Winter may be coming, but to people addicted to Game of Thrones, the Autumn leading up to it is a long and painful one. The show last aired in August 2017, and HBO, the service that it calls home, has been vague about when we’ll get to see it again, specifying nothing further than some time in 2019. So what can diehard Thronies do to make the time pass a little quicker?
There aren’t a lot of options beyond reading all the books or bingeing on the entire series again, not that there’s anything wrong with that. But if you’ve already exhausted those options and want to branch out into something new, maybe it’s time to head to the kitchen and bring a taste of the Seven Kingdoms to your dining room table.
Following is a list of foods that have been featured on the show throughout its seven-year reign, and recipes that will allow you to recreate them yourself. Some will be harder to make than others, but the upside to that is that the longer you slave away on one of these dishes, the closer you’ll get to the show’s Season 8 premiere. Win-win!
So get cooking, and if this sort of activity agrees with you, you might want to consider investing in A Feast of Ice and Fire: The Official Game of Thrones Companion Cookbook, available on Amazon for a nominal charge of around $25.
Warning: Spoilers for Seasons 1 through 7 lie ahead!
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Bowl of brown
For the poor who live in the King’s Landing slum known as Flea Bottom, food is something that’s not for the squeamish. Most of its residents see just one meal a day, a cheap stew known as a “bowl of brown.” It got this name for two reasons – it’s brown, and since no one knows what’s in it, it can’t really be called anything else.
According to the first book in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, A Game of Thrones, the stew consists of carrots, onions, barley and turnips, as well as a mystery meat that may taste like chicken, but isn’t chicken. Luckily, you are under no obligation to go for 100 percent authenticity, and you can use whatever meat you want when you make your own. Of course, Cersei will still cast aspersions on your choice from her vantage point in the Red Keep.
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Frey pie
It wasn’t until Season 6 that some of the people who had wronged House Stark began to get their comeuppance, and when they did, it was glorious. This goes for Walder Frey, who masterminded the highly traumatic Red Wedding, and his sons Lothar and Black Walder, who carried it out.
Frey’s sons were butchered by Arya Stark and baked into a meat pie, and then she slit his throat, but not before unwittingly eating some of the pastry. Luckily for you, it’s not necessary to murder two human beings and process their carcasses to make a rough approximation of this ghoulish delight. Just grab the French Meat Pie recipe found on allrecipes.com and pretend that the beef and pork that it recipe calls for are actually Frey flesh.
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Direwolf bread
In season three, Arya Stark parts ways with one of her earliest traveling companions from King’s Landing, a baker’s apprentice named Hot Pie. Before she leaves, he gives her the gift of a loaf of bread in the shape of a direwolf, the sigil of House Stark.
Ben Hawkey, the actor who plays Hot Pie on the show, opened his own bakery in London in 2017 called You Know Nothing, John Dough (really!), which makes direwolf-shaped bread. Unsurprisingly, it sold out immediately, so you’ll have to make your own using the Fiction Kitchen podcast’s recipe and Direwolf Bread Template.
Image Credit: HBO.
Kidney pie
Seinfeld may have been a show about nothing, but Game of Thrones is a show about nothing good, in the sense that it’s not until Season 6 that something good actually happens to the characters we’ve been rooting for. This happens when Sansa Stark is reunited with half-brother Jon Snow after five seasons of nonstop suffering.
When reunited, the two reminisce about the kidney pie they used to eat as kids, and this recipe from the BBC shows you how to make one. The recipe omits the peas that they remember from Old Nan’s recipe, so maybe throw a few in there for authenticity’s sake.
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Lamprey pie
Lamprey pie is the subject of a blink-and-you-missed-it moment in the Season 2 episode “The Prince of Winterfell,” in which Tyrion Lannister compliments his sister Cersei on the dish. It’s made with the jawless fish that people have been eating since the days of Ancient Rome, and Queen Elizabeth II had it for her diamond jubilee in 2012, so it’s no stranger to the highborn.
“[Lampreys] were a great delicacy in medieval times but with urbanization and industrialization we have lost touch with many of our culinary traditions,” food historian Ivan Day told the Telegraph. “They are often compared to eel and because they are cooked in their own blood they have lost popularity, but I think they taste very nice especially if caught fresh.”
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Lemon cake
Sansa Stark is among the most repeatedly victimized characters on Game of Thrones. On one rare occasion when she actually cracked a smile, it was because she was being offered her favorite food, lemon cake.
Blogger and chef Rosanna Pansino, author of The New York Times bestselling book The Nerdy Nummies Cookbook, has her own recipe for the dessert on her website. It’s a simple recipe with widely available ingredients, but you’ll have to leave the sliced lemons out overnight, so give yourself two days to make it.
Image Credit: HBO.
Mutton
The characters on Game of Thrones frequently eat mutton, but Tywin Lannister doesn’t like it. In a great scene in season two, he gives his plate of it to his young, underfed cupbearer, unaware that she’s Arya Stark, sister of Robb Stark, the man currently taking up arms against him.
Mutton is eaten at different points in the series, and in the books. In A Storm of Swords, author George R.R. Martin describes it as it’s being eaten by the sworn brothers of the Night’s Watch – “Near evenfall, Owen the Oaf returned with a loaf of black bread and a pail of Hobb’s best mutton, cooked in a thick broth of ale and onions.”
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Oysters, clams and cockles
Toward the end of Season 5, Arya Stark is training to become an assassin, and she’s directed to kill someone simply called the “thin man.” She sells oysters, clams and cockles from a cart that she pushes by him every day, until he buys some.
A blogger called The Starving Chef has posted a recipe for these mollusks on her website, but has had to modify it, substituting mussels for cockles. Rather than serve them with vinegar as the “thin man” likes them, The Starving Chef has made “a simple shallot mignonette to be served in the shells for a boost of flavor.”
