Dining With The Doctor: The Unauthorized Whovian Cookbook (4 page)

This freezes really well. If you have any leftover, make it into ice cubes and use them to flavor your water. Be warned, if you’re trying to increase your daily water intake, these make downright addictive ice cubes. Maybe that’s how Pete Tyler got so rich.

Wartime Cheese and Potato Dumplings with Fried Spam Slices (S1E9 - 10  The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances)

One of the best Science Fiction convention costumes I ever spied was a steampunk couple who simply gave their little boy a gas mask. It was almost impossible not to back away a couple of steps when he walked up and asked, “Are you my mummy?”

By the time this episode aired, I was already sold on the show’s reboot, but the two-parter made me really believe the new Doctor Who had legs. It was beautifully written, so wonderfully atmospheric, and used the now classic technique of making something ordinary into something terrifying. Little did I know this would be my first step down the path towards feeling instantly suspicious of things like shadows and statues.

I feel almost guilty critiquing their London Blitz Scavenger’s Meal. Almost. Even on the black market, a table like the one we saw full of roast pork, carrots, potatoes, and brown gravy in such generous portions would’ve been nearly impossible. In reality, a hearty Blitz era feast would’ve consisted of cheese and potato dumplings with pan fried spam slices and wartime ration bread toasted in the extra grease from the spam drippings.

To give you a real idea what Londoners actually survived on during the Second World War, take a look at the weekly ration allowance for one adult in the 1940’s.

Bacon & Ham 4 oz
Meat to the value of 1 shilling and sixpence (around about 1/2 lb minced beef)
Butter 2 oz
Cheese 2 oz
Margarine 4 oz
Cooking fat 4 oz
Milk 3 pints
Sugar 8 oz
Preserves 1 lb every 2 months
Tea 2 oz
Eggs 1 fresh egg per week
Sweets/Candy 12 oz every 4 weeks

That’s it. If you ate it all, you went hungry until next week. It’s amazingly austere. I could easily use all those ingredients to make a single meal with modest servings for four. Other than strictly rationed items, the grocery stores stocked limited quantities of flour, beans and potatoes. People were encouraged to dig up their gardens and plant vegetables and herbs, which certainly helped. Even raisins were a scarce treat.

Out of sheer respect for people who lived through the Blitz (and love for these two episodes) I humbly present the sort of authentic Air Raid meal Nancy and her pack of lost kids might’ve actually found while the householders were hiding in their bomb shelters. I'll admit I decadently doubled the amount of herbs (and added salt, pepper, and more herbs to my baked potato peels), which is probably why the end result tasted far better than I expected.

Wartime Cheese and Potato Dumplings with Fried Spam Slices
2 lbs/900 g of potatoes
2 eggs
4 oz/114 g grated cheese
½ tsp/2-3 g salt
¼ tsp/1-2 g pepper
1 tbsp/15 g of any dried herbs you’ve grown, such as thyme, basil, or parsley

Wash and peel the potatoes. If you want to really get a feel for the blitz, save the potato peels. You’ll rub them in any leftover cooking grease you can find, dust them with any leftover crumbs and and spices from the plates, then bake them up as a crispy treat. Nothing was wasted.

First, though, cube your potatoes and boil them in lightly salted water. Once they’re fork soft, put them in a colander and let them drain naturally for 10 minutes. You want to let the starches rest before you mess with them again. Set the potato water aside as a soup base for your next meal.

After the potatoes have rested and you’ve set aside the water they boiled in, return the potatoes to your saucepan. Keep the heat low while you add your salt, pepper, and herbs. Give it a good stir. Add both the eggs (or, if you’re feeling extra authentic, two reconstituted powdered eggs) and half the cheese then give it another good stir. Keep stirring until the potatoes firm up. If you happen to have some extra flour, you can always add a tablespoon/15 grams of it to help thicken the dumplings.

Heat your oven to 350F/178C. Turn the potato mix into 12 small balls, roll them in the remaining grated cheese, then put them on a lightly greased baking tray and let them cook for 20 minutes until they’re brown and crusty.

While they’re baking, open your tin of Spam and cut it into ½ inch/1.25 cm slices. Spam has a nice, high fat content, so you don’t need to waste any of your precious cooking fat. Fry the slices on a medium-high heat until they’re crispy on each side.

When the spam slices are done, you have to make a decision. If you have any leftover Wartime Loaf (a very simple bread) you can use the leftover spam grease to fry up a slice for each family member. Add it to their plate along with the dumplings and spam slices.

If you’re out of bread, get the potato peelings and rub them into the spam grease until they’re as well coated as possible. Add whatever salt and herbs you can spare. Spread the peelings into a thin layer on a baking sheet and put them in the oven for 10 minutes. This should work out well. The dumplings take 20 minutes to cook. If you fry the Spam for 10 minutes, then bake the potato peels for 10 minutes everything will be ready for the table at the same time.

Everyone should get 2 slices of Spam, 3 potato dumplings, and either 1 slice of fried toast or 1 handful of baked potato peelings. Chow down on this wartime meal while staring out your window and wishing a wheezing blue box would appear outside your door.

