Sausage Rolls

Our next new food item appears in the Gryffindor common room, following Harry's first attempt at opening his golden egg for the Tri-Wizard Tournament:

"'It was someone being tourtured!' said Neville, who had gone very white and spilled sausage rolls on the floor. 'You're going to have to fight the Cruciatus Curse!'" 

(Goblet of Fire 366).

Since these sausage rolls were nicked from the Hogwarts kitchens, our recreation better be as delicious as possible to compete with the House Elves' cooking! Luckily, I have a very simple plan.

You Will Need:

1 roll of Pilsbury (or similar) crescent rolls

1 box Morningstar Farms sausage links, preferably not completely frozen

1. Unroll your crescent dough and separate the individual sections.

2. Depending on how bread-y you'd like your sausage rolls to be, cut each section in two or three smaller equal triangles.

3. Starting at the longest side of the triangles, roll each sausage link in a triangle of dough and place on a cookie sheet.

4. Bake according to the directions on the crescent package.

These are so simple and SO tasty! Be careful, or you'll have eaten a whole tube of crescents without even noticing (not that that happened to any particular blogger or anything...)! A delightful option for breakfast or a protein-filled snack. Enjoy!

Butterbeer

Today's food item is the first occurrence of butterbeer in The Goblet of Fire, and it comes during one of Harry's many attempts at trying to avoid the vicious pen of Rita Skeeter:

"'She's gone,' said Hermione, looking right through Harry toward the end of the street. 'Why don't we go and have a butterbeer at the Three Broomsticks, it's a bit cold, isn't it?'" (Goblet of Fire 319).

If I remember correctly, we've done two butterbeer recipes already, but today's comes from homecooking.com. 

To Make 4-6 servings, You Will Need:

1 pint vanilla ice cream

1/4 cup butter, at room temperature

1/2 tsp butterscotch extract (I couldn't find this, so I used butterscotch syrup)

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp grated nutmeg

1 qt apple cider

apple slices for garnish, optional

1. On medium speed, beat together the vanilla ice cream, butter, butterscotch extract, brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg until well combined. Place in an air-tight container and re-freeze.

2. Gently heat the apple cider on the stove until steaming hot.

3. Place 1 scoop of the ice cream in a mug and top with hot cider. Garnish with an apple slice if desired. 

Alas, this is not my favorite butterbeer recipe. It really isn't very tasty when it's no longer hot. And I definitely recommend using melted butter instead of just room-temperature butter and just re-freezing the ice cream for longer (unless of course, you'd like butter chips in your ice cream; I spent a lot of time spitting out butter bits). It tastes fine for a few sips/bites, but I'd suggest trying one of the other butterbeer recipes out there. Cheers!

Blancmange

Today's food item continues the trio's exposure to foreign delicacies (and Ron's hopes that his new Veela crush will come speak to him again!).

"When the second course arrived they noticed a number of unfamiliar desserts too. Ron examined an odd sort of pale blancmange closely, then moved it carefully a few inches to his right, so that it would be clearly visible from the Ravenclaw table"
(Goblet of Fire 253).

This French dessert comes from the words "blanc," which means "white," and "mange," which is a derivative of the verb "to eat." So basically, we're making "white food." Yep. The recipe comes from The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook, so here we go!

You Will Need:
3 cups whole milk (divided)
2 envelopes unflavored gelatin
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 cup ground almonds
1/4 tsp almond extract
1 pint strawberries (for the sauce)
2 Tbs granulated sugar (for the sauce)

1. Grease 8 tartlet molds or a muffin pan and set aside (I needed 10 muffin cups, so be prepared!).
2. Pour 1/2 cup of the milk in a small bowl and sprinkle the gelatin over it. Set aside.

3. Heat the remaining milk, cream, sugar, and almonds in a small saucepan until hot but not simmering.

4. Pour the mixture through a sieve (into another bowl) to discard the almonds.

5. Stir the gelatin mixture into the milk mixture until dissolved. You may need to heat it some more over  the stove to help the gelatin dissolve (again, don't let it simmer).
6. Stir in the almond extract.

7. Fill the prepared molds to the very top and refrigerate until form, about 2 hours.

8. Place the strawberries and 2 Tbs sugar in a blender or food processor and process until completely blended.

9. Apparently you should be able to just invert the molds onto a plate to unmold them, but I had to peel them a little bit with my fingers (it wasn't hard though; one stretch and they popped right out).
10. Serve with strawberry sauce.

This dessert not only looks really elegant, but it is SO jiggly that I pretty much giggled the whole time I was eating it. The strawberry sauce is delicious! The texture of the blancmange might be strange to some people (because really, it's milk jell-o), but I live on tofu, so textures aren't an issue for me. The blancmange's taste is super subtle, so it's almost just a vehicle for the strawberry sauce. Leave it to the French to make something super fattening that has very little taste. No wonder Fleur wasn't interested!
But all together, it's pretty tasty, and would look really impressive as a dessert at a party. Give it a try!

Black Pudding

On the coattails of bouillabaisse, we reach another food I sadly cannot prepare. But this food does not hail from France, it is British to the core:

"'I'll take your word for it,' said Ron, helping himself to black pudding" 

(Goblet of Fire 251).

You may, like me, not blame Ron for passing up the bouillabaisse for something more familiar to him. But knowing the ingredients of black pudding makes me wonder which carnivorous "casserole" is more... well... icky.

