Skyrim Recipe: Elsweyr Fondue

There's a Khajit caravan that travels the roads and byways of Skyrim, appearing outside town from time to time to offer rare goods. I like to have my character stop by for a bit of moon sugar and some light conversation about the warm, exotic sands of Elsweyr, the Khajit homeland. But there's one thing I always wonder: just how does a desert kitty stay warm and groovy in the frozen wastes of Skyrim?

The answer, it turns out, is cheese fondue.

Cheese fondue and a bottle of skooma: not just for 1970's lounge cats anymore.

More specifically, Elsweyr fondue, a tasty recipe made from three simple ingredients in-game: ale, moon sugar, and an Eidar cheese wheel.

Beer? Cheese? Two of my favorite things! How, then, could I resist attempting a real world version? Well, lucky you: I couldn't.

Cheese fondue is a very simple dish with a history dating back several hundred years. It's little more than a thick cheese sauce made with beer or wine at low heat in a communal pot, into which diners dip cubes of bread. There are literally thousands of recipes built on this simple foundation. Variation comes from what type of cheese or liquor is used, what seasonings are chosen, or the addition of thickeners or emulsifiers (such as flour or egg).

As with other Skyrim-based recipes, the goal was to achieve an end result that came as close to the in-game description as possible, but was also tasty and relatively easy to make.

In this case, the first challenge came with how Elsweyr fondue is depicted in-game, as compared to what your average actual cheese sauce or cheese fondue looks like in reality. This is what game designers at Bethesda thought Elsweyr fondue should look like:

Image copyright Bethesda Game Studios.

Aside from being a liquid almost, but not quite, entirely unlike fondue... well, would you eat that? I sure wouldn't. It looks like the worst, most industrial chili ever made. If the game designers were trying to convey the bleak lawlessness of Skyrim in a single meal, I think they succeeded admirably with this one. It looks like a bowl of despair, Nord style. And it's certainly uncontaminated by cheese.

Which brings us to our next challenge: picking the right cheese. Take a look at this illustration of an Eidar cheese wheel:

Image copyright Bethesda Game Studios.

I've eaten a lot of cheese in my day, and that picture right there just screams STILTON to me. Stilton is a well-marbled blue cheese with a thick, brownish rind, lovely and creamy when at its most ripe. It goes very well with sweetish red wines and very ripe fruit... and it's definitely a stinky cheese. A wedge of the stuff, improperly sealed up, can make the inside of your fridge smell like feet, so I couldn't even imagine how rank a whole load of it would smell, bubbling away on a hot stove.

So Lexi and I decided against using just Stilton for this one. Instead, we chose a combination of cheeses for flavor, meltability, and scent. We also wanted to come up with a cheese that would melt well, becoming stable and smooth without the need for any emulsifiers, since none are called for in the game recipe.

Our family of ingredients: beer, cheese, fruit, and moon sugar.

The cheese we picked for our base was Snofrisk, a smooth, very mild, slightly tangy Norwegian cream cheese made mostly of goat's milk. We added a lovely, mild, soft French blue cheese (the front wedge in the image above) to stand in for the Eidar wheel and decided to pretend that Eidar Cheese would be a smooth, creamy, marbled goat cheese best represented by combining these two.   Add my favorite go-to amber ale (Silver City's Ridgetop Red), sumac moon sugar simple syrup... and it all melted into a magical tasty recipe that would do any Khajit proud. Here it is, in all its glory.

