Dining With The Doctor: The Unauthorized Whovian Cookbook (5 page)

When you come back, preheat your oven to 350F/178C. While it’s warming up in anticipation, you get to make little wolf head cookies. If you have a wolf (or dog, or anything remotely closely) shaped cookie cutter, you’re golden. If not, start with a nice circle, pinch off a muzzle at one end and pinch an ear at the other.

It’s okay if these look rough. If I lived in perpetual fear on Satellite 5 I’d be a shaky baker, too. Plant a cranberry where your wolf’s eye should be. Outline the interior of its ear with rasins. If you have a neck area, you can always add a collar out of golden regular raisins, but this is a Bad Wolf, not a tame sheep dog, so don’t stress.

Bake your cookies for 14-18 minutes, depending on how chewy (less time) or crispy (more baking) you prefer. Once they come out of the oven, let them cool at room temperature before shoveling them into your mouth. This is to let them firm up as well as to prevent you from burning your tongue.

Your Bad Wolf cookies will keep at room temperature for 3-4 days, so feel free to make plenty in advance.

The Mad Dalek Emperor’s All Seeing Eye (S1E13 - The Parting of the Ways)

6 small (3 oz/85 gram) boxes of purple Jell-O
6 cups/1.5 liters boiling water
6 cups/1.5 liters cold water
4 cups/1 liter vodka
¼ cup sweetened condensed milk or full fat coconut milk
1 hardboiled egg
1 round slice of black olive
4-6 drops red food coloring
plastic wrap

Am I the only one who looks at the unshelled Daleks and wonders where baby Daleks come from? Without their upended trash bin armor, Daleks look like meaty octopii who decided to climb out of the ocean and conquer the land out of sheer spite. Sometimes, like in this episode, they’re shown floating in a crazy purple bath, cheerfully splashing their little tentacles to emphasize their madness. Other times, they look nearly deflated as they spat against the interior of their armor or glare from inside a life support tube.

In this case, the crazy Dalek emperor looks like a tentacled brain in a jar with one big, ugly, angry eye glaring out at the world. I could’ve concocted an exotic recipe using a whole baby octopus, but I’ve never been able to eat food that actually looks back at me. That left me with one obvious alternative. Jello shots. If you’re having a bunch of Whovians over to watch some episodes, why not get drunk as a power mad Dalek by eating their tasty, tentacled brains?

You’ll need a brain shaped refrigerator mold for this. If you don’t already own one, you’re welcome. This is your excuse. Anyone who owns this cookbook is going to have plenty of other excuses to use a brain shaped mold.

Start off by bringing six cups of water to a boil. Add in the six packages of purple (or a mix of 5 purple and 1 blue) Jell-O. Feel free to add a couple drops of red food coloring to make the whole thing more brain-like. Give it a good, hearty stir until the Jell-O powder is dissolved. Now toss in the 6 cups of cold water, 4 cups of Vodka, and ¼ cup of milk-like-substance. Veteran Jell-O lovers may notice the math doesn’t quite add up here. Normally, it’s 1 cup of boiling water to 2 cups of cold water. Ah, but when making Jell-O shots, if you want them to firm up properly, you need to skimp some on the water. Trust me. The coconut milk or sweetened condensed milk gives your mold a fleshy solidity so your Dalek emperor isn’t weirdly transparent. If you can't drink milk, just use non dairy creamer. It'll be fine.

Coat your brain shaped mold with nonstick cooking spray and fill it with Jell-O. You should have a lot of Jell-O left. That’s a good thing, because now we’re going through the hassle of making tentacles. Get an 8x8 inch/20x20 centimeter square baking dish (for Americans, a brownie pan). Now bunch up your plastic wrap into rough tentacle shapes and put them in the bottom of the pan. Spritz them with non-stick coating, pour in the rest of your Jell-O mix, and put it in the fridge until it’s nice and solid.

Meanwhile, peel your hardboiled egg and drop some red food coloring onto one end. Let it dribble down the side so you can get that angry, bloodshot eye effect.

Once everything cools, it’s time to assemble your edible Dalek. Carefully upend the brain onto an oversized platter. You want room for tentaclly goodness. If it rips a little, relax. The Daleks all look like they’re suffering from radiation poisoning. Yours just has some extra character. Extra crazy character.

Oh so carefully remove your tentacles from the brownie pan (if you want really long tentacles, you can scale things up by ⅓. Make two more packages of Jell-O, and add proportionately more water, milk-ish sludge, and most importantly, vodka. Instead of chilling it in a brownie pan, chill the tentacles in a cake or lasagna pan.)

Now curl the tentacles strategically around your Dalek emperor’s brain. Once you’re happy with their placement, carefully spoon out attachment areas so it looks like the tentacles are coming out of the flesh. Since this is Jell-O, you can use some of the stuff you just removed to patch up the holes where the tentacles connect. Finally, decide where you want your mad, bloodshot eye. Cut away a tiny bit of egg and shove the olive slice in as a pupil, or put a single edible googly eye in the hole. Use whatever you have around the house. Now scoop out about ⅔ of the egg’s volume and carefully slide it into place. You want an angry, bulging Dalek eye, so make sure it's not flush with the surface. Finally, use a little of the Jell-O you just scooped out to create a makeshift eyelid area.

