Dining With The Doctor: The Unauthorized Whovian Cookbook (18 page)

The second time I watched this episode, I knew I had to make that man eating crack in the wall. The first time, I was too busy shouting at my television, “Give Rory back!” When I decided I wanted to pay homage to Rory’s second death in the span of three episodes, that rugged brown wall with the gaping white light seemed so easy to reproduce.

I was wrong.

First, I tried making it a main dish. Layers of seasoned ground beef were transformed into thick ropes, which I then stacked on top of one another to make the wall. It could stand in a puddle of alfredo sauce to represent the gushing light with a crack shaped cheese wedge stuffed into the middle. Except, of course, after multiple tries I just couldn't get it out of the pan and arranged upright without the whole affair falling apart. You’re welcome to try. I’d love to see a photo and read your recipe if you can make it work

Instead, I decided to go with my second choice, cinnamon pull-apart bread.

The batch of homemade bread tasted nice, but didn’t quite have the layered wood look I was hoping for. Then it hit me. This is supposed to be an easy cookbook for Whovians who just want to throw a fun party. I was making this way too difficult.

Part of me is ashamed to admit I even tried this, but even my inner foodie has to admit this is fast, easy, impressive, and cheap. You can make the whole thing for less than $10.

The great thing about cheap generic cinnamon roll dough is that it’s already arranged in neat rectangles. It’s amazing how much that stuff already looks like the beams of a rough hewn wooden wall.

To complete the transformation, line a dish with parchment paper for easy removal and yes, use some butter to grease the heck out of the paper. Remember that you’re baking your wall flat. It needs to come out and stand up to achieve the full effect (propping it against a cardboard box works best). Starting at the bottom of your pan, stack the long rectangles of dough on top of one another to build the base of the wall.

About ⅓ of the way from the bottom, pause and get out your sugar cookie dough. You should’ve picked this up at the grocery store while you were grabbing four freaking cans of cinnamon rolls and dodging questions about courting type two diabetes. Cut out a thick wedge and use your fingers to sculpt it into a rough crack in the wall shape. By the time it absorbed Rory, the crack was pretty big. For our purposes, you want it to stretch about3/4 of the way across the width of the wall. If it goes any further than that, you’ll lose structural integrity.

Once your crack is in place, start filling in the rest of the wall using your remaining rectangles of cinnamon roll dough. Squish them in nice and tight, right on top of one another.

This will need to bake a little longer than your average pan of cinnamon rolls, but not as much longer as you probably think. I found mine was good after adding about four minutes to the package directions. Try adding four minutes to the time on your dough, then start checking every two minutes until your wall is a dark, golden brown.

Once it comes out, your lovely white sugar cookie will be a dark golden brown. Use the edge of a very sharp knife to cut the brown surface off. Now fill the cavity with some of the pure white icing that comes with your cinnamon rolls.

This is very important. Now you have to leave it the heck alone. Your carefully made wall really needs to cool completely or else it’ll fall apart. This is a good time to go watch any of the episodes where Rory is a sexy Roman.

After half an hour or more, use the parchment paper to carefully lift the wall out of the baking pan. Prop the wall against a brown cardboard box to keep it upright. (The brown cardboard also creates the illusion your wall is in a cave, just like in the episode.) Empty the rest of your icing in front of the wall to represent the light spilling from the crack. The base of your wall should appear to be swimming in white light. If you have any fake ivy or leaves around the house, feel free to decorate the box. This wall had a very organic look.

Complete the effect with a Rory Williams action figure curled up at the edge of the icing pool.

Vincent’s Rustic Potatoes (S5E10 - Vincent and the Doctor)

1/2 cup/115 g butter
3 lbs/1400 g white russet potatoes, peeled
1.5 lbs/680 g purple potatoes, peeled
1lb/450 g yams, peeled
1 3/4 tsp/8.75 g salt
1/2 tsp/2.5 g ground black pepper
1 tbsp/15 ml olive oil

This is one of my favorite character episodes. They don’t dance around Vincent’s troubles, nor do they save him from his early death, but they do let a depressed, impoverished artist know that he mattered.

Like most poor people in France, Vincent’s diet would’ve revolved around potatoes. Therefore, I present this slightly modified version of the classic French dish, Potatoes Anna. In honor of the Tardis, I’ve switched up the colors to include purple potatoes and bright orange yams. In honor of Vincent, this is best served with a cheap bottle of rough red wine and some scraps of chicken stolen from someone else’s plate.

Start by preheating your oven to 425F/218C. While the oven is merrily heating away, melt your butter in a small saucepan until it’s nice and foamy. Then, because you’re a fickle artist, skim off the foam.

While the butter melts, peel all your potatoes. Cut them into nice, ⅛ inch slices and arrange them into an overlapping pattern in a round cake pan or oven safe skillet. As you finish one layer, brush it with melted butter and sprinkle with ½ tsp of salt. Keep adding layers, buttering and salting between each one, until you run out of potatoes. Feel free to alternate thick layers of white with thinner layers of blue and orange.

If you’re good with a knife, make sure your top layer is white, ring it with the orange sweet potatoes (possibly cut into Dalek shapes) and use the purple potatoes to make either a Tardis or a giant DW sigil in the middle of the pan. If you’re feeling inspired by all that blue, you can also try to make a sort of starry night pattern. If you're not a troubled artist working in an underappreciated medium, stick with dramatic rings of colors.

