Game of Thrones Premiere Party Theme Food

For those of you who don't know, The Husband is a dork.

Here he is, sitting on a replica Iron Throne at Wondercon.
After serious searching, he was by far the cutest dork I could find, so I married him.

Yes, dork.  And, frankly, so am I, though I really fall right on the Nerd/Dork dividing line and sometimes people don't realize I'm a dork until it's too late.  (cue maniacal laugh)

Anyway, so The Husband is ridiculously, crazily, bizarrely obsessed with the Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin.  In fact, if you haven't ever read the first book in that series and might be persuaded to do so, The Husband will probably just go buy you a copy of your very own.  He might even come to your house and read it to you.  He's essentially a missionary of this particular sect of dorkdom.

The good people at HBO have adapted this series into a TV show named after the first book, The Game of Thrones.  And they have been marketing the hell out of it.  For one, they've been hauling replica Iron Thrones all over the country for people like The Husband to sit in, and they have also rolled out celebrity-chef food carts in New York and L.A. with foods inspired by the books.

Of course, we had a premiere party for airing of the first episode; we got HBO just for this show in the first place, so it seemed like we should pack the house with all our dorkily-inclined friends and watch it together.  I decided to jump on the bandwagon and make some theme foods for the party, because I am like that.

I made one of the things that HBO had on the food carts, this lemon cake recipe.  This recipe requires a relatively high level of baking experience, but is totally worth trying out, because the cakes are the lightest, most airy things you've ever had from a home kitchen.  I was a little alarmed when I folded the batter into the whipped egg whites and ended up with such a thin liquidy consistency, but everything turned out just fine.

I also made some "meat pies" from the books, except that I made them vegetarian.  I used Alton Brown's pocket pie crust, which is surprisingly easy.  For the filling, I did as follows:

Vegetarian "Meat Pie" Filling
Nouns:
1 medium onion, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
6 cremini mushrooms, stemmed and diced
4 yukon gold potatoes, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup red wine
1 cup vegetable stock
6 ounces veggie crumbles, I used Morningstar
2 good squirts ketchup
1 tsp rosemary
1 tsp thyme
2 bay leaves
fresh ground pepper
1 cup peas
butter or olive oil

Verbs:
In an enamel dutch oven or cast iron skillet, brown the onions over medium heat in the butter or oil until translucent, then add the garlic, celery and mushrooms.  Cook for several minutes, stirring as needed to prevent sticking. Add the potato, rosemary and thyme and cook for five to ten more minutes.  Then add the wine and stock, simmering until reduced by about half.  Then add the crumbles, bay leaf and peas, and simmer on low heat for 45 minutes.  Yumm!  Resulting mixture should be the consistency of pie filling.

Yum!