INGREDIENTS
Butter (optional)
1 4.4-oz. container of plain Snofrisk cheese
About 4 oz. soft, creamy blue cheese
Beer or ale
Moon sugar simple syrup (see recipe below)
Culinary sumac or lavender (to correct seasonings as needed)
Bread and/or fruit wedges for dipping

RECIPE
1. Melt a pat of butter in the top of a double boiler over medium heat. This is optional, but can help prevent sticking.
2. When the butter foams, add the Snofrisk. Whisk slowly with the butter until well blended.
3. Whisk in beer or ale, 4 oz. at a time or so, until the texture is thick and creamy, somewhere between the consistency of a melted milkshake and unwhipped whipping cream.
4. Add the blue cheese in bits and gradually whisk in until smooth.
5. Add a tablespoon or two of the moon sugar simple syrup. This will sweeten the fondue, so check to taste before adding a whole bunch of it.
6. If your moon sugar simple syrup was on the mild side, add lavender or sumac a teaspoon at a time to adjust seasonings.
6. If your fondue is a bit too thick, thin it with more beer or ale.
7. Mess it forth into a pre-warmed earthenware bowl or your favorite fondue pot, and eat by dipping in sliced apples or chunks of lightly toasted bread!

It should look more or less like this, a little thicker if you wish.

 MOON SUGAR SIMPLE SYRUP
1 cup sugar
1 cup water
Several Tbsp of lavender or culinary sumac

Awhile back Lexi and I came up with a very serviceable recipe for moon sugar based on a microwave hard candy recipe. Initially I wanted to add the straight moon sugar to this recipe, but Lexi noted that we might have difficulties with it melting smoothly, and would end up with cheese sauce with bits of half-melted moon sugar floating in it rather than a smooth, creamy, dippable sauce. So instead, I took her advice and opted to make a simple syrup instead.

The process is simple: boil 1 cup of granulated white sugar in 1 cup of water. Stir until sugar dissolves. Remove from heat immediately and add lavender or culinary sumac to taste, usually 1 or 2 Tbsp. Let cool and use as you would in any simple syrup recipe. (If you make with lavender, we recommend straining before use to get the lavender bits out.)

MORE NOTES
Lexi and I made two different kinds of moon sugar, one for each of Skyrim's moons (Masser and Secunda). One uses lavender, the other culinary sumac; each have their own flavor qualities, and we kept this in mind when choosing ingredients for the fondue. Lavender makes a very floral, pretty flavor, but it's very strong. Sumac is more musky, like one of those flavors you've met before but just can't put your tongue on it... it's also more subtle than the lavender.

So for the first workup of this recipe I chose a milder French cheese and a solid, not-very-hoppy amber ale to go with the sumac without drowning out the flavor. The breads were chose were a dark rye (as might be found in the Nordic wilds) and an Italian artisan loaf, cut into large chunks and lightly toasted on a baking sheet at about 325F for 10 minutes or so. Round it out with slices of a firm, fleshy apple (like Granny Smith or Fuji) and you can dine with the coolest cats on the tundra.

And don't forget the skooma...

Skyrim Food That We'll Never Make



DONUT!

Gwen and I have been fielding some requests from readers, and seeing some requests posted on Skyrim forums around the intertoobs that we make some specific things from the land of Skyrim.  But there are some things that we will never make and you will never see on this site.  Here's why... 

WARNING: SNARKY SARCASTITRON LEVEL 3  

1. Boiled Cream Treat

Because it's a fracking donut.  I can't believe how much discussion I've seen online about this.  "What is it?  Is it a bagel?  What could it be?  It's fascinating!"  Seriously?  WTF.  IT'S A DONUT.  We're not going to spend our time and effort recreating something you can buy at a grocery store for 49 cents.

You can read this two ways: "Boiled" + "Cream Treat", where the cream treat itself is boiled.  That's just stupid.  or "Boiled Cream" + "Treat".  Oh, boiled cream?  Like CUSTARD?! Or PUDDING?!  Tell me you've never made the kind of instant pudding at home where you have to heat the milk first.   In all fairness, those of you under the age of 20 may have only ever had instant pudding, but let this be the time you learn from Gramma Lexi about how things were in the olden days of 1995.  Oh wait - it's not that old.  You can buy it right next to the instant stuff right now.

How exotic and mysterious!

2. Sweetrolls

Sweetrolls are everywhere in Skyrim, and everyone wants to taste them, including us.  This is a legit recipe that's got some of its own interesting challenges, but frankly, it's been done.  To death.  We don't think the world needs yet another sweetroll recipe right now.  Other sites did it first.  And probably better.

www.gourmetgaming.co.uk - The original and still Champeen!

