Dining With The Doctor: The Unauthorized Whovian Cookbook (10 page)

Store your homemade kitty kibble in a glass jar or bowl at room temperature for however long you can keep your hands off it. I’m not sure how long it can theoretically last because mine has never survived more than two days.

This is actually a great addition to any Doctor Who themed party. Sprinkle it around whenever you need gravel, a quarry scene, or rocks to set the stage for another food. To serve it on its own, put it in a (clean, new) kitty litter pan and park some Hot Wheels in neat rows along the surface.

Extermination Loaf (S3E5 - Daleks in Manhattan)

1 long French or sourdough baguette
8 tbsp/75 g room temperature butter
½ cup/100 g chocolate chips
½  cup/100 g large edible ball bearings (or mayonnaise)
1 tbsp/15 g cinnamon
4 tbsp/60 g sugar
4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 tsp/5 g salt
chocolate buttons or oversized chocolate chips
white coffee straws
white gumdrops

You can easily make two flavors of this Dalek Bread. If you’re taking over Manhattan, enjoy the sweetness of a cinnamon sugar bread with a hint of chocolate on top. If, on the other hand, you’re stuck in Hooverville, try some garlic Dalek bread, preferably with slices of genetically modified ham on the side.

Whichever type you want to make, start by cutting your bread about six inches from the end of the loaf. The curved part is your Dalek’s head. You’ll get two Daleks per baguette (plus a little extra bread to spare.) Now that you have the bodies, cut four slices, about ⅔ of the way through the bread.

If you’re going for the savory version, mix together your minced garlic, salt, and room temperature butter. (You’re welcome to add a teaspoon of Herbes de Provence, Italian seasoning, or your favorite garlic bread herb blend.) Generously coat the inside of each slice. According to The Doctor, humans are the only species to invent edible ball bearings. (You can find them in the cake decorating aisle of your grocery store.) In his honor, carefully push them into the bread’s crust in order to make the familiar Dalek armor ridges. If you can't find edible ball bearings, you can always resort to dabbing on mayonnaise to symbolize the armor eggs.

If you’re making the sweet version, mix your cinnamon, sugar, salt, and butter then generously slather it inside each slice.

Either way, bake your bread for 10 minutes at 400F/205C.

If you're making the sweet version, the moment you pull it from the oven, carefully lay chocolate chips on the surface to make the Dalek armor’s dots.

For the finishing touches, start by cutting a white coffee straw in half. Soften a chocolate button or oversized chocolate chip in the microwave (1-2 seconds) then gently press the coffee straw into it. This makes your plunger arm. Poke the arms into your Dalek. If you have pipe cleaners, wrap a scrap of one around one end of the other half of your coffee straw. This makes your eggbeater arm.

Complete the effect by adding a pair of small white gumdrops to the top of the Dalek’s head for the antenna. If you have any Cheerios, pretzel sticks, and Nutella at home, you can use those to make an edible eye stalk. Don't stress, though. The antenna and arms are enough to make your Dalek instantly recognizable.

This genuinely edible recipe also happens to be cheap, easy, and darn near guaranteed to illicit a giggle.

Dalek Sec's Head (S6E6 - Evolution of the Daleks)

1 head of cauliflower
8 fat carrots or 8 fat sausages
1 hardboiled egg
1 slice of pitted black olive
3 cups water
1 tsp red food coloring
prepared coleslaw from Series 4, The Doctor’s Daughter

This is really more of an edible centerpiece sculpture than a recipe. It’s hard to resist making something as oddly grotesque as Dalek Sec’s head.

Mix the red food coloring and water. Soak your cauliflower in it overnight, turning it a couple of times to make sure the cauliflower is evenly coated. This will be Dalek Sec’s brain. You could always skip this step by substituting a head of red cabbage, but cabbage doesn’t quite have the eerily brain-like texture of cauliflower.

The meaty version looks a little more authentic. You’ll want to fully cook half a dozen fat sausages. Arrange them around the cauliflower like Dalek Sec’s tentacles.

