An Unexpected Cookbook: The Unofficial Book of Hobbit Cookery (9 page)

If you’ve never tried rabbit, it’s a mild, easygoing meat that pairs perfectly with English herbs. If your large local grocery store stocks bison or goat, odds are good they also occasionally stock rabbit. Some smaller grocers also stock a few frozen rabbits, usually in bottom drawers away from eye level.

Stew:

1 tbsp butter or lard

2 onions, diced

1 medium rabbit, skinned and quartered

2 bay leaves

1 tsp fresh ground black pepper

2 tsp coarse salt

1 tsp dried tarragon

1 tsp dried thyme

½ tsp dried basil

5 c /1 liter water

4 large carrots, peeled and cut into large chunks

4 medium potatoes, peeled and cut into large chunks

1 large turnip, peeled and cut into large chunks

Dumplings:

1 c /140 g all purpose flour

½ c /120 g cold butter

¼ c/ 20 g fresh parsley, chopped

2 tsp baking powder

½ tsp coarse salt

½ tsp black pepper

cold water

Start by peeling your carrots, potatoes, and turnip. Cut the root veggies into equal sized large chunks of around 2 inches / 5 cm.

It’s time to get out your trusty Dutch oven again. If you don’t have a Dutch oven, use your heartiest stock pot.

Melt 1 tbsp butter or lard over a medium-high heat. Once the fat is a liquid, carefully brown your rabbit quarters. Use a pair of tongs to take them out of the pot and add the chopped onion in their place. Cook the onion until it barely starts to brown, no more than 3-4 minutes. Add the salt, pepper, bay leaves, tarragon, thyme, and basil. Mix them in with the onions and keep cooking for another minute.

Add all the water. Give it all a good, hearty stir. Since you’re not using broth, you really want the herbs mixed in well. Now return your rabbit pieces to the pot and put a lid on it. Turn the heat down to medium-low. You want to get a nice simmer going. Don’t let it come to a heavy boil. Let the hare and herbs simmer for 1 ½ hours, stirring once every 15 minutes or so.

After an hour and a half, add the carrots, potatoes, and turnips. Give it all another good, hearty stir and put the lid back on. Let it keep cooking for another half hour.

Meanwhile, prepare your dumplings. Historically, really decadent dumplings would be made with beef suet, which is a flavorful liver fat. If you have a really good butcher, he can get you some, but few commercial grocers stock it. Instead, we’re substituting the cheaper, more commonly available, but still delicious fat of butter.

Mix the flour, salt, pepper, parsley, and baking powder. Now cut the butter into small pieces and add it in. Use your fingers to crumble the butter into the flour mix. Once you’ve made something akin to parsley flavored gravel, add water, 1 tsp at a time, until you’ve got just enough to turn the gravel into a soft dough. Don’t knead, squeeze, or overwork the dough. If you do, you’ll get tough, chewy dumplings instead of soft, fluffy ones. Rip the dough into 8 smaller pieces.

Give your gently simmering stew one more hefty stir. Now carefully drop the 8 dumplings on top of the liquid. Don’t fuss with it. Just drop in a dumpling and move along. It doesn’t need to be perfect. Get them into the pot as quickly as possible and slap a lid on it.

Clamp the lid down tightly and leave it alone for 20 minutes. Do not raise the lid. If you let the steam escape, you’ll ruin your dumplings.

After 20 minutes, take the lid off and admire your handiwork. Use a slotted spoon to carefully lift the dumplings out of the broth. Now, because you’re a nice person, fish out the bones. If your broth is too thin, you can boil it uncovered for a few minutes to thicken it up.

Serve each person one hearty scoop of rabbit and veggies with two dumplings. Pour a little extra broth on top to keep it nice and creamy.

If you have unexpected guests, give them each a smaller scoop of soup with one dumpling and serve it with plenty of Pan Fried Tater Cakes (pg 71) and chunks of last night’s bread.

This quick, cheap soup is a great way to warm the belly while also stretching out more expensive luncheon ingredients in case you end up hosting an unexpected party full of rowdy dwarves.

1 lb / 450 g mushrooms, sliced

1 shallot, sliced

2 tbsp butter or cooking oil for vegans

1 tsp thyme

1 bay leaf

6 c / 1.4 l chicken or vegetable broth for vegans

1 tsp coarse salt

½ tsp fresh ground black pepper

Fetch 6 cups of the broth you made from the carcass of last night’s roast chicken (pg 116) and bring it to a boil. You can also use canned broth, but the flavor just won’t be the same. With simple food, the flavor comes from quality ingredients. Whatever broth you use, add the bay leaf, thyme, salt and pepper.

While the broth comes to a boil, melt the butter in a skillet over medium-high heat. Cook the shallots for 3-4 minutes or until they start to brown. Add the mushrooms and cook them for another 3-4 minutes.

Dump the sautéed shallots and mushrooms into the boiling broth and mix well. Turn off the heat, put a lid on top, and let the soup flavors mingle for 5-8 minutes.