Slitheen Eggs (S1E11 - Boom Town)

4 cups/1 liter water
6 large white eggs
6 bags (or 6 tsp/30 g loose) black tea
1 tbsp/15 g green peppercorns
2 whole cloves
1 star anise
1 cinnamon stick
2 tbsp/30 g white sugar
1 inch/2.5 cm peeled fresh ginger, sliced thickly
16-20 drops green food coloring

Okay, so these are a little smaller and a little less tentacly than Margaret was when she regressed to childhood, but they’re also not sentient, which means you don’t need to feel guilty about chowing down on these marbled green eggs.

Start by bringing the water to a boil.

Add the green tea, star anise (or 1 tsp/5 grams regular anise), cinnamon stick and peeled ginger. Once the water is nice and bubbly, let the tea brew for about 5 minutes then soft boil your eggs.

To soft boil the eggs, reduce the boiling tea mix to a simmer then gently lower in your eggs one at a time. (You can use this same recipe to make a dozen eggs. No need to double anything but the eggs themselves.) Cook them for 8 minutes with the lid on. Now, carefully remove your eggs from the pan and rinse them in cold water so you don’t burn your hands. Once they’re cool to the touch, use the back of a spoon to gently crack the shells. You don’t want to peel the shells off or break them into pieces. Just tap away with the spoon to create a nice crackle pattern in the surface. The more you crack them, the more intricate and interesting the pattern.

Now add the green food coloring, sugar, and peppercorns (if you can’t find green pepper, go ahead and substitute whatever mixed color peppercorns are locally available) to the pan and gently lower the cracked eggs into the water. Bring the mix back up to a boil then turn the heat down to low. Put a lid on and leave the eggs in the brew for the next 40 minutes.

When you pull them out, you’ll have green eggs with an amazing brown veined pattern. If you use white eggs, the interior of the peels are even more impressive than the exterior. Best of all, the eggs themselves with have a really neat but subtle flavor. These will remain good in the fridge for a couple of days, so feel free to make them in advance. They taste best warm or at room temperature, though.

Since your Slitheen eggs don’t have any of Margaret’s tentacles, when you’re ready to serve them, boil a mix of half black and half whole wheat angel hair pasta according to the package directions. If your local grocery doesn’t have black pasta, don’t stress over it. Just get the whole wheat type. The two colors combine to look more like the overall effect of the texture and color of the tentacles, but no one is going to be that big a stickler for details. You can also pick up black squid ink pasta on Amazon.

Toss your pasta in a little olive oil, fresh garlic, and salt (the oil helps keep your pasta from drying out as well as acting as a vehicle for the flavor) then make it into some neat little nests. You're welcome to substitute your favorite olive oil based sauce if you want a flavor with more punch. A tomato based sauce will make it look like you stabbed the living egg until it bled on your pasta. If you really hated Margaret (and your friends have strong stomachs) then go right ahead. A white sauce just doesn't work. Trust me.

 Snuggle an unpeeled Slitheen egg into each nest. Let people peel the eggs at their plate so they get the full effect of the green, veined outside as well as seeing the artistically colored inside. As cool as the unpeeled eggs look, the inside of the shells really sell the overall alienness. Once you're done showing off, you end up with a unique, mellow, spicy flavor that tastes just as alien as it looks.

This makes a good main course for your vegetarians and lactose intolerant friends. As an added bonus, even if you special order the squid ink pasta, you still have a dirt cheap main dish with a nice, dramatic flair. Be warned, people who eat eggs tend to ask for extras (as much to play with as to eat) so go ahead and make some spares.  

Big Brother House Bad Wolf Brand Human Chow Cookies (S1E12 - Bad Wolf)

1 cup/225 g unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup/210 g light brown sugar
1/3 cup/65 g white sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp/5 ml vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups/195 g flour
1 tsp/5 g baking soda
1 tsp/5 g salt
½ tsp/3-4 g cinnamon
3 cups/260 g old-fashioned rolled oats
1 cup/140 g large golden raisins
½ cup/70 g large dried cranberries

Oh, Russell T. Davies. It’s hard to believe you let the writers follow up something as amazing as The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances with a two part parody of contemporary reality TV.

 Watching their lethal versions of Big Brother and The Weakest Link is a great reminder that Doctor Who is at its best when the episodes are timeless

If you want really appropriate foods for the lifelong reality show contestants of the new Satellite 5, go raid a gas station for whatever brightly colored packaged foods have the longest expiration date. If that sounds like a vile punishment, you can always chow down on these cookies instead. You can pretend they’re a nutritious breakfast or a dessert treat, all while a Bad Wolf glares at you from the baking sheet.

To make these, beat your room temperature butter, brown sugar, and white sugar until they’re as creamy and smooth as Captain Jack’s bare chest. Now add in your eggs and vanilla, once more beating the mix until it gives you a saucy wink. Once your wet ingredients are well teased and ready for more, introduce them to the dry. Some people would put the flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon into a separate bowl and thoroughly mix them all together, but let’s be honest. You’re going to dump them all on top of the eggy sugar mix so you don’t have to dirty a second bowl. I don’t blame you. As long as you mix nice and thoroughly, everybody will play nicely together.

Once your mix looks irresistibly delicious, roughen it up a little by stirring in the rolled oats.

This is the point where you’d normally mix in all the raisins and cranberries, but these are Bad Wolf cookies. Instead, you’re going to put the bowl in the freezer and walk away for 45 minutes. Gosh, that’s just long enough to watch an episode.