In The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook, Dinah Bucholz includes a recipe for black pudding, but includes the caveat that it is almost impossible to prepare in the United States because of laws regarding certain ingredients. 

The recipe requires 3.5 cups of blood (sheep's or pig's is recommended). And unless you happen to be connected in some way to a slaughterhouse, you probably have no way to legally obtain animal blood while residing in the U.S. And there is NO WAY that I'm going to attempt to create a vegetarian version of black pudding, as I have no desire of tasting ingredients to find a substitution for the flavor of blood. 

Sorry folks, this is one you'll have to imagine on your own. Or take a trip to Britain.

Bouillabaisse

Today we reach Ron and Harry's first exposure to some decidedly foreign dishes:

"'What's that?' said Ron, pointing at a large dish of some sort of shellfish stew that stood beside a large steak-and-kidney pudding. 'Bouillabaisse,' said Hermione" 

(Goblet of Fire 251).

Bouillabaisse is, as Hermione goes on to say, a French dish which many find quite tasty. As a vegetarian (even before I was a vegetarian), I do not care to eat fish of any kind. While it is likely possible to create a vegetarian version of bouillabaisse, it would require creating so many subtly different flavors of seitan that I would be cooking for days.

However, if you do enjoy the flavors of seafood, I recommend that you give bouillabaisse a try. There is a promising looking recipe in The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook.

Beef Casserole

Today's food item follows Malfoy's appearance as the amazing bouncing ferret (though it has nothing to do with that delightful scene):

"Harry and Hermione both laughed, and Hermione began doling beef casserole into each of their plates" (Goblet of Fire 207).

Beef cassrole is of course mentioned again in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Hagrid serves it to our trio... and in it they discover a suspicious talon! Casserole is, in my mind, an amalgam of veggies and protein and usually noodles. The recipe we're making today is from The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook, and has no talons. It reminds me more of a stew than a casserole, but it is tasty nonetheless. I'll be tweaking the recipe a bit for the vegetarian factor, so here we go!

You Will Need:

1 Tbs vegetable oil

1.5 pounds vegetarian steak substitute (I used Gardein Beefless Tips)

1 onion, finely chopped (my onions were really teeny, so I used two)

1 celery rib, finely chopped

3 Tbs all-purpose flour

3 cups No-Chicken broth

1 Tbs tomato paste

10 oz mushrooms, sliced (I only used 8oz)

salt and pepper, to taste

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Heat the oil in a large oven-safe skillet on the stovetop.

2. Add the onion and celery. Cook over medium heat until the onion turns brown, scraping up the browned bits on the bottom of the pan, 10-15 minutes.

3. Sprinkle the flour over the onion and celery and stir until absorbed/dissolved.

4. Add the broth while stirring.

5. Add the tomato paste, mushrooms, beefless tips, salt, and pepper. Mix thoroughly and bring to a boil. Turn off the heat.

6. Cover the skillet and transfer it to the oven. Bake the casserole for two hours. Stir at least every 30 minutes so the bottom doesn't burn.

7. Serve over mashed potatoes, rice, or pasta.

Even though this doesn't meet my personal qualifications as a "casserole" (definitely more of a stew, I think), it's still quite delicious, and an excellent protein source. It's also a super easy meal you can prep, go live your life for two hours, come back and it's ready to eat! Enjoy!

Sprouts

It seems recently all our food items appear with a reference to Hermione's stand on Elf rights. Today's food is no exception:

"'Er-- is this the new stand on Elf rights?' said Ron. 'You're going to make yourself puke instead?' 'No,' said Hermione, with as much dignity as she could muster with her mouth bulging with sprouts" (Goblet of Fire 198).

I adore Brussels sprouts. My carnivore brother thinks this is because as a vegetarian, I'm required to eat anything green. Usually I just steam sprouts and sprinkle them with some garlic salt. But today, we shall prepare one of the two Brussels sprouts recipes from The Unofficial Harry Potter Cookbook. I've made the "Brussels Sprouts with Chestnuts" before, and it's quite delicious. However, since I've already made it (and since chestnuts are absurdly expensive), today we shall make Brussels Sprouts with Bechamel Sauce.

You Will Need:

1 pound Brussels sprouts (the cookbook calls for frozen, but why would you ever choose frozen over fresh? ew.)

water

1 Tbs butter

1 Tbs flour

1 cup whole milk (I used half and half, 'cause that's what was in the fridge)

1/4 tsp salt

1/8 tsp ground nutmeg

pepper, to taste

1. I always opt to steam vegetables instead of boiling them, like this recipe suggests. Steaming them leaves less chance of smooshy veggies, and retains more nutrients. Steam your Brussels sprouts until tender.

2. Heat the butter in a skillet until foaming.

3. Add the flour and stir to combine.

4. Pour in the milk while stirring.

5. Add the salt, nutmeg, and pepper, and continue to cook, stirring constantly, until thick and bubbling.

6. Pop your sprouts in a serving dish and pour the bechamel sauce over them. Serve immediately.

Definitely be generous with your peppering "to taste,"and I would recommend adding a bit more salt. While not my favorite, this is definitely a good option for Brussels sprouts, especially for someone, perhaps someone young, who doesn't like to eat their green veggies. Creamy sauce is a good way to hide the nutrition! This would also be a good option for serving over asparagus. Enjoy!