So a Khajit, an Argonian, and an Orc Walk Into a Skooma Den...

Now legal in the Ratway, the alley behind the Winking Skeever, and Washington State.

 ...and get totally blasted on skooma.

Ah yes, sweet, sweet skooma... sweet, mind-numbing, haze-inducing, brain-cell-slaughtering skooma. Loathed by uptight Imperial soldiers everywhere in Cyrodiil, you can find plenty of it while wandering the wilds of Skyrim. Buy it at any Khajit caravan, from random skooma dealers encountered on the road, or - best of all - make your own with this Real Life Skooma Recipe!

I did - and I will openly, immediately admit that this is a really weird recipe with a really odd mix of flavors. It's not for the faint of stomach or frail of liver. It's not going to be to everyone's taste. But it's as canon as anything else Lexi and I have concocted for this blog, and if you're a diehard Skyrim fan with Daedric-strength tastebuds, give this one a shot.

Skooma in-game is made from refined moon sugar. A book from Morrowind, An Alchemist's Guide to Skooma, describes the recipe in greater detail (I would seriously love to meet the game designer who wrote it). In developing my own recipe, I started with the following descriptions from the book:

In Elsweyr skooma is made from moon sugar and a poisonous herb called nightshade... the preparation of skooma requires that the alchemist dissolve some moon sugar in water and bring it to the boil. For one pint of water you should add one cup of moon sugar. Once it is boiling, add one thimble full of nightshade essence.

That right there, my friends, is simple syrup with powdered nightshade added. Straightforward, basic, and something Lexi and I have done before, in our recipes for Elsweyr Fondue and the Velvet Lachance. Reasoning that trying to make simple syrup using our own moon sugar recipe might cause some issues with melting, I fell back on the variation we came up with for the fondue:

MOON SUGAR SIMPLE SYRUP
1 cup granulated white sugar
1 cup water
1-2 Tbsp of lavender or culinary sumac

Boil sugar in water. Stir until sugar dissolves. Remove from heat immediately and add lavender or culinary sumac to taste, usually 1 or 2 Tbsp. Let cool. (If you make with lavender, we recommend straining before use to get the lavender bits out.)

Left: Sumac Simple Syrup (Secunda)
Right: Lavender Simple Syrup (Masser)

With the Velvet Lachance, we solved the issue of where we might get nightshade; the nightshade family is vast, and there are, in fact, quite a few edible plants within it: tomato and eggplant are some examples, but for spice and kick we went with peppers. And oh, there are sooo many to choose from... which ones to use?

Clockwise, starting with the fresh red pepper on the left: Thai pepper, chipotle powder, ancho chili powder, cayenne chili powder, crushed jalapeno peppers, Aleppo pepper (center), Guajillo pepper (long purplish dried pepper), Sanaam chili pepper (bottom)

This is where the flavor really comes into this recipe, and where you can go hog wild, picking and choosing as many (or as few) peppers as you wish. And I highly encourage readers to experiment on your own: we came up with flavors we liked, but there are so many more possible variations out there. Here's the basic recipe:

SKOOMA
4-6 oz. simple syrup
A pinch to a teaspoon of peppers (crushed, minced, dried, powder, a mix of peppers or a single variety)
Vodka

Mix the peppers into the simple syrup. Let sit for an hour or two. Strain. Mix with an equal part vodka, over ice or as straight shots. Lose your mind and yowl like a horny desert cat at the moon's dim light.

TIPS:

• Lavender has a stronger flavor than sumac, so will stand up to the stronger peppers.
• Don't let your base mixture sit for very long. Either drink it right away, or strain out the pepper after an hour (2 hours tops). If you let it sit, it tastes terrible.
• Fresh peppers have a milder flavor than powdered (at least the ones we tried), but may have more heat.
• Combinations that worked reasonably well were lavender and chipotle, lavender and Guajillo pepper, sumac and Aleppo pepper, and sumac and Thai pepper.
• Don't drink this without cutting it with vodka (or gin, if you want something sweeter and fruitier). It's too cloyingly sweet without being diluted.
• Goes well with Elsweyr Fondue and a need to erase the bleak lawlessness of Skyrim from your mind.

10.10.10 Is the Number of the Feast

Towel Day is May 25. 
Have a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Party!

Gwen and I enjoy throwing themed parties, especially long ones. The more pop cultural the better, and if we can work themed food in, well woe be to him who violates the theme. Like the Kung Fu Weekend of Death, complete with Shaw Brothers movies, a copious chinese dinner and dim sum breakfast. Or the Geek Movie Weekend, with back-to-back Holy Grail and Princess Bride.

Tangentially: We've spent waaaayyyy to many hours of our lives arguing over what is and is not a Geek Movie [Holy Grail IS, Total Recall is definitely NOT] and devising logical tests to determine it quickly and decisively. Eventually we'll be forced to post a Venn diagram to publish our research into this heady and debatable subject.  But I digress...

So when October 10, 2010 rolled around, my better half and I absolutely had to throw a themed party (Gwen attended of course).   We decided to make it a contest - a geek trivia scavenger hunt if you will - with clues and prizes for the first person to get it right. We thought long and hard for weeks about the clues, not wanting the game to be too easy or too hard, and using Guinea Pig Gwen to gauge their difficulty. We picked up some sweet ass prizes for the winners, including a D-n-D Red Box, Creationary (it's Lego Pictionary! Brilliant!), The Ladies of Star Wars playing cards, old USSR propaganda posters against drinking... We even prepared a Lamuella Sandwich Bar: a sumptuous buffet of fixin's for build-your-own sandwiches (including Perfectly Normal Beast, of course) and homemade mocha stout to keep everyone's spirits up.

The guests were gathered and the goal was explained:
Tell us what the theme of the party is, and why it's significant.

Clue #1: There are clues all around the house:

Sci-Fi + Britain	A dolphin, A Whale, and a Robot
Petunias	Bottles of Bitter and Salted Peanuts

Clue #2: Mice (Hyperintelligent pan-dimensional Beings)

Clue #3: Jack Handy (As in, Jack Handy's Deep Thoughts)

Clue #4: This party could only be held on 10/10/10.

The fourth clue was our favorite, and the inspiration for the party.  Serious Geeks will know that in Binary, 101010 = 42. 

We wanted the clues to be hard enough to be challenging and tailored to the audience, which is obsessed with pop culture references and quotes.  Unfortunately, we made them a little too hard, and nobody got it without hints.  But the guests had a good time, the sandwiches were worthy of Arthur Dent, and everyone loved the prizes, which we gave out anyway.

Here are some additional food ideas for future HHGTTG parties:
Gwen's Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster recipe

Fairy Cake
Milliway Steak Bites (Ameglion Major cow) and green Salad

Coconuts

So this Towel Day, have some friends over and raise a pint of bitter to the memory of Douglas Adams.   Stay Froody, Dude.  We miss you.

Douglas Adams 1952 - 2001

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...