Week 6 - Medieval

The week 6 theme, medieval, was also a repeat (this time, 2016), and it was just as challenging this time around. I researched recipes again, but found myself right back at the same Game of Thrones site (Inn at the Crossroads). I didn't want to repeat the exact same meal as last time, but the white beans and bacon (recipe) were so tasty that I decided to make them again. Plus, B generally likes beans and bacon, and he wasn't around yet when we made it last time, so it would be new to him.

I was really intrigued by one of the pages called Salladhor Saan’s Shipboard Dinner. I’ve still never read or watched anything Game of Thrones, but the dinner included medieval Arabic lamb meatballs in an eggplant sauce, which immediately sparked my interest. Although we don’t really cook much red meat at home by choice, I decided to make an exception here to follow the recipe closely and use ground lamb, since I don’t have enough experience in medieval cooking to know if there would really be an appropriate substitute. The store only had a ground beef and lamb mix, so that’s what I got.

The meatball and eggplant portion of dinner took a while, even though it sounded so simple on paper and I took shortcuts. There were two main parts - making the eggplant and making the meatballs. The eggplant, if following the recipe, would have been time-consuming, as you had to roast the entire eggplant. Instead, I grabbed a jar of roasted eggplant from the store, and it worked just fine. To the eggplant, I added about 3 oz of plain Greek yogurt, two squeezes of garlic from the bottle (about 2 cloves minced), some salt, a little sesame oil, and some ground coriander. So easy and fairly quick.

The meat portion took longer. First, since I don’t really buy ground red meat, I had to check on the cooking temperature and also do some freshness tests (like sniff test, slime test, etc), especially since the meat had turned an unappealing brown compared to the red hue it had when I bought it. Once the meat was in the bowl, I added paprika, salt, and pepper, along with a little cumin and cinnamon, kneaded it all together, and rolled out some meatballs. A little olive oil in the skillet, and in went the meatballs.

The cooking instructions here were where things didn’t go quite as expected. They said to fry the meatballs until browned, to add water to cover, and to simmer for about 10 minutes. The medieval source cookbook did mention to cook the meatballs in the water until it evaporated, which seems like it would have taken far longer than 10 minutes based on how much water was left in ours, especially since we didn’t even fully cover the meatballs with water. The texture also didn’t really change during the water-simmering step, so if I were to make these again, I’d probably just skip it. We thought we had to do it so we could throw the eggplant-yogurt sauce into the same pan, but I ended up just heating that separately, adding a little bit of the water from the meatball skillet, and putting the meatballs on top, which I think we liked much better than the other way.

The eggplant sauce was fantastic, and I would definitely make that again. It was also a really good complement for the meatballs. I don't know if I would buy this meat mix again, as I feel like Impossible would have worked just as well. The white beans and bacon were, of course, good. Overall, the meal was nice, but our favorite part was probably that eggplant sauce.