Image Credit: HBO.
Pigeon pie
If you’re a character on Game of Thrones, stay away from weddings. Aside from the infamous Red Wedding, there was also the Purple Wedding, at which the groom, King Joffrey, is poisoned. But if he had lived to eat any of the food at the wedding, he would have enjoyed a serving of pigeon pie.
You’re going to have a very hard time finding recipes online that use actual pigeons, which many city dwellers consider flying rats and wouldn’t eat at gunpoint. Instead, substitute Cornish game hens, as blogger The Starving Chef does in her recipe.
Image Credit: HBO.
Pork sausage
When King Joffrey died, the mantle of “creepiest and most sadistic character” on Game of Thrones was passed effortlessly to Ramsay Snow, who took Theon Greyjoy as a prisoner and removed a certain part of his body. To add insult to injury, he then ate a pork sausage in front of his newly-modified prisoner.
Luckily, there are many widely available pork sausage recipes that can even be enjoyed by those without prisoners to torture, flay and debase. For example, there’s this garlic pork sausage recipe from celebrity chef Anne Burrell, that you can make in less than an hour and a half.
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Roast chicken
The most violent season of the gruesomely violent Game of Thrones was arguably Season 4, which premiered with an episode in which Sandor “The Hound” Clegane massacres a group of Lannister soldiers at a tavern and then takes all of their roast chickens to eat. Arya Stark, who’s there with him, gets a new horse out of the deal too. But if roast chicken is your thing, you don’t need to be a bloodthirsty former member of the Kingsguard to enjoy it, nor do you even have to be a highly experienced chef.
The No-Fail Lemon Roasted Chicken by chef Marcella Hazan has a recipe that’s well within the reach of even the most inexperienced cook, and the name is no joke. If you follow the instructions exactly as written and don’t take any liberties with it, it comes out perfectly every time, literally without fail.
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Rabbit stew
While Sandor Clegane and Arya Stark are traveling, they encounter a farmer and his daughter, who give them a place to stay and food to eat. They are served a rabbit stew, which Clegane devours ravenously and with appalling table manners. Have you heard of a spoon?
While the stew made by these peasant farmers likely contains just a couple of simple ingredients, this recipe for “modern” stewed rabbit from Popsugar.com (https://www.popsugar.com/food/Modern-Stewed-Rabbit-Recipe-40997271) is more sophisticated. Popsugar.com says that the dish, which calls for one hour of cooking time, is “one of our favorites.”
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Sour goat’s milk
The night before the spectacular “Battle of the Bastards,” Ser Davos Seaworth and Tormund Giantsbane are having a friendly chat when the subject of wine comes up. Giantsbane offers Seaworth what Wildlings drink to take the edge off, sour goat’s milk, which he says is stronger than “that grape water” that they drink south of the Wall.
While many food bloggers have chosen not to publish their sour goat’s milk recipes, a Reddit user named “NorgMan” has given a rough approximation of how you can make it. “[T]he fermented milk would need to go through at least 1 distillation to bring the alcohol content to around 10%, up from 2 – 2.5 percent. This recipe used by nomadic Mongols is probably as close as you could get. Go get you some and party like the Free Folk!”
Image Credit: HBO.
Spit-roasted rabbit
There are multiple instances of characters on Game of Thrones eating spit-roasted rabbit. Sometimes this is done with great expertise and sometimes it’s done very poorly, such as when Podrick tries to cook one without skinning it first.
The Game of Thrones fan website The Inn at the Crossroads features a roasted rabbit recipe, although it gives instructions for cooking over a porch grill, since the person who wrote it lives in Boston. The recipe is simple and calls for about half an hour of cooking time, and the site advises that you forgo utensils and just tear into the thing with your hands and teeth.
Image Credit: HBO.
Stallion heart
One of the most memorable moments in season one of Game of Thrones is when a pregnant Daenerys Targaryen eats an entire, bloody, raw stallion heart in front of Khal Drogo’s khalassar. This puts her well on her way to becoming Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen, First of Her Name, the Unburnt, Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Chains and Mother of Dragons.
Sadly, modern Googling techniques have failed to turn up a decent recipe for raw stallion heart, so if you’re planning to go all Dothraki and eat one yourself, we can’t advise you to do much more than maybe sprinkle a little pepper on it. However, author Jennifer Thurston features on her website a recipe for a Dothraki Horse Heart Dessert, which calls for a heart mold, Jell-O, corn syrup, cocoa powder and, of course, red food coloring.
Image Credit: HBO.
Venison
Tywin Lannister is easily one of the most intimidating and ruthless characters on Game of Thrones, and that’s established the very first time we see him. He first appears in episode seven of the first season, skinning a deer while he lectures his son Jamie about the importance of family and what a man’s legacy is.
We don’t get to see him eat it, so we don’t know how it was served. However, there are many Game of Thrones-related venison recipes, including one from The Inn at the Crossroads fan site that’s a mix of different venison stews that appear throughout the books, and include such yummy extras as beer and bacon.
Image Credit: HBO.
Wild boar
If any one thing sets the events of Game of Thrones in motion, it’s the poisoning of Jon Arryn, Hand of the King. But a close second is when a typically drunk King Robert Baratheon gets gored by the wild boar that he’s hunting, setting into motion the War of Five Kings.
Just before he dies, he tells his family and friends to eat the boar, but doesn’t specify how it should be prepared. There are many recipes for wild boar on the internet, so why not try this recipe for pan roasted wild boar tenderloin with braised foraged mushrooms from Dean and DeLuca?
This article was syndicated by MediaFeed.org.
Image Credit: HBO.
