Official Game of Thrones Cookbook launches

Amateur chef and fantasy literature fan, Chelsea Monroe-Cassel makes it possible to eat just like they do in Game of Thrones.

“Eat hearty, my friends. Winter is coming,” is one of the most famous lines from the wildly popular HBO series based on the books by George R. R. Martin, and Monroe-Cassel gives a flavour of the Westeros culinary world in The Official Game of Thrones Cookbook: Recipes from King’s Landing to the Dothraki Sea.

Martin put a lot of food in his books, Monroe-Cassel told Afternoons.

“One of the hallmarks of George Martin’s novels is that incredibly rich detail and it’s not just the food, it’s the description of the landscape and the heraldry and what people are wearing. And for me, at least, that really anchors me in that setting and lets me look around with wider eyes.”

Each of the seven kingdoms of Westeros has a unique cuisine, she said.

“They all have their own personalities and their own microclimates, their own trade routes, and politics. And all of that affects how I build recipes. I can’t do that for all of the recipes that I’ve ever written, but I can definitely do it for Game of Thrones, because there’s so much detail and thought put into the world-building.”

For the seafaring folk of the Iron Islands, for example, she delved into Scandi cuisine.

“As well as culture and food in the age of sail, because you need food that really lasts a long time on a ship. They don’t have a whole lot of farmland, so they’re mostly stealing other people’s food or making do with what they have, which is foraged or fished.”

When she’s researching a recipe, she looks at the world in which the people of Game of Thrones live, she said.

“I look at those trade routes, the climate, the culture of a place; Dornishmen love spicy food so their recipes are going to be spicier than something over in the Iron Islands where you know, they’re not they’re not doing a whole lot of trading over there for fiery peppers.

“Maybe they might find the chest of them every now and then if they loot the right ship. Not something that’s going to be a staple part of their cuisine.”

There were some recipes she shied away from though.

“George Martin essentially forbade me from making some of the recipes, like the seagull he’s like just don’t do that, take a pass on that. It tells you something about what the characters are doing and how hungry they are, if they’re out eating seagull, but that’s not necessarily one you need in your weekly rotation of recipes.”

So, what would be in any self-respecting Westeros pantry?

“You’ve got your standard baking flour, different kinds of flour and coarseness, a lot of honey.

“You’d have a lot more of what we’ve gotten away from with modern agriculture, you’d have a lot of preserved fruits. In the fair-weather months, you’d be frantically storing up as much food and preserves and pickling things as you possibly could in advance of winter.”

Some of her favourite recipes in the book are Myrish fire wine, poppy seed pastries, stewed plums and roasted grapes.

“It’s very easy, it just it sort of deepens the flavour of the grapes and you serve alongside some cheese, a little balsamic on there. I highly recommend.”

Highgarden dumplings also get an honourable mention

“It’s a take on gnocchi, it has some historical precedent. So, it’s not entirely out of place in this kind of a setting. And really tasty, that was one of my favourites to test.”