Dining With The Doctor: The Unauthorized Whovian Cookbook (20 page)

To make your pirate ship, start by cutting twenty evenly spaced slices into your bread. Don’t cut all the way through - just go about ¾ of the way down. You don’t want your ship to fall apart. Every other cut, line one side of each slice with mayo and the facing side with mustard. You should have a blank slate slice then a condiment filled slice. You want to leave every other slice blank so you can simply cut through it when the time comes to serve your sandwich. That way the part you serve will be nicely seasoned while the part left behind will be nice and dry rather than a sticky mess.

Fill in the condiment smeared slices with a piece of cheese, slice of roasted red bell pepper, and a hunk of your favorite deli lunch meats (I like turkey and roast beef, but use whatever you normally eat.) At this point, you have a rather uninspired group sub sandwich.

Let’s make some magic happen.

Peel off three of your nicest looking romaine lettuce leaves. If they’re unevenly sized, you want the tallest one in the middle and the ones in front and back to be slightly smaller. Carefully cut two holes in the lettuce leaves and thread the large pretzel rods through them. You now have a sail attached to a mast. Carefully insert your sails into your pirate ship sandwich. For finishing touches, arrange pitted black olive slices as portholes on each slice of the ship. Hold the portholes in place with a toothpick.

You can add a ship steering wheel to the front by cutting a smallish wheel of lemon and pinning it in place with a toothpick.

This looks best served on a large platter surrounded by blue jellybeans with a few gold chocolate coins tossed in for good measure.

Blueberry, Cucumber, and Starfruit Time Scraps (S6E4 - The Doctor’s Wife)

1 large cucumber
1 large starfruit
2 cups/260 g blueberries
1 lemon
1 orange
1 lime
2 tbsp/30 ml rice wine vinegar
1 tbsp/15 ml olive oil
1 tsp/5 ml honey
½ tsp/2.5 g salt
pinch cayenne

Hello, sexy. You deserve a dish as blue as the Tardis, full of bright white moons and burning yellow stars with hints of orange and yellow comet trails dashing around your bowl.

If you have fresh blueberries, that’s great. If you’re relying on frozen, Put them in a colander, put the colander in a bowl, and let them sit in the fridge overnight. Save all the tasty blue juice dripping off of them for use in a cocktail. When you’re ready to make the dish, take the berries out first and let them come to room temperature.

Wash any wax off your lemon and orange then carefully zest them both. You want to make sure you only get the brightly colored peels. That interior white pith is nasty and bitter. Toss the zest into a small bowl. Juice the lime into the bowl, next add the rice wine vinegar, olive oil, salt, and cayenne. Whisk them together to make a nice, light citrussy dressing.

Next, peel your cucumber and cut it in half lengthwise. Use a spoon to scoop out the seeds. Angle the edges a bit to make nice, white crescent shapes. Cut the seeded cucumber into moon shaped slices and toss them in a large bowl. Wash the starfruit and cut it into slices the same width as your cucumber moons. Toss them into the same bowl.

The cucumber and starfruit slices are sturdier than the berries, so add the dressing now and toss it about until everything is thoroughly coated. If you’re using fresh blueberries, add them now, gently mix them, and call it a day. If you’re using frozen berries, rinse them lightly to remove any last bits of leaky juices (this way you won’t stain the other fruits) and add them to the fruit bowl.

Top the whole thing off with any leftover zest or some reserved slices of lemon and orange peel, just to add more Tardissy color. This wilts fast, so make it right before your party starts.

If you’re in the mood for a fancy dinner party, this is great with some Chicken and Ood soup for Nephew, the Tardis Wellington for Idris, and your choice of blue cocktails.

Confidentially, this is also a good base for a Vincent inspired Starry Night platter.

Melted Rebel Flesh (S6E5 - The Rebel Flesh)

1 lb/455 g russet potatoes
8 cloves garlic
3/4 cup/85 g whole blanched almonds
1/2 cup/120 g extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 cup/120 g water
juice of 1 large lemon
3 tbsp/45 ml white wine vinegar
1 tbsp/15 g kosher salt
½ tsp/2.5 g fresh ground black pepper
1 hardboiled egg
red apple, olive and raisin scraps
I wanted to give you a rebel flesh recipe that would make you cry more, more, more. Then I remembered that was a Billy Idol lyric and not a Dusty Springfield one. One look at these aliens and I knew exactly what I was going to make. After all, the Flesh looks like sculpted mashed potatoes with hard boiled eggs for eyes. They might as well have included a recipe for Skordalia on the lids of the acid vats.

Peel your potatoes, cube them, and boil them until tender. Drain the potatoes and let them cool slightly. While they’re cooling, peel your garlic and toss it in a food processor or blender. Add the almonds, olive oil, salt, and lemon juice. Process it all into a thick paste. Add everything but the potatoes and pulse it a couple more times so everything is nicely mixed. Finally, make sure your potatoes are totally drained then throw them in the blender or food processor along with everything else. Pulse lightly until you have a uniform mass of Flesh colored tasty paste.

