you can already see it looking a little like wings.

Wrap the dough in plastic. To make the dough look more wing-like, pinch the edges of each “wing” into a point and poke the shoulders (where the two spirals are connected by a single layer of dough) downwards a little to make the curve of the back. Put your dough in the freezer for half an hour. This is just enough time for you to repeat the process on the other three lumps of dough waiting in your fridge.

While you’re waiting half an hour, preheat your oven to 375F/190C and pour your remaining sugar into a saucer or a shallow plate. Don’t leave the dough in the freezer too long. You just want to firm it up a bit so the cookies will hold their shape when sliced.

Take the wings out of the freezer after 30 minutes. Unwrap your first one and cut it into ½ inch/1.25 centimeter slices. Each slice should look like you cut it off the back of a weeping angel. Dip the cookies into sugar and put them onto an ungreased baking sheet at least 2 inches apart. Angels need their personal space.

Bake for 12 minutes, or until golden brown. Take the cookies out of the oven, briefly admire your handiwork, then flip them over and put them right back in the oven for another 5-8 minutes.

If you’re feeling whimsical, you can also make some appropriately sized triangular (for the body and skirt) and round (for the head) sugar cookies then arrange them into angel shapes on a plate. Alternately, you can add just a couple drops of black food coloring to the sour cream before mixing it in. This will give the dough a more grey color, which, with the crystalline texture of the sugar, enhances the stone-like appearance. Experience says making grey dough will also put people off your cookies, because our reptile brains can’t get past the grey crunchy look in order to appreciate the buttery goodness within. It’s your call

Vampire Space Fish (S5E6 - The Vampires of Venice)

1 lb/455 g of cod fillets (or other whitefish of your choice)
2 tomatoes, diced
1 red bell pepper, diced
½ onion, diced
2 cloves of garlic, minced
2 tbsp/30 g butter
1 tbsp/15 g flour
1 tsp/5 g honey
½ tsp/2.5 g salt
½ tsp/2.5 g marjoram
½ tsp/2.5 g basil
¼ tsp/1 g thyme
2 sheets puff pastry, defrosted
2 eggs, beaten
1 ball of aluminum foil
1 set of plastic fake vampire teeth

The first time I saw this episode, I knew I was going to make some kind of gigantic bitey fish dish. The obvious answer here would be a giant, bone-in fish with big honking teeth. Sadly, I’m part grossed out by eating fish with eyes. They always seem to be watching me, judging me, critical of my choice of sauce. Not this time.

Preheat your oven to 425F/218C. While your oven warms up, toss your butter in a skillet and melt it over a medium-high heat. Throw in your diced onion and sauté until it starts to turn translucent. Add in the garlic and bell peppers and continue to cook the mix until the onions just start to brown. Now throw in your nice juicy diced tomatoes along with your salt, marjoram, basil, thyme, and honey. Give it all a good stir. It should be a bit liquidy in there. Continue cooking for another two minutes, then sprinkle a tablespoon of flour on top. This will thicken up the sauce a little so you don’t soak through your puff pastry while it cooks. If it still looks too wet, add another tablespoon of flour.

Take the filling off the heat and get ready for the fishy fun part. Put one piece of puff pastry on a greased baking sheet. Arrange your cod filets vaguely into the shape of a fish. Top the filets with your bloody red, organic, meaty looking tomato mix. These are vampire space fish, after all. You need a little red in there. Now lay your second sheet of puff pastry on top and pinch it down around the edges of your vague fishy shape. Cut away the excess puff pastry. You now have a crude fish loaf stuffed with actual fish. It’s a good start, but you can do better. Pinch the edges around everything but the mouth. When it comes to the mouth, mash up a ball of aluminum foil about the same size as your plastic vampire teeth. Shove it in where the mouth should go.

See all that leftover puff pastry? You can’t waste something like that. Use a beer bottle cap or very small cookie cutter to cut it into the shape of scales, then carefully arrange the scales across the top of your fish’s body. You can use other scraps to create fins or tail details if you’re feeling fancy. If you couldn’t find any plastic vampire teeth, create an oversized dough mouth then cut the puff pastry scraps into lots of long, sharp pointy teeth and use them to fill the mouth with razor-like goodness. When you’re done decorating your fish, whisk up two eggs until they’re slightly frothy. Use a pastry brush to coat the whole fish with a light layer of egg. That’ll give it a lovely shine and help it bake up into a pretty golden brown.