Fish out the bay leaf and serve hot. If you can’t serve this immediately, hold off on combining the mushroom mix and hot broth until 10 minutes before serving. If you let the mushrooms soak for too long, they’ll turn your soup dark and suspiciously cloudy.

VEGAN VARIATION

If you have home made vegetable broth, this is the time to use it. The broth is the real star of this soup, and store bought broth just doesn’t pack much punch. In addition to substituting veggie broth for chicken broth and subbing in the cooking oil of your choice (olive works well, even though that would’ve been virtually unknown in the Shire) increase the oil by 1 tbsp. You want to make up for the natural fats in the home made chicken broth.

These tasty, pan-fried bites of potato goodness are perfect for soaking up gravy from your steak and ale pie or stewed rabbit. The key to success is patience. Trust your grandmother’s wisdom and walk away for a good ten minutes before flipping them and you’ll be rewarded with perfectly crisp, wonderful examples of how common, country people in Tolkien's day often had tastier meals than their wealthier city cousins.

1 c / 200 g shredded potatoes

2 c / 200 g mashed potatoes

1 c flour

1 large onion, minced

½ c / 100 g shredded cheddar (or your favorite cheese)

¼ c / 60 ml whole milk

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 tbsp coarse salt

1 tsp fresh ground black pepper

4 tbsp softened butter, plus 4-6 tbsp butter for frying

Peel and grate your raw potatoes. To reduce the starch, soak them in cold water for five minutes. Don’t skip this step. It makes a big difference. While the raw potatoes are soaking, mix your leftover mashed potatoes, flour, minced onion, minced garlic, salt, pepper, milk, shredded cheese and softened butter. You should end up with something a little thicker than lumpy pancake batter. Drain your raw potato shreds, give them one last rinse, and mix them into the batter.

Melt a tbsp of butter in a large skillet over medium heat - no hotter! Drop in a heaping tbsp full of batter and use the back of a spoon to flatten it slightly. You should be able to fry 3 potato cakes in a round pan or four in a square one.

Here’s the hard part. Once your potato cakes are nice and round, leave them alone. Let them sizzle away over a medium heat for about ten minutes. If your first batch starts to burn before 10 minutes are up, turn down the heat.

When you flip the tater cakes, the bottom side should be a lovely dark golden brown. Let them crisp up for another 6-8 minutes on the second side.

Since they are a bit time consuming, don’t be afraid of making two pans at once. Just stagger the flipping. Put down three potato cakes in the first pan. Wait five minutes, put three in a second pan, wait five more five minutes. You can get into a good rhythm of flipping one skillet and adding new batter to the other.

In addition to making great gravy sops, these small, round potato cakes also taste surprisingly good with a sprinkle of coarse salt and a dollop of fresh applesauce.

Tolkien based the Shire on a rural village outside Birmingham. Readers outside the UK are prone to thinking of the country one big coastline, but Birmingham is a thoroughly landlocked city smack in the middle of England. Tolkien wrote that the country village where he spent some of the happiest years of his childhood wasn’t on the train lines. This meant it was wonderfully isolated from what he saw as the worst parts of the industrial revolution. That also meant fresh fish would’ve been in limited supply.

The nearest port cities would’ve been around 100 miles away from the Shire. By horseback, that’s 3-4 days ride in each direction. With no air conditioning and no travel faster than a horse, your best case scenario is one week old stinky fish. People certainly would’ve enjoyed whatever river fish they could catch, but mutton, rabbit, chicken, and occasionally beef would've been their preferred protein.

This easy baked fish dish is more the sort of thing Hobbits would encounter on an adventure, dining in strange, new and distant lands - dozens of miles away!

2 filets white fish of your choice (cod, haddock, or whatever is fresh and sustainable) cut no more than ¾ inch / 2 cm thick

Juice and zest of 2 lemons

2 tbsp melted butter

1 tsp rosemary

1 tsp thyme

1 tsp coarse salt

1/2 tsp fresh ground black pepper

1 lb / 450 g asparagus, trimmed

Butter or oil up a baking sheet. Once your pan is prepped, in a large bowl, mix your fresh lemon juice and zest with the melted butter, rosemary, thyme, and coarse salt. You want to use a large bowl because you’re now going to dump in your fish and rub the lemon mix all over both sides, preferably without getting it all over your counter. Rub whatever’s left all over your asparagus.

Once your fish and asparagus are coated with lovely smelling herbs, arrange your fish filets in the middle of the sheet. Spread your trimmed asparagus in a single layer on either side.

Now grind the pepper directly over the top of your fish and asparagus. If you’re a big fan of fresh ground black pepper, go ahead and keep grinding until you’ve applied a tsp or more. It tastes lovely with the fresh lemon and herbs, but was incredibly expensive in Tolkien's day, so going light is actually a bit more authentic.

Bake at 375F / 190C. The thicker the fish, the longer it will take. At the 10 minute mark, stir the asparagus (you mostly want to flip it over) and rotate the pan 180 degrees to make up for any inconsistencies in your oven’s internal heat. Put it back in the oven and bake for another 5-10 minutes (for a total of 15-20 minutes) or until your fish flakes easily with a fork.