Dining With The Doctor: The Unauthorized Whovian Cookbook (9 page)

Including baking time, you'll have these on the table in half an hour. If you're looking for something that's both a good Whovian in-joke and a variation from the endless fish fingers and custard spreads, this is a nice alternative. You can always meet the fish finger folks in the middle by putting out a tray of some of the savory fake custard alternatives you'll also find lurking in the last chapter.

SERIES THREE: SMITH AND JONES

Huon Particle Cocktail (S3E1 - The Runaway Bride)

3 shots/130 ml Champagne or sparkling wine
½ shot/22 ml clear raspberry liqueur
Fresh raspberries

This is a simple cocktail in honor of a complicated wedding. Poor Donna Noble. It’s hard enough to lose your fiancé, but losing him to an impossibly giant cross between a spider and a crab could hurt any woman’s ego. The best thing to do is drink it off and hope a madman in a blue box comes to rescue you.

Again.

Add half a shot of Chambord (or your favorite raspberry liqueur) to the bottom of a champagne flute. Top the flute off with champagne. Drop in 3-4 raspberries, to symbolize the Racnoss Empress. If you’re feeling extra fancy (and you have cooperatively sturdy fruit) you can even garnish the glass with another raspberry.

This refreshing cocktail is best served at a festive occasion alongside a tray of dark pink crab legs artistically arranged to look like a spider.

Moon Cake Pops (S3E2 - Smith and Jones)

1 box of cake mix
1 tub of pre-made frosting
1 8 oz/220 g bag of white melting chocolate
1 tbsp/15 g butter
a handful of chocolate chips
powdered hot chocolate mix
long lollipop sticks or bamboo skewers
paintbrush
styrofoam block for display

If you’ve had a hard day of being abducted by giant walking rhinos, you deserve a nice commemorative dessert. Luckily, it’s easy to make these cake pops look like tiny, edible moons.

You have a lot of good flavor choices here. If you want to make your cake interior look really moon-like, pick up a box of spice cake or carrot cake. Realistically, though, those aren’t your favorite flavors. You’re probably going to pick chocolate. I’m a big fan of lemon. Or strawberry. Or red velvet. Let’s be honest, I’m just a big fan of cake. Whatever you pick, just get the corresponding icing.

Bake your cake according to the package directions. Once it’s finished, resist the urge to stuff the warm cake directly into your face. If you’re notorious for poor self control, bake an auxiliary backup cake. Once your primary Whovian cake is finished, let it cool down to room temperature. Now let your inner five year old run loose and rip that cake to shreds. Seriously. Tear into it with your fingers until you have nothing but a gorgeous mess of shredded cake goodness.

Meanwhile, soften the tub of icing in your microwave. Pour ¾ of it over the cake crumbles. If you use the whole tub of icing, your cake pops will end up too mushy. Resist the temptation. You want to moisten the cake and hold it together without making it unpalatabley gooey. Now really mix the cake and icing together until you have a solid cake paste.

Line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil and spritz it with nonstick spray. If you have a cookie scoop or melon baller, use that to scoop nicely shaped balls into your hands. Roll them around a little to get them as moon shaped as possible, then line them up on the cookie sheet. Your hands are about to get really goopy. Every half dozen or so, be prepared to go wash your hands (and maybe re-grease them with some spare butter to keep future cake balls from sticking.)

Once you’re out of cake, put the tray of balls into your freezer for at least an hour. You want them to firm up so they’ll play nicely with the icing. While the cake balls are chilling, pour your white melting chocolate into a large, microwave safe bowl. In the United States, you can find this at most craft stores, such as Michael’s or Hobby Lobby.

Cut 1 tablespoon/15 grams of butter into four small pieces and toss them in the bowl. While you’re at it, toss in a couple chocolate chips. These don’t add much flavor, but they do help turn the white chocolate more of a moon-like grey.

When your cake pops have firmed up, follow the package directions to melt the chocolate in the microwave. Alternately, you can melt the chocolate in a double boiler, but it takes a lot longer and requires you to have an actual double boiler. This recipe is for lazy people who want to look fancy, and we both know that means you don’t own a whole lot of exotic pans.

Now that your chocolate is melted, it’s time for the fun part. Skewer each ball with a lollipop stick or actual bamboo kabob skewer. Dip it in the chocolate, roll it around a bit, and make sure the entire ball is nice and coated. Shove the skewers into a styrofoam block (which you can also pick up at the craft store) so the cake pop keeps it’s moon shape.

Grease your fingers up with butter and poke little crater shapes into the moons. Once the icing has cooled, you can use the powdered hot chocolate mix and a paint brush to dust on shadows in the craters and give the moons a little more contrast and definition. Or you can drink the hot chocolate while admiring all your hard work making these miniature moons. I’m not going to judge.

Psst...these work equally well as “Day of the Moon” themed decorations.

Shakespearean Shooter Sandwich (S3E3 - The Shakespeare Code)

1 crusty round loaf of bread
2 lbs/910 g steak, preferably not too lean
1 lb/500 g mushrooms
½ lb/230 g leeks or onions
8 tbsp/75 g butter
2 tbsp/30 ml Worcestershire sauce
4 garlic cloves
3.5 oz/100 ml brandy or whiskey|
nor (optional)

That beard. That swagger. Oh, Shakespeare. You’ve never been so sexy.