See?
http://www.gourmetgaming.co.uk/post/12553999356/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-sweet-roll-this
http://www.geekychef.com/2012/01/sweetroll.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWReL8P-GtQ
http://toysandbacon.blogspot.com/2012/02/how-to-make-skyrim-sweet-rolls.html
http://coffeelovescompany.blogspot.com/2012/10/fantasy-recipe-skyrim-sweet-rolls.html
http://www.instructables.com/id/Dovahcake-or-how-to-make-a-sweetroll/

3. Potage Magnifique

Because it's nasty.  It's a flour gravy filled with vegetables.  Potage was peasant food in the middle ages that people had to eat out of necessity that was bland and subsistence-only food.  It's also the in-game joke.  The 'Gourmet' who wrote the book Uncommon Taste can't cook.  His whole presence in the game is a parody of arrogant TV chefs and his recipes are bunk. This one is no exception.  Sunlight Souffle without the eggs?  That's not a typo, it's irony.

 IT'S A JOKE.  IT'S SUPPOSED TO TASTE LIKE ASS.  (Actually it looks like ass too)

BTW, this goes for all the rest of the recipes in Uncommon Taste as well.   Pfft.

4.  Boring, Common or Otherwise Uninspired Recipes

There's a lot of really interesting in-game food.  Aaaaaannnd... there's a lot that's not.  We're not going to make things like Beef Stew, Roast Chicken, or Clam Meat.  If it's got a clear real-life analogy, there are hundreds or even thousands of recipes out there that you can try.  What makes our cooking juices flow is the stuff nobody else is doing, or stuff that's super challenging.  While we might do a Horker Stew with pork and lavender sometime, we'll probably not post a recipe for a baked potato. 

So there you have it.  The Foods We'll Never Make.  As an aside, although we love Skyrim, we've been itching to get back to our bloggy cooking roots and do more food from things not Skyrim related.  There will be a few more Tamriel recipes, sure, but expect to see an increasing number of recipes from Britcoms, movies, cartoons and other geeky sources.  We can't be one-dimensional now, can we?

Skyrim Food: Apple Cabbage Stew

Pardon me while I stop mid-fight to eat 20 bowls of Stew.

Apple Cabbage Stew.  Sounds tasty, yeah?  Well evidently in Skyrim the only seasoning anyone uses is Salt.  That's fine if you're living in a fantasized medieval Nordic land, but for the rest of us non-Stoics with more than 2 tastebuds who don't actually like eating raw dog meat and mammoth snout, getting this recipe to the Tasty Place was tricky.

The more posts we do, the more Gwen and I feel like what makes our site special is our overwhelming (some would say unhealthy) obsession with canon.  A lot of food blogs are written by cool, well-balanced people with interesting interpretations on recipes.  We're not those people. 

We actually debated making a common version of this stew that exists in the real world.  There was discussion about things like chicken stock, onions, thyme, red wine; ingredients that would make it conventionally tasty and easy to make. 

Easy?  Conventional?  Non-Canon?  BLASPHEMY!!

I  have a giant monkey brain that I use to think through creative problems.  Three ingredients?  No seasoning but salt?  No problem.  Chicken stock is for the weak.

Liberties were taken with the quantities and preparations of the three main ingredients, but no additional foods or seasonings have been added.  The final redaction is a riff on traditional Northern European sauerkraut dishes.  Sauerkraut (preserved cabbage) would be a very likely preparation in Skyrim.

Ingredients: Apple, Cabbage, Salt.

• 3 or 4 Sweet Apples, like Honeycrisp or Red Delicious
• 2 lb Salt-Cured Sauerkraut, Canned sauerkraut won't do.  Get the naturally cured stuff in the refrigerator section at the store made with Cabbage and Salt.
• 4 Cups Apple Juice or Apple Cider, The sweeter, the better; you're not going to add any sugar.
• Salt to taste

Found these authentic Skyrim apples in a barrow. They look like they'd been there for a couple millennia.