Carefully cut the remaining two sausages into strips and arrange them down the middle and across the width of the head, ending in each of the sausages. You may need to carve the sausages a bit in order to make it look like the meaty head strips flow into them naturally. Have fun with it. Worst case scenario, you have to cook a second batch of sausages. Pin everything in place with toothpicks then snip off the ends to maintain the illusion.

If you’re a vegetarian or allergic to nitrates, substitute thick peeled carrots for the sausages. If you can find some red carrots at your local farmer’s market, you’ll still get a lot of the effect, plus you’ll impress any of your friends who haven't seen red carrots in real life. (Spoiler alert: they stain anything they’re cooked with a dark red, but somehow still taste exactly like ordinary orange carrots.)

Now carefully cut an egg sized hole in your cauliflower or cabbage for Dalek Sec’s cyclops eye. Wedge the egg in there nice and tight. Oh so carefully cut another hole in your hardboiled egg for the olive pupil. You can also substitute a googly eye from the cake decorating section of your grocery store.

The first time I made this, I tried to get clever by putting the cauliflower on top of an extra wide can wrapped in nori (seaweed paper used to wrap sushi.) That way, the sausages would hang down, looking even more tentacle-like. It was a great theory, but in reality, I couldn’t get the sausages to stay in place, no matter how many strategically placed (and artfully cut) toothpicks I tried to use to nail them down.

Instead, I’m content to simply arrange the top of his head on a bed of coleslaw, surrounded by bread Daleks. Remember the middle parts of the baguette you used to make your bread Daleks? They can be pressed into service here. Simply toast them up and spread a little horseradish on the inside. When people are ready to eat, they can stuff one of Dalek Sec’s sausage tentacles into the impromptu bun, top it with the coleslaw beneath his head, and enjoy a somewhat cannibalistic sandwich.

Lazarus Cocktail (S3E7 - The Lazarus Experiment)

2 shots/90 ml blueberry vodka
2 shots/90 ml tonic water
yellow sugar
fresh blueberries
ice

Drink this and you’ll either feel young again or turn into a social monster. You won’t know which until you try it. To make this simple, attractive cocktail, start by quickly dipping a lowball glass in water and putting it in the freezer. The goal here is to get a nice frosted glass full of bluish fluid, much like the Youth-O-Tron Dr. Lazarus emerged from. It just so happens that the colors also work nicely with the Tardis colors, giving this cocktail an even more Whovian flair.

If your grocery store doesn’t stock dyed sugar in the baking aisle, it’s easy to make your own. Just mix 4-6 drops (depending on how hard you squeeze) of yellow food coloring into 1/4 cup of sugar. Use a fork to mix it heartily until the dye is evenly distributed over all the granules. You can use it for all kinds of decorating - or you can go crazy and make a heck of a lot of cocktails for your friends.

Once you have a frosty glass and a pile of sparkly yellow sugar, get two tea saucers or salad plates. Fill one with water and the other with your yellow sugar. Dip your frosted glass in the water then dip it into the yellow sugar. Congrats! You now have a frosted glass with a yellow sugar rim. All you need now is a drink to fill it.

Carefully pour in the blueberry vodka. If you can’t find blueberry vodka, take a hammer to a bag of frozen blueberries so they get nice and crushed, let the bag come to room temperature, and strain out the blueberry juice. This may seem complicated, but I can’t find affordable blueberry juice in any local grocery while I can find oodles of frozen blueberries for around $3 per bag. You can substitute one shot of the blueberry juice and one shot of vodka for the blueberry vodka, all the while pretending that you’re the sort of person who only uses whole, organic, natural ingredients to make a cocktail.

Now add a scant handful of unhammered frozen blueberries (or fresh, if you’re using premade blueberry vodka) to the bottom of the glass. Add your nice, bubbly tonic tonic water. Gently stir the cocktail so everything is mixed. Be careful not to knock off the sugar resting on the rim. Top it off with a few cubes of ice.