This makes a great alcoholic centerpiece for your Whovian gathering. If the whole Jell-O Brain isn’t eaten, make sure you remove the eye before you put it in the fridge. You don’t want to wake up hung over at 4 in the morning and see a half cannibalized Dalek glaring out at you from the back of your fridge.

SERIES 2: ROSE MEETS THE REGENERATION

The Doctor’s Hand (S2E1 - The Christmas Invasion)

1 package hot dogs or beef brats
2 packages crescent roll dough
1 cup/200 g blanched, peeled almonds
cheddar cheese
I wanted to give you some kind of jellied hand floating in a blue liquid, but all my experiments in that direction were downright inedible. Instead, in honor of The Doctor's first new series regeneration, you’re getting a super simple recipe that can be easily made by either children or drunks.

Cut your hot dogs in half length-wise. Four of them will make the fingers while the fifth will make the thumb and back of the hand. Pair up each hot dog sliver with an equal length of cheese. Now wrap the crescent roll dough around each one to make five fingers.

 To make your hand look more organic, bunch up a roll of aluminum foil about the size of an orange. Drape one triangle of crescent dough over the aluminum foil to create the base of the hand. Arrange the fingers around the base of the hand. To make the thumb, simply stretch the fifth finger out in so it makes a straight line from the pinky to the forefinger. If you don't have enough extra thumb sticking out, add a little more hot dog near the pinky.

Put another triangle of crescent dough on top and start pinching it into place to seal up your hand. Otherwise, you'll have flesh sticking out of the edges. That's great for a zombie food, but this is The Doctor.

Once your dough is sealed and hand shaped, you can add a blanched almond to the tip of each finger as a fingernail. To be honest, no matter how hard I push them in, mine frequently fall out while the dough bakes. It's a nice effect when you can pull it off, but don't stress over it.

You should have enough supplies to make two hands. We’ll ignore the fact that the doctor only had one hand cut off while defending the earth in his pajamas.

Bake the hands at 350F/178C for 14-16 minutes, or until golden brown and puffy. If they’re still too white, continue cooking, checking every 2 minutes for doneness.

Let the hands cool for about 10 minutes. Serve them in the middle of a platter full of Satsuma's (or Clementine's, or any other small oranges) and small apples. Alternately, you can create an atmosphere more reminiscent of Captain Jack’s Doctor Detector by piling the hand onto a platter of fresh, dry blueberries or blackberries. If you go that way, surround your hand with a wide arrow made of orange wedges and have fun pointing it in the direction of anyone cosplaying the tenth Doctor

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New Earth Apple Grass Cocktail (S2E2 - New Earth)

2 shots/90 ml lemon-lime soda
2 shots/90 ml clear apple juice
1 shot/45 ml vodka
½ shot/23 ml peach schnapps
½ shot/23 ml blue curacao
ice

New (to the 11th power) New York held a lot of recipe temptations, but there’s something so heartwarming about Rose Tyler’s excitement at the new ground beneath her feet during her first trip to New Earth. Drink a couple of these apple grass scented cocktails and you won’t blink twice at cat faced nuns tending a futuristic hospital.

The apple juice gives this the right aroma for apple grass while the peach schnapps and blue curaco combine to give it the grassy color. The lemon-lime soda gives it a clean finish.

Mix the apple juice, vodka, peach schnapps and blue curacao in a cocktail shaker along with a handful of ice. Pound it like you’re a force grown clone contemplating what might happen now that his once thin mistress lives in a fleshy mortal body

Strain the result into a lowball glass and add a few ice cubes. Top it off with the lemon-lime soda and mix gently. Garnish the glass with a lime wedge. Drink enough of these and you won’t care how the nurses achieve their miracle cures.

Queen Victoria’s Nightcap (S2E3 - Tooth and Claw)

1 cup/235 ml Claret wine
1 shot/45 ml single malt whiskey

As the owners of Torchwood House could vouch, a visit from Queen Victoria was more of a nightmare than an honor. It wasn’t unusual for her hosts to spend up to 70,000 pounds sterling on food and drink during one of her visits, during which they were expected to make her nine course meals with up to 30 different dishes.

Sadly, it’s hard to keep up with demands like that when your manor is overrun with werewolves. The best you can do is hang some mistletoe garlands to keep the supernatural at bay while throwing back a couple of fortifying glasses of Queen Victoria’s favorite tipple - a glass of Claret fortified with a shot of single malt whiskey. Yes, really. She must’ve had an iron liver.

I can't actually recommend this drink. I'm not a huge fan of Claret, and honestly, pouring good whiskey into bad wine seems like a crime against alcohol. However, if you want an authentic taste of the period, it's well worth trying. Once.

Deffry Vale School Chips with Krillitane Oil (S2E4 - School Reunion)