Directions

1. Empty the sauerkraut into a strainer, rinse and drain well.  Squeeze out extra moisture with your hands.
2. Dice all but one of the apples
3. Add the drained sauerkraut, apple juice and diced apples to a large pot and simmer over low heat for 3.5 hours
4. Dice the final apple and add it to the stew
5. Simmer another 30 minutes or until the stew is a nice dark golden color.
6. Salt to taste

It's actually pretty good - it's a crunchy sweet-n-sour hot dish that can double as a side to pork. It's also vegan.  The sauerkraut absorbs up the sugars from the apples and apple juice and it mellows out the tang of the kraut.  The longer you cook it, the more caramelized the stew will become, and the sweeter and darker it will get.

Skyrim Treats: Moon Sugar

Moon Sugar; sweet and mysterious

Wander the roads and byways of Skyrim, and eventually you're bound to run into a rough encampment by the side of the road on the way into town. These clusters of tents are temporary trading posts set up by the nomadic Khajiiti, a feline race from the exotic desert land of Elsweyr. Here you can buy and sell goods many merchants in town will avoid, including the less-than-licit moon sugar.

Pure, uncut, from the wilds of Elsweyr. The first sample is always free.
Image source Bethesda Game Studios.

Moon sugar is described as a crystal made from the canes of certain grasses in Elsweyr. It has magical properties, can be used as an alchemy ingredient, and is a strong narcotic. It's illegal in much of Tamriel: in Morrowind many shopkeepers won't even do business with you if you're carrying the stuff (not so in the more lawless land of Skyrim). Refine it, and you have skooma.

The in-game picture shown above depicts pale but not colorless lumps or chunks of various sizes. It reminded us immediately of rock candy.  Figuring that nobody really wants to wait a whole week for traditional rock candy to crystallize, eventually we found this easy microwave hard candy recipe, upon which we based the recipe below.

The land of Elsweyr is an exotic, somewhat mysterious desert land with a rich religious tradition, including some pretty hefty mythology about the moons of Tamriel: Masser and Secunda. There's plenty of in-game talk about Moon Sugar, but nothing specifically about which one, so it made the most sense to do a version for each moon.  

Masser and Secunda
Image Source Bethesda Game Studios

Masser is floral and sweet, while Secunda is dark and mysterious.  The resulting Moon Sugar(s) should be laden with subtle flavors which seem familiar but foreign to the average Nord, as if one can't quite put their tongue on just what they're tasting...

Early recipes started with vanilla sugar and vanilla-cardamom sugar (vanilla bean pods and/or cracked cardamom pods scraped into a cup or two of sugar and left for a week to absorb the spices). That makes a good base, but I learned after a few trials that plain hard candy made this way will have a honeylike taste which tends to overwhelm the mildness of the vanilla. So it was back to the drawing board.

Eventually I came up with two good variations. The first was made with lavender sugar (made by putting two Tbsp of culinary lavender in with the vanilla sugar and letting it sit for a week, then sifting out the lavender). The end result is subtle and floral, with a lovely translucent golden color to it.

Top: Sumac Moon Sugar (Secunda)
Bottom: Lavender Moon Sugar (Masser)

I realized after I made it, however, that at least one of the recipes we came up with should fit the in-game Khajiit culture where it's made: dry, desert lands, exotic, distant, hot. Lavender is lovely, but it's a much more European herb: I always think of France when I think of lavender, and Lexi always thinks of the tundra around Whiterun. A better analog for Elsweyr would be some place like Arabia or North Africa, and the spice would be something grown and used heavily in the region. 

It also occurred to me that any flavor we chose would have to fit in with a future Elsweyr Fondue recipe, which uses Moon Sugar as an ingredient.  So instead of another sweet, floral herb found on the roads of Skyrim, we used Sumac.

I can hear you now: "What the hell is sumac?? Isn't that the poisonous stuff that gets you all itchy if you run into it in the woods??"

