Posted October 6, 2016 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 4 Comments
UPDATE: There is an new version of this recipe available in my cookbook, A LITERARY HOLIDAY COOKBOOK.
Happy October, folks! Since Halloween is just around the corner, I decided to do a spooky literary menu in honor of the season. Our theme this month is Edgar Allen Poe!
For our appetizer, we’re starting with a tribute to Poe’s famous poem, The Raven. These deviled “raven eggs” are a Halloween-y variation on our Cracked China Deviled Eggs. I used the cracked dying technique to create a black, spidery pattern over the eggs. I thought it would be fun to make the insides purple, and to avoid more dye, I used my own variation on a beet and avocado deviled egg recipe from Amazingly Tasty.
If beets aren’t your thing, I still highly recommend giving these a chance. I’m not normally a beet fanatic, but I love the subtle difference in flavor they bring to the filling. Plus, they’re healthier than normal deviled eggs, since they forgo the mayo and mustard—and you just can’t beat that color! 🙂
NOTE: The eggs need to soak for 7 hours before being peeled (this is what helps achieve the spidery pattern in the dye). I recommend hard boiling the eggs the night before you want to make the recipe and letting them soak overnight.
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Posted September 1, 2016 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 8 Comments
Say hello to our new Book of the Month: Sherlock Holmes! I’ve been wanting to making a Sherlock menu since Day 1 of this blog, but one of the struggles I ran into is that Holmes just doesn’t eat a lot. He subsists mainly on coffee, pipe smoke, and music—which is cool to read about, but doesn’t make for an appetizing dinner.
So up until a few months ago, I had Holmes on the back burner. Then a friend of mine specifically requested a menu for him, and I renewed my search. I tried a Holmesian recipe hunt once more, but just couldn’t find enough to make a full menu. When I expressed my frustrations to another friend, she had a great idea: make recipes inspired by the names of the Sherlock Holmes stories! Before long, we were chatting about how fun it would be to have an orange-flavored recipe for The Five Orange Pips, something ginger for The Red-Headed League, and so on. So, at long last, my Sherlock Holmes menu is FINALLY ready to premiere! 😀
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Posted August 4, 2016 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 6 Comments
I’m proud to announce the start of a menu I’ve been looking forward to for ages: A STUDIO GHIBLI MENU! For those who are unfamiliar, Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki worked with Studio Ghibli to make films like My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, and Ponyo. I’ve been a huge Hayao Miyazaki fan for years, so I thought it would be fun to make a menu for his movies! Since it would be impossible to choose just one film, I decided to base each dish after a different movie. Today’s recipe is from Spirited Away!
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Posted July 7, 2016 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 9 Comments
Our new Book of the Month is A Little Princess, and we’re starting it out with one of my favorite foods in the entire book: Sara’s bakery buns! When the previously affluent Sara Crewe is suddenly thrown into poverty, she struggles with hunger every day. One day she finds a coin in the street, but instead of spending it right away, she tries to find who it belongs to. When she can’t, she uses it to buy six warm, fresh bakery buns…then the baker woman sees her give five of them away to a starving child on the street! The baker woman is so touched by Sara’s generosity, she takes in the child Sara helped and teaches her to work in the bakery. Who knew a little girl with a simple bun could do so much?
In the movie version of the story, the bun in Sara’s hands looks like a giant, delicious cinnamon bun, but I decided to take it a step further and make something special: blackberry buns! Today we’ve spiraled traditional sweet roll dough around rich blackberry preserves and drizzled it with sweet lemon icing.
A dish fit for a princess!
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Posted June 2, 2016 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 11 Comments
That’s right, folks! Our new Menu of the Month is going to be based on
Star Trek: The Next Generation. The Mister introduced me to
Star Trek after we first got married, and now I’m hooked. Plus, now seemed like a good time to throw in another TV/movie menu, since I haven’t done one since
February. I’ve been looking forward to this menu for MONTHS, so let’s get started! 🙂
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Posted May 5, 2016 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 3 Comments
A few months ago, I read The Borrowers for the very first time, and I couldn’t believe what I’d been missing. It was amazing! Despite being written for a young audience, the characters were nuanced and relatable. The plot, though relatively simple, was engaging. I LOVED Arrietty’s spunk—she quickly became one of my top literary heroines!
We first meet the Borrowers while they are making their evening dinner: potato soup. Of course, since the pot was no bigger than a thimble, only the most delicate slivers of potato and onion were taken from the Borrowers’ stores to make the soup. Nevertheless, the resulting dinner was hearty and delicious, and I knew right away that it would be the appetizer for my Borrower menu.
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Posted April 7, 2016 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 12 Comments
Our April book of the month is definitely a modern classic (or rather a classic series). We’re cooking A Series of Unfortunate Events! I DEVOURED those books as a kid. In fact, when I first started the series, I went to the library three times in three days, because that’s how fast I was whipping through it.
Even though it’s been years since I first read A Series of Unfortunate Events, I still remember the Baudelaires’ Aunt Josephine and her chronic fear of pretty much everything. She was too afraid to even turn her stove, resulting in her penchant for cold cucumber soup.
This particular soup is a light, delicious recipe originally developed by Whole Foods. I specifically sought out a cucumber mint soup, since the author mentions that such soup has “a delicious, minty taste.” I’d never made cucumber soup before now, but this recipe is easy and refreshing, not to mention healthy. Not bad for not using a stove! 🙂
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Posted March 3, 2016 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 4 Comments
I just read The Three Musketeers for the first time last year, and I was hugely impressed. Considering the size of the book and the time when it was written, I was expecting it to be a little slow and wordy. Instead, I laughed my way through the first chapter and rooted for D’Artagnan and his musketeer pals all the way to the end. Before the book was over, I knew I had to make a menu for it here on the blog.
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Posted January 7, 2016 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 3 Comments
We kicking off the New Year with the granddaddy of all classic stories: the legend of King Arthur! I’m a big fan of ancient myth and folklore (you should see my Irish myth collection), and the Arthurian legends are some of my favorites. What’s not to love about epic tales of grand quests, noble knights, and a brave king? In fact, the reason I waited so long to make a King Arthur menu was because I wanted to wait until I had enough blogging experience to do it justice. So here we go! 🙂
The appetizer for our King Arthur menu is inspired by the beginning of Arthur’s story: his retrieval of the sword from the stone. These easy, delicious cheese bites are just the right snack to kick off a long afternoon of knightly adventuring…or at least reading about knightly adventures! The perfectly British combo of Camembert and English cheddar is balanced with toasted nuts and sweet-tart dried cranberries—a truly kingly dish! 🙂
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Posted December 3, 2015 by Alison's Wonderland Recipes in Book of the Month Recipes / 11 Comments
December is here, and with it all the trappings of Christmas. Since I moved in early November and didn’t get a chance to decorate for Halloween, I was determined not to let that happen for Christmas. On the first night of Advent, I set the lights low, turned on a CD of Christmas hymns, and finished almost all my decorating in one night (I saved the tree for the next day). I was so ready for it, and it was actually really relaxing. I even found that it has been a lot easier to remember the “reason for the season,” I guess because it gave me a chance to think about why I was decorating. I know I won’t always get that, so I was grateful to have it this year.
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