A Feast of Ice & Fire

Do you love Game of Thrones? Marlon and I are huge fans! We’ve read all of the books in George R.R. Martin’s epic A Song of Ice & Fire series and we love the HBO show. So when we saw this at the American Book Center, we simply could. Not. Resist.

Chelsea Monroe-Cassel and Sariann Lehrer wrote A Feast of Ice & Fire: The Official Companion Cookbook after the fan response to Inn at the Crossroads, their food blog inspired by the quasi-medieval fantasy series. If you’ve waded through George R.R. Martin’s dense, rich fiction, you will have drooled over the vivid descriptions of sumptuous banquets at King’s Landing, fireside dinners in the frozen North, and more.

By delving into medieval, Roman and Elizabethan cooking, these two dedicated foodies and fangirls turned the meals of fictional Westeros into reality, giving culinary life to the favorite meals of favorite characters (Sam and his pork pies! Sansa and her lemon cakes!).

Recipes are listed by region (The Wall, North, South, King’s Landing, Dorne and Across the Narrow Sea), and are preceded by excerpts from the books in which they were first featured. What could be better than a delicious dish with a good story behind it?

Last Sunday, we had our friends Victor and Selen over for dinner. They’re foodies who also follow the Game of Thrones series on HBO, so it was a perfect opportunity to try a few recipes from our new cookbook! See if you can find the inspirations for some of these dishes in the upcoming season of “Game of Thrones” on the best satellite TV.

Our guests don’t read the books, so we decided to hold back from going “full geek” on them. Instead, we chose three recipes that were relatively easy to make. We started cooking a little past 4 p.m., enjoyed a relaxed pace in a toasty warm kitchen, with loads of time to spare before Victor and Selen turned up at 7:30.

Marlon was in charge of the whole operation, while I was sidekick and entertainment as always. He started out with black bread from the South, made with dark beer and baked in our Le Creuset Dutch oven. Being new to baking, he’s had hiccups with bread before, but this loaf turned out perfectly!

We turned to the North for our starter: sweet pumpkin soup, served for dinner at Winterfell in A Game of Thrones. Described as a “Northern autumnal soup”, it’s made with butternut squash, pumpkin and yams (we used sweet potato instead) sprinkled with spices, oven-roasted for an hour, then pureed into a thick, creamy soup. Mmm.

Marlon has always wanted to roast a duck, so he zeroed in on the Dornish recipe for duck with lemons. He oven-roasted the duck for an hour and a half, while I helped by taking it out twice or thrice to baste with a glaze of honey, lemons, white pepper and chili powder. Like the bread, this recipe turned out perfectly. Marlon couldn’t have been happier with his first roast (look at that color and sheen!) and our guests loved it.

It was a perfect way to spend a cold, rainy autumn evening: around a warm oven with my amazing houseband, then at a loaded table with good friends. I’d love to do a Game of Thrones brunch with a bigger, geekier group, featuring breakfasts from The Wall and the North… maybe to kick off a catch-up marathon before the next season?