Lightly tent some aluminum foil over your evil space fish and pop it in the oven for 15 minutes. Remove the aluminum foil and bake it for another 20 minutes. You want to make sure it’s in the oven long enough for the fish to bake all the way through but not so long that you burn the puff pastry.

If you opted for the big fake teeth, as soon as you take the fish out of the oven, carefully remove the aluminum foil plug and shove the plastic teeth in there instead. You may have to do a little strategic squishing. If you left too big a gap, you can always fill it in with some white cheese to match the color of the plastic teeth.

Serve the fish with a side of Donna’s Time Beetle, a hearty glass of red wine, and a reminder to your single female guests that at least they’re not being fed to thousands of piranha-like husbands after dinner.

Ledweth’s Eknodine Pensioners (S5E7 - Amy’s Choice)

baby cucumbers
nori
leftover Slitheen Eggs
olive slices or edible googly eyes
toothpicks
red food coloring

Based on the start of this episode, I know you're expecting something based on Amy’s pregnancy baking spree - a cake, or maybe some muffins. However, it’s hard to resist the lure of the crazy Eknodine in Rory’s fantasy world. They’re an instantly recognizable alien that happens to be easy to make. Hold one of these in your mouth and have fun freaking out your guests.

To make your own Eknodine, start by cutting a three inch/7.5 centimeter slit into one end of your baby cucumber, length wise.

Turn it 180 degrees and cut a second slit. You should now have four sort of tentacles sticking out of one end of your cucumber. Carve out a little of the white interior. Now use a knife to cut each of the four wedges into several smaller wispy tentacles. You’ll need to carve out more of the white meat of the cucumber in order to make room for the eye shaped egg.

Once you have the mouth complete, cut a wide circle of nori and push it into the middle of the hole. This is just to add to some fullness to the mouth. If you don’t have nori around the house, don’t worry. Now shove the egg into the nest of tentacles, pointy side facing down into the meat of the cucumber.

Use a couple of toothpicks to secure the peeled Slitheen egg in place. Try to pierce one of the fleshier tentacles, go through the egg, and come out a fleshy tentacles on the other side. The good thing about this is the actual Eknodine had all kinds of spiky bits, so the toothpicks actually add to the overall effect. Feel free to have some pinning down every tentacle.

Finish it off by cutting an olive shaped circle into the eye and pushing the olive round into place to make the pupil. Alternately, just use a googly eye from the cake decorating aisle of your grocery store. Squeeze one drop of red food coloring into the middle of the pupil and let it drip around the eye to give it a good bloodshot look.

If you do this right, you should have something sturdy enough for you to hold one end in your mouth without it all falling apart. Enjoy blowing some powdered sugar in people’s faces before menacing them with a mouthful of something that looks like it should be fighting Sigourney Weaver.

Silurian Hot House Salad with Lemon-Lime Vinaigrette (S5E8 - The Hungry Earth)

Salad:
4 cups/170 grams salad greens
1 Clementine or Satsuma orange
1 red bell pepper
½ cucumber
Dressing:
1 tbsp/15 ml olive oil
¼ cup/60 ml white vinegar
½ cup/120 ml water
1 lemon
1 lime
½ tsp/2.5 g salt
½ tsp/2.5 g sugar

Oh, baby. It’s so hot down here, 22 miles beneath the surface of the Earth. In honor of the green Silurian scales and the red blood spilled in their unnecessary conflict, I present this hot house salad. Making a salad isn’t complicated. Peel your orange and break it into segments. Cut half of your cucumber into thin slices. Seed your bell pepper and cut it into thin strips. Spread your spinach over a nice platter and artistically arrange the cucumber, orange, and pepper slices on top.

To make the dressing, carefully juice your lemon and lime, making sure to filter out any seeds. Pour the juice and all the other ingredients into a clean jar or plastic ware container and shake it like the earth just mysteriously moved under your feet. Keep shaking it until everything inside is so mixed up it the ingredients aren’t sure what timeline they’re stuck in. Lightly drizzle the result over the top of the salad.

Cinnamon Pull Apart Crack in the Wall (S5E9 - Cold Blood)