Serve your Flesh dip in an oval dish to get the full effect of a melting human face. Cut the hardboiled egg in half and lightly sprinkle it with cayenne pepper to make bloodshot eyes, then position them at the top of the face. Slice your apple, rub it with the remains of your lemon (to stop it from turning brown) and position it for the mouth. If you're good with a knife, try to carve a gaping scream. You can also drop a couple raisins in the middle for barely formed nostrils. This goes well with a tray of vegetables, pita bread wedges, and an existential dread that your memories aren’t really your own.

Liquid Flesh Cocktail (S6E6 - The Almost People)

4 pasteurized eggs
2 cups/475 ml Irish whiskey
2 cups/475 ml sweetened, condensed milk
2 cups/475 ml heavy cream
2 tbsp/30 ml chocolate syrup
2 tbsp/30 ml strong, brewed coffee
1 tbsp/15 ml high quality vanilla
1 tbsp/15 ml almond liqueur
1 tbsp/15 ml honey (optional)

The cocktail is my version of homemade Irish Crème Liqueur. If you’re feeling lazy, just pick up a bottle of Bailey’s and pour it into a decanter. You now have instant Flesh. However, if you’ve never tried homemade Irish Crème, you are missing out on one of life’s great pleasures. This recipe is dirt simple, cheaper than a bottle of Bailey’s, and delightfully easy to modify according to tastes. As much as I like the original recipe here, I also really enjoy it with a tablespoon of cinnamon or a quarter cup of peppermint schnapps. Play with it.

Crack the eggs into a blender. Add everything else. Put on the lid and let it enthusiastically blend away until everything is thoroughly integrated. At this point, simply pour it on ice and drink up. That’s it. It’s almost embarrassingly easy. Your Irish crème will stay good in the fridge for a few days, though mine rarely lasts that long. This is a good time to reuse any of your leftover Last Human Fruit Leather combined with some plain brown bags made into paper dolls for the acid miner jumpsuits. Suddenly, you have a Flesh ganger for everyone at your party and a glass full of liquid flesh for them to drink up.

Headless Monk (S6E7 - A Good Man Goes to War)

Fish:
4 tbsp/60 ml olive oil
4 standard issue lunch-size brown paper bags
4 (6 oz/170 g) halibut, swad, or other white fish fillets
salt and pepper
2 tbsp/30 ml soy sauce
2 tbsp/30 ml freshly squeezed lime juice
3 tbsp/45 g freshly grated ginger
Salsa:
2 ripe
mangos, peeled and diced
4 scallions, trimmed and diced
½ red bell pepper, diced
2 tbsp/30 g chopped onion
4 tbsp/60 ml freshly squeezed lime juice
1 tbsp/15 ml rice wine vinegar
1 tsp/5 g salt
½ tsp/2.5 g cayenne pepper.

You could host a party around this episode alone. You get a best-of-aliens parade including everything from the Silurians to the Pirates to the Cybermen However, you get to see something new and awful here in the form of the Headless Monks, so let’s celebrate the awkwardness with its own special recipe

This makes a great Whovian centerpiece for a sit down dinner. The bags smells delicious while also looking creepily suspicious in the middle of the table .

Start by preheating your oven to 425F/218C. While it heats up, drizzle a tablespoon of olive oil over the outside of your paper bags and rub it in with your hands until the bags are entirely coated. They'll get a little wrinkled. That's okay. Greasing them up helps keep the paper bags from igniting while in the oven. Let the olive oil soak into the paper while you rinse your fish fillets and pat them dry. Generously season both sides of the filets with salt and pepper.

In a small bowl, mix your soy sauce, lime juice, and ginger. Open each bag and put a single fish fillet in the bottom. Carefully reach in and spoon one quarter of the soy-lime mix over each filet. To make the full headless monk effect, bunch the top of the paper bag together and then roll it down, so it looks like the cowl of a robe. Just underneath that, cinch it closed with a rubber band.

Put the bags on a baking sheet and cook the fish for 18-20 minutes. When you take the bags out, tie a rope knot around the neck of each bag to add to the overall headless monk effect. Fluff out the shoulders of the bags before putting them on the table.

While your headless monks are baking, mix up your salsa by simply combining all the salsa ingredients in a large bowl and tossing them gently with a fork.

To serve, tear a small slit in the bags, carefully transfer the fish to a plate, and top it with the freshly made mango salsa. This pairs very well with the Blueberry, Cucumber and Starfruit Time Scraps.

Regeneration Fizz (S6E8 - Let’s Kill Hitler)

1 shot/45 ml banana rum
1 shot/45 ml blue curacao
chilled, pink sweet sparkling wine
lemon twist

Don’t get me wrong. I love Moffat’s writing, but this episode had plot holes you could drive a starship through. So to help you help you ignore them and just enjoy the amusing one liners and in-references instead, I humbly present this strong regeneration fizz. Drink enough and it will erase your memory.

Simply pour your orange vodka and banana rum into a champagne glass. Top it off with sweet, sparkling wine and garnish the glass with a twist of lemon peel. Menacingly serve it with a banana and a kiss, perhaps while crying a river over the gaping continuity issues. At least it’s pretty.

This is the perfect drink for a gay gypsy bar mitzvah.

Jammy Dodgers (S6E9 - Night Terrors)