Dining With The Doctor: The Unauthorized Whovian Cookbook (12 page)

Next peel your pear. The white flesh makes the Toclafane’s eyes. Cut almond shaped eye pieces and position them above the crescent shaped cantaloupe cheekbones. You don’t want the eyes to be too sunken. If they’re not high enough up, pad the bottom with some extra cantaloupe meat.

Now take the remaining half of your second cucumber. It should be a nice roughly peeled half sphere of orange flesh. Cut away what you need in order to fit it into the gutted cucumber shell. You want it to be flush with the pear eye slices while also completely filling the shell.

Use your extra pieces of cucumber to flesh out the face and wedge it in nicely. Once it’s fully formed, use the tines of a fork to carve deep forehead lines. Use a butter knife or one tine of the fork to carve a long oval, about two inches wide, into the middle of the forehead. Go ahead and add any more wrinkles or lines you’d like.

Finish it off by mashing two blueberries flat and carefully pressing them into the middle of the eyes as dark, cloudy pupils.

If you’re careful, you should be able to get two Toclafane from two cantaloupes. If you’re not - and I’ll be honest, this is a bit of a hassle the first time around - you’ll get one Toclafane and a bunch of cantaloupe chunks.

That’s fine. Serve your one Toclafane surrounded by a mix of cantaloupe chunks and blueberries. If people ask, they’re there to symbolize the fiery skies filled with dead stars that wait at the end of the universe, but you and I know there’re really there to give your guests something to nosh on so your Toclafane has a chance of surviving until the last stragglers wander in. After all, something like this is worth showing off.

SERIES FOUR: THE DOCTOR-DONNA

Titanic 1st Class Menu Punch Romaine (S4E1 - Voyage of the Damned)

6 cups/2.7 kilograms crushed ice
2 cups/475 ml Champagne or sparkling wine
1 cup/237 ml white wine
1 cup/237 ml simple syrup
1/3 cup/78 ml fresh orange juice
2 tbsp/30 ml lemon juice
2 tbsp/30 ml white rum
orange peel (optional)

There was so much food in this episode I had a hard time deciding what to make. Foon’s Buffalo Wings were tempting, but I’ve already given you a recipe for Weeping Angel Wings. If Rambutan Fruit was easily available it’d be perfect as a stand in for Banacafalata. In the end, since this episode takes place on the sinking Titanic, it seemed appropriate to give you an easy recipe you can make at home for something first class passengers on board the real Titanic would’ve considered schmancy.

Once upon a time, this proto-margarita would’ve been an expensive and time consuming drink. Luckily, you have a blender. Modern technology is wonderful. You can skip all that thankless labor and simply toss everything but the orange peel into the blender. Leave the ingredients at the tender mercy of your whirring steel blades for about a minute. Once you have a nicely alcoholic ice mix, spoon it into individual dessert cups.

You’re on a boat. That means unless you’re wearing a captain’s hat, you’re not the designated driver. Enjoy the luxury of knowing you won’t be behind the wheel tonight by drizzling another half a shot of rum over the ice cups. To keep it classy, garnish each one with a curl of orange peel.

If you’d rather have a less classy but more evocative garnish, you can serve these with some easy Host Haloes. Toast up some white bread until its golden brown. Use a large glass to cut halo sized circles and a small glass to cut out the interior. Smear the circle of toast with clear apple jelly for that shiny golden look. Garnish each glass with a halo. Whenever someone asks you for information, remind them they’re about to die.

Serve these quickly lest you risk the dessert melting and the Host decapitating you in the hallway.

Adipose Herbed Butter (S4E2 - Partners in Crime)

1/2 cup/114 g undyed butter
2 tbsp/30 g Herbs de Provence
2 tbsp/30 ml fresh lemon juice
2 tsp/10 g pepper
½ tsp/2.5 g salt
small blueberries

Oh, Adipose. Your squishy adorableness has so much potential. Adipose Rice Crispy treats were tempting, but they weren’t smooth enough. A bento box filled with cuddly Adipose shaped sushi rice came out adorable and tasty, but still had a little more texture than I liked.

If you really want the smooth, creamy texture of the Adipose, you need to be true to the monsters. You need to work with pure, delicious fat.

Butter isn’t naturally yellow. That’s just dye. Most fresh butter is actually a creamy white color. Pick up some fresh butter from a farmer’s market or, if your local grocery stocks undyed butter, pick up some of that. Regardless of where you get it, when you bring your butter home, let it sit at room temperature. You want it soft, but not melted.

Knead the salt, Herbes de Provence, and lemon juice into half of the butter. At this point, it should look way too herby to pass for an Adipose. Luckily, you have the other half pound of butter.

Shape your herb butter into a rough oval. Now carefully mash your remaining butter around it until you have a deceptively smooth white outer shell. Cut a slit on each side to make the arms and a slit down the middle bottom to make the legs. Pack them with more fresh butter until you don’t have any herbs showing. You’re basically sculpting a rounded fatty square with limbs.

Once your Adipose butter sculpture is the right shape, it’s time for the details. Carefully use your thumbs to create a crease for the eyes. You can use a thumbnail to make a thin line for the mouth. Fill the mouth with a dense line of black pepper.

Now for the hard part.

Get a cheap paint brush and carefully paint on the black pepper powder to shadow the eyes. Trust me, this makes a huge difference in the overall appearance of the Adipose. Once your eyes are shadowed, carefully push a small blueberry in place for the pupil.