If you slipped into the Tardis for Martha’s first journey back in time, you could not only enjoy the only production of Shakespeare’s “Love’s Labour's Won,” but also a hearty slice of what would later be called a Shooter’s Sandwich. It’s a sort of cheap cheater’s version of a hearty meat pie made by people who didn't have access to an oven. One dense slice would keep you full for the duration of a four hour long performance. For you historians, this is technically an Edwardian recipe. However, food historians agree that by the time a recipe was written down, it had usually been in use and circulation for decades, so there are good odds you'd find this served at theaters like the Globe. Groundlings needed some hearty fare for a day of mocking actors and pretending to flirt with boys in dresses. This would’ve been perfect.

Start by slicing off the top quarter of your hearty round loaf. Scoop out about ⅔ of the interior. You can pull the interior apart and let the scraps dry in order to make homemade croutons. Thinly slice your mushrooms, garlic, and leeks or onions. Melt your butter in a skillet and toss in your vegetables. You want to sauté them over a medium high heat until they’re reduced down to about half their previous bulk. Add the Worcestershire sauce and brandy or whiskey then give it a good stir. Let it continue to cook down while you prepare the steaks.

While your vegetables enjoy their drink, take a shot for yourself before rubbing your steaks down with a generous amount of salt and pepper. This part isn’t entirely period, since pepper would be a bit pricy in Shakespeare’s day, but in our modern, decadent era you can afford to live a little. Speaking of living a little, treat yourself to some nice, fatty ribeyes. If you use a really lean meat you’ll end up with an unpleasantly dry, tough sandwich. You want something with some real substance in this manly sandwich.

Rub a tiny amount of butter into the bottom of a hot skillet and sear your steaks for a couple of minutes on each side. You want to keep them nice and juicy for the sandwich, so don’t go overboard. Aim for medium rare to medium. While the steaks are still dripping and hot, tuck them into the hollowed out loaf of bread. You want to create a solid layer of meat across the bottom. If you’re feeling fancy, you can now smear the steaks with some horseradish or mustard for extra flavor. When you’re done, top the meat off with all your vegetables. Try to really cram them down inside. If you’d like, you can top the whole thing off with a thick layer of cheese.

Now put the lid back on your bread. It looks as innocent as a pretty young witch. You’d never imagine what’s really inside. If you want to give it some extra flair, use an exacto knife to cut out a giant DW or Seal of Rassilon from the nori and put it over the middle of the bread lid.

Wrap the sandwich in waxed paper and tie it loosely with butcher’s string. This is to keep everything in place so you don’t end up with a sandwich that’s all mushroom in one bite and all meat in the next. You need to keep it all in place because next, you’re going to crush it as thoroughly as the tenth Doctor crushes Martha’s heart.

Flatten the wrapped sandwich under something heavy - the complete Yale Shakespeare is a good start. If you have bricks or cinderblocks lying about, you can pile them on top of a board. Put some real weight onto it. You're about to crush the sandwich down into a hearty mock pie.

Let the sandwich sit under the weights, unrefrigerated, for at least 6 hours, preferably overnight. The end result should be a fantastically dense, room temperature sandwich

When you’re ready to serve it, cut the sandwich into pie-like slices. A little goes a very long way. To add to the period feel, hire a cross dresser to serve it with apples and nuts.

Kitty Nurse Kibble (S3E4 - Gridlock)

3 cups/700 g rolled oats (not instant)
1 cup/200 g nuts and seeds
½ cup/120 g dried fruit
½ cup/100 ml dark honey
¼ cup/50 g unsweetened coconut flakes
1 tsp/5 g cinnamon
1 tbsp/15 ml vanilla

We’re back on New Earth, where the Face of Boe is once more being tended by personal nun and part time pet kitty, Novice Hame.

In honor of the cars endlessly circling below, I humbly offer this anthropomorphized cat chow. It packs densely, is shelf stable at room temperature for months, and is equally nutritious whether you’re on an endless roadtrip or living with your head in the clouds.

Preheat your oven to 300F/150C. While the oven warms up, soften your honey in the microwave for 15-20 seconds. You don’t want it to boil, but you do want to get it a little bit runny. Mix in the vanilla and cinnamon. Once those are well blended, add your oats, coconut flakes, and nuts or seeds. Personally, I like pepitas and peanuts, but feel free to use sunflower seeds, flax seeds, pecans, walnuts, almonds, or whatever crunchy bits suit you.

I usually start this process by coating a large plastic spoon in olive oil (so the mix won’t stick to the spoon) and really putting my elbow into it, but I still end up with some bits too dry and others too soggy. I recommend skipping this well intentioned but ultimately delusional step. Just rub your hands down with some oil (it helps keep everything from sticking to your skin) and get in there with your bare hands from the very start. Really knead it so everything is coated in a little honey.

Once you’re satisfied with the honey to crunchy bits ratio, butter the heck out of a cookie sheet and spread your mix out as thinly as possible. Bake it for about 15 minutes. Use a rubber or silicone spatula to break it all up and mix it around, then try to once more spread it thinly. Pop the mix back in the oven and bake it for another 10-12 minutes, or until it just barely starts to brown. There’s a thin line between deliciously crunchy and horrifically burned. When in doubt, undercook the kibble.

While it’s still hot, mix in your choice of dried fruit. I’m a big fan of cherries and blueberries, but you’re welcome to use cranberries, raisins, pineapple, mango, banana chips, or whatever makes your mouth happy.