Dining With The Doctor: The Unauthorized Whovian Cookbook (8 page)

While the meat is roasting, it’s time to make the duxelles. That’s just a fancy term for the mushroom and shallot topping that gets baked inside the crust. Melt your butter in a skillet over medium heat. If you enjoy chopping vegetables, mince up your mushrooms, onions, and garlic. If you consider it a chore, throw them all in a food processor, along with the fresh thyme, and pulse it a few times until you end up with a nice vegetable mince. Don’t let it run too long or else you’ll end up with a vegetable paste.

Toss your veggie mix into your melted butter and cook it all for about eight to ten minutes. It should be gloriously aromatic. Finish the mix with your salt and pepper, cook for another minute or so, then set it aside to cool.

It may seem counter intuitive, but once the meat and veggies are ready, you want to put them in the fridge to cool down a bit. This is so they don’t soak through the puff pastry and thereby ruin the crust. Leave them be for an hour or so while you watch another episode of Doctor Who.

When you come back, it’s time for the fun part.

Unfold your puff pastry. It should be large enough to wrap your entire roast. (If in doubt, buy two boxes of puff pastry dough. This isn’t the place to skimp.) Now carefully cut an inch or so off one of the shorter edges so you have a line of thin scraps. You’ll be using these to decorate the top into a Tardis shape.

Carefully pat your roast dry with some paper towels.

Spread your duxelles out in the middle of your puff pastry. You want to make a rectangle of it a little smaller than your meat. Now carefully spread a generous amount of dijon mustard over one side of your meat and put it mustard side down on top of the duxelles. Once the meat is in place, oh so carefully fold in the edges of the puff pastry so they overlap. You want to essentially wrap your meat in the puff pastry as though it’s an edible Christmas present. Feel free to cut away any extra pastry that doesn’t fit.

Now for the hard part. Carefully flip the whole thing over so it’s seam side down in a pre-buttered pan. This gives you a nice, smooth surface for the rectangular top of your Tardis.

If you squint, you can see the potential within, but it doesn’t really look like a Tardis. Not yet. You want to use the puff pastry scraps to finish off the effect. Start by cutting strips to make a half inch wide rectangle around the top of the roast. Position this a good inch/2.5 cm inwards from the edges. Otherwise, you risk having your decorations simply fall off the sides when the puff pastry expands during baking. I speak from experience.

Once your border is in place, add another strip down the middle, lengthwise. Now add three evenly spaced strips across the width to represent the upper windows, the warning plaque, and the bottom of the doors. Cut a small circle of pastry and put it in the second box on the right. Cut a little square of puff pastry and put it in the second box on the left. If you have enough puff pastry left, make a thin cross (to represent window panes) in each of the top two boxes. Stop and admire for a moment. It’s lovely.

To make sure it comes out of the oven a beautiful golden brown, beat your eggs until they’re slightly frothy. Use a pastry brush to coat the entire exterior of your puff pastry. Lightly sprinkle the whole thing with kosher salt. Add a little extra salt to the middle left box that represents the plaque so it’ll be nice and sparkly.

Now pop the whole thing in a 400F/205C oven and bake it for 25-35 minutes, depending on your preferred level of doneness. Feel free to sneak a meat thermometer into the side to check the temperature. You want it about 130F/55C (140/60C if you prefer your roast closer to medium well.) If your roast isn’t done enough, cover the top with aluminum foil and cook for another 5-7 minutes. Final cooking time has as much to do with the thickness of your roast as the weight. The thinner the meat, the faster it cooks.

If you’re feeling extra fancy, once your Tardis is finished baking, you can fill the top two windows with either some carefully carved egg whites or some pale white cheese, and perhaps even create some shadows in each of the boxes using either a spread made from diced black olives or some Japanese nori (seaweed paper used to make sushi.)

A good roast needs at least 20 minutes to cool before serving. Otherwise, you’ll lose all the delicious juiciness inside. Luckily, this gives you plenty of time for guests to admire your hard work. When you’re ready to serve it, simply cut the Tardis into 1-2 inch/2.5 - 5 centimeter thick slices.

If you desperately want a Tardis on the table but you’re intimidated by the idea of a fancy roast, don’t despair. There’s a perfectly good cheater’s option that will get you 80% of the look for a fraction of the effort.

Get yourself a couple rolls of unperforated crescent dough at the grocery store. Sure, you can also use pizza dough, but the crescents are easier to work with and create a more consistent final result. Now, make whatever casserole you normally enjoy. Chicken pot pie works a treat, as does a tamale pie, or even a shepherd’s pie. Prep your casserole in the usual fashion, spread a nice, flat layer of crescent dough on top, then follow the same procedure using dough scraps to create the details. You can probably throw this crust together in ten minutes, and that’s only if you take some time on the windows. Bake your casserole with the Tardis crust on top and enjoy the envy and admiration of your friends.

Whatever sort of meaty goodness you make, it’s best served with some Electric Light Orchestra Karaoke and the company of your favorite people whose lives have been touched by The Doctor.

2012 Olympic Shortbread Medallions (S2E12 - Fear Her)

¾ lb/170 g unsalted butter
1 cup/200 g granulated sugar
1 tsp/5 ml pure vanilla extract
3 1/2 cups/225 g all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp/1 g kosher salt
icing
colored sugar
colored ribbon

I was tempted to offer you a tooth crunchingly horrible dessert since The Doctor loves cake with ball bearings you can eat. However, in honor of the sad, alternate world where London suffered from some sort of bizarre austerity Olympics instead of the pop culture extravaganza of our world’s 2012 opening ceremonies, I give you these Olympic Medals. If you’re not feeling the Olympic love, you can always stencil on the Seal of Rassilon instead. Either way, wear them proudly around your neck.