Now, if you’re going for extreme accuracy, you’ll want to give your Adipose a faint pink hue around the edges. If your local grocery stocks powdered sumac at affordable prices, pick up a bottle of that and a second cheap, disposable paintbrush. Sumac is a reddish Persian spice that just so happens to create a wonderful fleshy blush color when used in very modest quantities. Go gently with it. You just want to add some highlights. If your local grocery doesn’t stock sumac, don’t panic. Your Adipose will still be an instantly recognizable buttery delight. You can also use paprika or chili powder, but those flavors tend to overwhelm the herbs.

Once you’re finished, loosely tent some waxed paper over your Adipose and put it back in the fridge to stiffen up until right before your party.

Now, if you don’t happen to like Herbes de Provence, you can substitute whatever seasonings you want in the middle of your Adipose. Just make sure you use a little bit more than seems sensible so the unseasoned outer shell won’t dilute the flavor too badly. I’m a big fan of freshly minced garlic with some onion flakes, generic “Italian” seasoning mix, dill and chives, or rosemary and basil. Really, whatever spices you normally cook with will work fine when making your own seasoned butter.

Marble Circuits With Fire Dipping Sauce (S4E3 - The Fires of Pompeii)

1 14 oz/400 g can of chickpeas/garbanzo beans, drained
½ cup/120 g roasted red bell peppers, drained
⅓ cup/80 g tahini
⅓ cup/80 ml lemon juice
2 tbsp/30 ml olive oil
2 cloves of garlic, peeled
½ tsp/2.5 g salt
smooth surfaced cucumbers

It seems like 90% of ancient Roman recipes were based on a nine year old boy’s dare. Rather than make you gag through a recipe for authentic garam fish sauce, I thought you’d prefer something inexpensive to make, easier to eat, and instantly recognizable to your dedicated Whovians.. The small circuits are surprisingly easy to make. You need some smooth skinned American style cucumbers Look for the widest ones you can find, preferably more oval than round

Slice your cucumber in half length wise. Use a spoon to hollow out the seeds. What you have left is the right color for the marble circuits (green on top, white beneath) but entirely the wrong shape. You want to carve the white interior flesh until you have leveled things out so your cucumber slice is as flat as possible.

Once you have a flat-ish rectangle, use the tines of a very solid fork to carve lines into the skin. The easiest thing to do is just carve a couple of circular holes in each corner, make a short diagonal line going inwards, angle it sharply downwards, then fill in all the extra spaces with straight lines. Have fun playing with it. If you do this continuously along the width of the cucumber, you can then cut the rectangle down into interlocking squares. Depending on the size and shape of your cucumber, you should be able to get at least 12 circuits.

Once you get the hang of it, carving the cucumbers goes faster than you think. It’s best to go ahead and carve up at least 4 cucumbers at a time then encourage your guests to try and make an entire computer motherboard out of them.

With all that carving work to look forward to, you and I both know you’re just going to pick up a tub of roasted red pepper hummus at the grocery store. Maybe, if you’re feeling extra fancy, you’ll grab some nice bloody looking roasted red bell peppers to go with it. However, this is a cookbook, so let’s pretend you’re going to make your own hummus.

Luckily for you, hummus is almost comically simple. Just throw everything but the cucumbers into a blender or food processor and let the machine attack the food with its angry blades until you have a nice, smooth paste.

Since you’ll have extra roasted red bell peppers left over from making your hummus (wink), serve your cucumber circuits surrounded by the hot red lava colored vegetables on one side and the cooling lava colored red bell pepper hummus on the other.

The Sibylline priestesses predict your guests will polish off this appetizer.

Ood Mezze Plate (S4E4 - Planet of the Ood)

1 jar roasted red bell pepper strips
2 packages hummus
2 hard boiled eggs
1 long piece of string cheese
1 package pita
raisins

While you’re playing with your food by making stone circuits, you might as well set up another highly recognizable appetizer tray inspired by the tentacle-tastic Ood.

This is a great one to throw together fast and cheap if, say, you thought only 5 people were coming to your viewing party but for some reason you discovered 20 unexpected RSVP’s this morning. It’s a super fast sculpting project good for people with kludgy hands. Honestly, the hardest part is boiling the eggs.

Grab your largest plate. Now scoop out all the hummus and make a rough oval in the middle. This works best if your hummus is kind of pinkish (roasted red pepper, for example) or a darker grey-brown (olive tapenade, herb infused, etc.) Plain hummus won’t offer enough color contrast with the pita.

Now cut one of your eggs in half. You now have two Ood eyes. Plop them in the pool of hummus. If you want, you can try to carefully dot the back of a couple olive rounds with hummus (which will act as a sort of food glue) and put them on the eggs as pupils. Add a couple of raisins for the nostrils.

To make the mouth, empty the oil out of the roasted red bell peppers and rinse them all off thoroughly. Your hands will still be kind of greasy, so be careful when handling a knife. You want to cut the peppers into thin, tentacle-like strips. Once you have a nice mound of strips, arrange them so they’re spilling out of your Ood’s mouth.

Cut your pita loaves into wedges and arrange them neatly along the sides of your plate, basically filling up any space that isn’t taken up by the Ood’s face.

Finally, stretch a piece of white string cheese until it reaches from the Ood’s mouth to an adjacent tea saucer. Cut a small slit into the egg and stuff one end of the string cheese inside. If you’re a particularly benevolent Ood master, instead of the artificial brain sphere you can alternately arrange salmon slices or Spam in the shape of a wet pink brain.