You want to compact this as tightly as possible, so once you’re out of potatoes, press down hard with a skillet. If you have another heavy pan that fits inside the first (like a smaller cast iron skillet) push it down hard to flatten the potatoes as much as possible. Seriously. Really squish them in there.

Once squished, finish the top layer by pouring on the last of the butter and sprinkling the top with fresh ground black pepper and your remaining salt.

Tent some aluminum foil over the top. Put the whole thing in the oven and bake it for 50 minutes. Remove the aluminum foil, crank the temperature up to 500F/260C, and bake for 10 more minutes or until the edges turn nice and golden.

When it’s done, let your dish sit and cool for about 10 minutes. Run a rubber or silicone spatula around the edges to loosen it up. Enjoy it with a bottle of cheap red wine, some toasted sunflower seeds, and a painful appreciation of all the colors in the night sky.

The Doctor’s Omelet (S5E11 - The Lodger)

2 eggs
2 tbsp/30 ml milk
1 tsp/5 g Herbes de Provence
½ tsp/2.5 g salt
½ tsp/2.5 g fresh ground black pepper
⅓ cup/100 g fresh grated hard parmesan cheese
4 slices of whatever lunchmeat is in your fridge
mayonnaise
butter

I’ll be honest. I’m a little dubious about The Doctor’s cooking skills. Sure, Craig says this is the best omelet he’s ever tasted, but I’ve never started breakfast by dumping whole eggs into a cold pan and swirling them around with what looks like some lunch meat scraps.

 You’re welcome to try it his way. I, not being a Time Lord, mucked about with the order a bit and, since he said he learned to cook in Paris, added a bit of Herbes de Provence. This omelet is best served with strong black tea drunk straight from the pot, full of “excited tannin molecules.”

Crack the eggs into a bowl Add the milk, salt, pepper, and Herbes de Provence. Whisk it all together with a slightly manic enthusiasm.  

The next step is important. This is where nearly ever failed omelet went wrong. Put a smallish nonstick skillet on a medium heat. No hotter - I mean it! Medium. Now enthusiastically butter the interior of your skillet. For a proper omelet, your nonstick skillet still needs some edible lubrication.

Now that you have a buttery, medium-warm skillet, pour in your egg mix, tilt the skillet so it spreads evenly along the bottom, then leave it the heck alone. Walk away if you have to.

In 3-4 minutes, your egg should be set, which means the interior will still look a little bit soft and runny while the edges have turned golden brown. Rip up your lunch meat and spread it across one half of the omelet. Top that with your parmesan cheese. Now oh so carefully use a spatula (two, if you don’t have much practice) to flip the bare half of your omelet on top of the lunchmeat coated side. Don’t panic if you didn’t get an exact seal. You’ll be fine. In fact, if you didn’t make it in one piece, just layer it on as best you can and try to neaten things up a little.

For your next trick, slide the omelet onto a plate. If your top half is kind of messy, put two plates together, flip it over, and presto, your nice, neat bottom half is now on top. You look like a pro at this.

The Doctor squirted a rather intimidating amount of mayonnaise right in the pan along with the whole eggs. I suggest you, not being a Time Lord, merely make an artistic dab along one side of the plate and let your guests decide how much of the condiment they want to enjoy with their omelet. Not everyone is as blindly accepting as Craig.

Omelets are fast, easy, and cheap. Confidentially, you can always make one true to the episode plus some more edible omelets for your vegetarian guests. Roasted red bell pepper strips, spinach, and crumbled goat cheese go together really well, as do fresh garlic, fresh basil leaves, and fresh green onions. Historically, omelets have been served as a main course any time of day, and were usually stuffed with whatever leftovers people had around the house, so just have fun with it.

In honor of the trapped Tardis, serve this garnished with a handful of blueberries and an electronic toothbrush.

Rory the Roman's Farro Stew (S5E12 - The Pandorica Opens)

2 tbsp/30ml olive oil
2 leeks, white parts only, sliced
1 1/2 cups/300 g pearl farro
6 cups/1.4 l beef broth
1 tsp/5 g salt
1 tsp/5 g fresh ground black pepper
2 tbsp/30 g crumbled goat cheese

I’ll be honest with you here. My first impulse was to make a Stonehenge sculpture out of hot dogs with one of my white chocolate and strawberry Cyberman heads inside. Heck, you could surround your MeatHenge with two of every alien, as though you were creating the scariest ark in the universe.

 Then I saw Rory - the first man to be totally unimpressed when he walked onto the Tardis - and decided to honor him and the rest of his plastic legionnaires with this hearty, simple ancient Roman stew.

You can find farro at most health food stores, schmancy groceries, and even on Amazon. If you’re in a pinch, go ahead and substitute pearl barley. The flavor will be a little different, but the Romans were pretty flexible. They came. They saw. They conquered. Along the way, they ate whatever they could get their hot Italian hands on.

To make this simple, hearty legionnaires stew, start by putting a soup pot on a medium heat and adding your olive oil and leeks. Cook for 7-10 minutes, or until the leeks are golden brown. Now simply add everything but the cheese. Give it a good stir and put a lid on the stew. Wait for it to come to a boil. Give it one more enthusiastic stir, turn the heat down to low, and put the lid back on.

Leave it alone for the next hour and half, or until the farro has absorbed a lot of the moisture and become nice and tender. You’ll naturally want to peek, but try not to take off the lid and stir the stew more often than every 15 minutes.