Drink a couple of these and you’ll feel younger, smarter, and more attractive ... right up until the point where you turn into a giant humanoid insect.

Burnt Custard Sun (S3E8 - 42)

4 egg yolks
1/2 cup/65 g sugar + 6 tsp/30 g sugar for the topping
3 tsp/15 ml vanilla extract
2 cups/480 ml heavy whipping cream

“Burn with me,” as you fall into the sun. In the United States, this dessert would be called Creme Brulee, but in the spirit of the episode, we’re using the British Name: Burnt Custard. The smooth flesh will melt in your mouth just like the crew of the S.S.
Pentallian
as they fall into the star they illegally mined.

The good news is burnt custard is a lot easier than most people think. In a small saucepan, warm the cream over a medium heat until bubbles start to form around the edges. The goal here isn’t to boil the milk. You want to keep it nice and smooth. While the cream is gently heating, whisk your egg yolks and sugar together in a bowl. Once the cream starts to bubble at the edges, pull the pan off the heat and stir in the egg yolk mixture. Gently mix it together. Add in the vanilla, then keep mixing it some more.

Heavily butter half a dozen small ramekins. Equally distribute the custard between the ramekins. Place the ramekins in a baking pan, and add one inch of boiling water. Put the pan in an oven and bake the custards at 350F/177C for 40-45 minutes, or until the center is set enough that the middle barely jiggles.

Take the ramekins out of the pan and let them rest for 10 minutes. Cover them with foil, then put them in a fridge for at least 4 hours, or overnight.

Before serving, sprinkle the top of each burnt custard with one teaspoon of sugar. Pop them under a hot broiler and let them cook for two to five minutes, or until the sugar is caramelized and browned, but not burnt. If you have a kitchen torch, have fun using that to caramelize the sugar instead. Any excuse to cook with fire is a good one

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Scarecrow Soldiers (S3E9 - Human Nature)

Popcorn Balls:
18 cups/150 g popped popcorn
2 cups/450 g sugar
1 1/3 cups/310 ml water
½ cup/170 ml light corn syrup
1 tsp/5 ml white vinegar
1 tsp/5 ml vanilla
½ tsp/2.5 g salt
Scarecrow Coating:
2 cups/900 g creamy peanut butter
shredded wheat cereal or corn flakes
regular sized chocolate chips
mini chocolate chips

Close to Halloween, Americans can find pre-made popcorn balls alongside the rest of the seasonal bagged candy. Feel free to save yourself some hassle by purchasing them. The rest of the year, you’re going to have to make these for yourself, just like Whovians all over the rest of the world. Luckily, it’s not that hard.

Fill all your largest bowls about halfway with popped popcorn. It’s okay if you look like half your kitchen is spread out on your dining room table.

Once that’s done, pour your corn syrup, water, vinegar and sugar into a saucepan. Cook it all over a high heat until it reaches 255F/124C on a candy thermometer or achieves the “hard ball” state of candy making. If the Tardis matrix won’t translate that into real cooking terms for you, just stir frequently until the sugar is completely dissolved and everything seems pretty thick. The recipe is forgiving. Just before you take the mix off the heat, stir in the vanilla.

Now quickly and carefully pour the sugary mix over your popcorn. Try to drizzle it as evenly as possible over as much of the popcorn as you can. This is why you’re using so many bowls. Toss each bowl gently so the popcorn within is evenly coated. Once you’re out of syrup and all your popcorn has been tossed, it’s time to turn it into ovals. You were expecting balls, but honestly, the scarecrows in this episode had decidedly squarish rounded heads.

As soon as the mix is cool enough to touch, grease your hands up with butter or olive oil (for the vegans and vegetarians). Press the popcorn into baseball sized balls. Squeeze the balls into more rounded off rectangles or ovals. Just make sure the bottom is flat so they'll stay upright when served. These will become your scarecrow heads. Let them cool on a sheet of waxed paper.