Preheat your oven to 350F/178C. While the oven is heating, cream together your butter and sugar. Mix in your vanilla. If you’re a good person, you’ll mix your flour and salt in another bowl, but we both know you’re just going to dump the dry ingredients in the same bowl with your deliciously buttery sugar. It’ll be alright. Just mix it up as best you can.

Once the dough is a nice, consistent solid, shape it into a ball full of cookie potential and put it in the fridge for 30 minutes. That’s almost enough time to watch an episode. You’re entirely forgiven if you actually come back 45 minutes later.

Dust your working surface with a little flour. Roll the dough out until it’s only about ¾ of an inch/2 cm thick. Use a round cookie cutter to cut out your medallions. Since you want to be able to hang them from a ribbon, use a screwdriver or the end of an ink pen to cut a neat round hole at one end.

Bake your cookie medallions on an ungreased baking sheet for 20 to 25 minutes, or until the edges just start to brown.

Let the cookies cool down to room temperature before you decorate them. If you want to host your own Whovian Olympics, decorate the cookies with a nice yellow lemony icing for gold, a white cream cheese icing for silver, and a caramel colored icing for bronze. Use icing to write 1, 2, and 3 on the representative cookies.

Alternately, if you all want to be Time Lords, print out a Seal of Rassilon and use an exacto knife to carefully cut it into a stencil. Lightly ice the cookies, lay the stencil in place, then dust the top with colored sugar. Carefully peel off the stencil.

Whichever type of cookie you make, thread the hole with a long string of colored ribbon so people can wear their trophies around their neck, at least, until they’re ready for a snack.

Cyberman Ghosts (S2E13 - Army of Ghosts)

2 cups/270 g sushi rice
2 tbsp/30 ml sweetened sushi rice vinegar (available in the same aisle as the rice)
2 sheets nori
6 oz/170 g sushi grade tuna
4 tbsp/60 g mayonnaise
1 tsp/5 ml sesame oil
1 tsp/5 ml Sriracha or other Asian hot sauce
1 tsp/5 ml sweetened rice wine vinegar
1 red bell pepper (optional)
aluminum foil
small frozen blueberries

We all know that inside every Cyberman is the brain of a once living human being. Likewise, these sushi balls are stuffed with something deliciously red and bloody You can either decorate these sushi rice balls with full Cyberman armor or leave them the amorphous “ghosts” seen in the episode. Vegetarians are welcome to substitute red bell peppers for the tuna. (Tomato would have a better color and consistency, but it’s so wet it would ruin the sushi.)

Cook your sushi rice according to package directions. I have a rice cooker. If you make much rice at home, these things are amazingly easy to use, dirt cheap to buy, and produce nearly miraculous results. I can’t recommend them enough.

While your rice is cooking, dice your sushi grade tuna into small pieces. Mix the mayo, sesame oil, Sriracha, and one teaspoon of sweetened rice vinegar. Feel free to add a little hot chili oil if that’s too mild for you. Mix in your minced tuna. This is now your Cyberman’s brain.

If you’re a vegetarian, feel free to substitute a minced red bell pepper for the tuna. It won’t taste the same, but isn’t that the point? You still get a tasty red brain explosion, only yours has a little crunch to it.

However you make your rice, once it’s finished, douse it with 2 tablespoons of sweetened rice wine vinegar. I know fancy home sushi chefs will mix rice wine vinegar with sugar and salt to make their own, but honestly, I cut that out when no one was able to tell the difference between my home mix and the bottled stuff. Just make sure the pre-made brand you buy uses actual sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup.

Now for the fun part.

Grab a small handful of rice and pack it nice and tight. You’re making a Cyberman’s head. Hollow it out a little and stuff some of your tuna or red bell pepper brains inside. Seal the head closed with some more rice. You can leave it amorphous, like the ghosts in this episode.

If you like sculpting, go ahead and give it some features then decorate the surface with bits of Nori or an icing pen to make the Cyberman face. When you’re done, bend some metal paperclips into the familiar rectangular head antenna and stuff those in around where your cyberman should have ears. Finish them off with two small frozen blueberries for the eyes.

Fishy Daleks (S2E14 - Doomsday)

6 triangular frozen fish filets
Pocky Sticks
catsup
mustard
cotton swabs
tartar sauce
There’s something fishy about a giant cosmic egg full of Daleks.

If you’re intimidated by the thought of making sushi brains or a Tardis Wellington, this is a cheap, simple alternative you can whip up with zero cooking skill. It also happens to give you nicely decorated raw ingredients for the Fish Fingers and Custard Tacos in Chapter 7.

Those rhombus shaped fish filets already look suspiciously like Daleks. All they need is a little extra decoration and you can nickname them Sec, Thay, Caan, and Jast

Bake the fish filets according to package directions. Once they're crispy and edible, use the mustard to draw armor lines on the body. Dot the body with your choice of catsup or tartar sauce armor eggs.

Shove a couple of broken Pocky sticks on one side and a snipped cotton swab on the other to represent the Dalek’s arms. If you happen to have any olive slices, put one on your Dalek's head to represent the eyestalk.