Well, that's poison sumac, yes... but culinary sumac is an entirely different animal. (Well, plant, really.) It's a small shrub which grows in tropical and subtropical zones across Africa, in dry desert lands much like the Khajiit homeland. The fruit is dried and ground into a rich purplish-reddish powder and used in Middle Eastern cooking. It's a little bit lemony, a little like cumin, and a little bit delicious and unfamiliar.

Here's the final recipe. For the Masser version, leave out the sumac.

MOON SUGAR
1 cup vanilla, vanilla-cardamom, or lavender sugar (use standard white sugar only)
1/2 cup light corn syrup
1 Tbsp sumac (for the Secunda version only)
Vegetable oil (a flavorless oil like canola) or vegetable shortening
1-2 Tbsp powdered sugar

Oil or grease a jelly roll pan. Mix the flavored sugar and corn syrup in a microwave-safe bowl.

Cover tightly with plastic wrap and microwave for 3 minutes. Remove from microwave and stir. Cover again and microwave for another 2 minutes. Add the sumac at this point, if you're making the Secunda version.

WARNING: SUGAR WILL BE EXTREMELY HOT!!!

Remove from microwave, remove plastic wrap, and pour mixture onto oiled/greased jelly roll pan.

You can dust with powdered sugar at this point, but there's an easier way. See below.

Let cool until hard. Break into large chunks. Put the large chunks into a heavy-duty freezer bag, seal, and break them by tapping firmly with the side of a wooden spoon. Add powdered sugar to the bag and shake to coat pieces.

Store in an airtight container.

We can neither confirm nor deny that this recipe will have you yowling to the full moon like a wild feline on a hot summer's night. You'll just have to try it yourself.

Skyrim Honey-Nut Treats

Restore 5 Points of Health

Honey Nut Treats can be found all over Skryim.  It's a pretty simple idea, really: nuts+honey+stick = sweet, caloric goodness.   Putting these on a stick totally makes sense, as they're so sticky that the Dovahkiin's hands would stick to his/her sword.  Try explaining THAT to a Falmer.

To be really canon, these would probably just be honey, nuts and spices mixed with boiled honey - kind of like simsimieh, but it's a serious pain in the ass to make and unless you're a professional candy maker, there's no guarantee that it will actually set up.  Instead, I've modified an easier marshmallow treat recipe to get a taste that's authentically Skyrim without the need for a French culinary degree.

When you're making these, take the time to go to a restaurant or craft store and get Candy Apple Sticks.  They're sturdy, the perfect size and look just right.  In the game, these treats are the size of a baby's arm, which I put down to the game rendering.  Using a Candy Apple stick produces a treat that's really just the right size for a real meat human (or Dunmer.  or Argonian.  or...).

"Nothing hits the spot right after a fight like Nuts on a Stick."

Recipe (yields about 2 dozen treats)
3 Cups of Puffed Rice Cereal
(you know, the kind that's got a copyright on the name)
3 Cups of Mixed Nuts (salted or unsalted, per your preference)
1/2 Cup Honey
1/2 Cup Peanut Butter
2 Cups Marshmallows
3 Tbsp. Cinnamon

Mix the cereal, nuts and cinnamon in a VERY large mixing bowl, and set aside.

Melt the marshmallows, peanut butter and honey in a very large pot over low heat. Stir well until everything is melted and combined.

Pour the melted mixture into the cereal and nuts, and stir well to combine.

We used unsalted peanuts and almonds.  It was kind of like tasty hippie food.

Transfer the mix to a large mixing bowl and chill in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes.  The mix is too loose to form into balls when it's warm, and needs to chill a bit to firm up.

Take the mix out of the fridge and with damp hands (not soaking wet, just damp), mold the mix into balls that will be skewered onto the apple sticks. Damp hands keep the treats from sticking to you. Buttering your hands works too, but isn't as effective.

At this point, depending on the heat and humidity at your house, the treats may still be too loose to stay stuck on the apple stick. If this is the case, put the rolled treats on a tray and stick them in the freezer for about 15 minutes, then try to skewer them again.

These will keep for a week or more without refrigeration.  Just make sure to wrap or pack them in an airtight container.