A Feast of Fire and Ice — Our Game of Thrones Themed Feast
Welcome back, friends! A bit of a hiatus, but it’s well worth it. Been up to a bunch of stuff, mostly involving … food! Fire Island will be posted (and so will the backlog of trips I’ve taken such as the rest of California and Australia), but for now, we dive into the world of George R.R. Martin.
A couple of months ago, with our renovations finished and my 30th birthday looming, we decided to throw a joint birthday/housewarming celebration. Our friend Steve (to whom I will now on refer to as “Wacka”) brought us the king of gifts—the Game of Thrones cookbook, A Feast of Fire and Ice. We thanked Wacka and said we would invite him over to try these recipes out.
Fast forward a few months and here we are. Now, being that when this dinner happened, it was still pretty warm and humid out. The one problem with the book is that 98% of the recipes are very hearty and heavy dishes. Not optimal for that kind of weather. I searched through the book trying to find something that wouldn’t be too complicated and too heavy. Dr. Awesome and I agreed on two recipes: Aurochs Roasted with Leeks with a Medieval Pepper Sauce (inspired by Winterfell) and for dessert, Iced Blueberries in Sweet Cream (a treat from The Wall).
I started out preparing the iced blueberries. All we had to do with the blueberries was freeze them. The cream on the other hand was more labor intensive.
First, I had to slightly beat two egg whites and added it to the cream in a sauce pot.
While heating the cream and egg white mixture up slowly, I had to whisk it the whole time so that the eggs didn’t scramble and also so that the cream didn’t burn. Once the mixture got to below a boil, I added some amazing honey from Catskill Provisions (their Spring honey) and salt.
Once that simmered for another two minutes, I poured the warmed mixture into a bowl and added some more cream and sugar. I then put it in the fridge for a couple of hours to cool and thicken.
Next was preparing the main dish. I had gone to our amazing butcher, Ottomaneli and Sons, to get our top round of beef. The butcher asked me how I was going to prepare it and I told him it was being roasted. I received this amazing cut of beef wrapped in a layer of fat. Just picture a beef wellington. That’s what it looked like.
To prepare the dish, I had to cut up some leeks into circles and use a whole head of garlic.
Then we added some carrots, sage, thyme and bay leaves.
I also added a cup of beef stock to the bottom so that the veggies wouldn’t burn (plus it gave them an amazing beef flavor, along with the fat that melted onto them).
Dr. Awesome seasoned the beef on all sides.
Then we placed it on top of the veggies with the temperature probe inside to make sure it was cooked to a perfect medium-rare.
While the beef was cooking, we prepared the suggested Medieval Pepper Sauce. Basically, you torch a piece of bread till it’s charred, then we put it into a mixture of vinegar and water with ground ginger and of course, black pepper, and mashed it until we got the right consistency that we wanted. (We had to add some more liquid since it was coming out too thick.)
After about an hour and a half, our beef was ready to be pulled. And it came out looking great.
Here are how the veggies came out—all roasted to perfection by a lot of beef fat.
Now, I’m sure you’re asking, “why are there mashed potatoes on this table when there was no mention of a potato recipe?” Well, Dr. Awesome deduced (like Sherlock) that because potatoes are a “new world” food, they were not included. But we felt we needed some sort of carb, so we broke the rules a little.
Dr. Awesome thought it appropriate to read to us from the cookbook—quotes which preceded each recipe.
And then, we feasted.
We had our doubts, but the beef was cooked to perfection, the veggies had a ton of flavor and the pepper sauce really added a crazy new dimension to the beef flavor.
As you can see, Wacka and his sweet date Micaela enjoyed it too.
With bellies full of meat, it was time to break out the dessert.
The frozen blueberries and the thickened cream were great. What was really cool was that the cream froze onto the berries, so it made it almost like a thin layer of ice cream. Really delicious.
All in all, we had a pretty successful dinner. When it gets a bit colder out, we’ll be trying out some more recipes.
And I’m sure Wacka will make another guest appearance 🙂
I YUM New York 