Author Topic: Fan ..... food? Baywraps!  (Read 7670 times)

Phaz

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Fan ..... food? Baywraps!
« on: January 17, 2011, 05:27:13 AM »
I'm one of the least artistic people on the planet (5 year olds can draw better than me) so it'd be impossible for me to do any fan art or make a mistcloak or anything along those lines.  I also can't write, so fan fiction is out as well.

However, I can cook. 

I've always been fascinated by Mistborn and the bay wraps featured in the 1st book always stuck out. 

Quote
Several skaa women of various ages worked in the shop's kitchen, preparing baywraps -- rolls of thin, flat bread stuffed with boiled barley and vegetables.

After a lot of planning and research I finally decided on my recipe and made my first batch tonight.  They came out delicious.  Here is the final result.  I pretty much took the general idea, then thought about how to take that to make it taste good. 

For the flat bread, I wanted something that was more than just holding it all together.  This is where I probably deviated a little.  The easiest thing would be a tortilla style wrap, but too me that was too thin and didn't have the right texture.  I could also use something like pita bread but that would be too thick and dry.  I wanted something that would really add to them.  Thus, I went with some naan(the bread you get at Indian restaurants, that pic was before I got the cooking down, some are over/under done on one side).  I don't do a lot of baking so this was a bit of a challenge.  In the end (once I got the cooking temp/time down on the grill) I ended up with a delicious bread that had just the most subtle sweetness to them, with additional flavor coming from some garlic butter they were brushed with.  They also came out with the perfect texture, of having a bit of soft spongyness to them.  It really goes well with the...

Boiled barley - This was based of an Alton Brown recipe.  I've never had barley before (except in beer of course) and had no idea what to expect.  I ended up just cooking some pearled barley with water and then adding it to some orange juice, olive oil and tossed it with some bacon (of course), fennel and mizithra cheese, which is a softer goat cheese from Greece with a ton of flavor.  This stuff is great, I could eat spoonfuls.

Finally was the vegetables.  This took some thought.  I wanted vegetables that I could grill.  In the end, I went with asparagus, eggplant and artichoke hearts that I tossed in a dressing made with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, apple cider vinegar and some dijon mustard.  The goal here was to get a bit of acidic flavor to match the subtle citrus flavor in the barley.  These came out good and paired perfectly.

After that, it was just a matter of spreading some of the barley on the naan, adding the veggies, to get this and then rolling them up.

They were great.  This was just an experiment batch though, I already have some improvements.  For the artichokes I'm going to get full artichokes and just cut out the hearts.  I tried to save money/time by getting just the hearts but they way they prepare them didn't work on the grill.  I'll cook the hearts sous vide with some tricks to get a really intense flavor then grill them with a olive oil/garlic baste just enough to get some intense grill marks on them.  I think I'm going to try some lemon flavor for the asparagus and I still want to figure out something for the eggplant.

I had a lot of fun working with this (and am not even done yet, it will probably take 2-3 more batches until I've settled my mind).  I think as I go through other books I'm going to take notes of what the characters are eating and do the same thing.  I seem to remember some interesting feast descriptions in Way of Kings....
« Last Edit: January 17, 2011, 05:29:57 AM by Phaz »

CabbyHat

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Re: Fan ..... food? Baywraps!
« Reply #1 on: January 17, 2011, 06:19:44 AM »
Very interesting! I'm sure this is a lot fancier than what the skaa peasants would be eating, but no matter - just reading about these things is making me salivate. Maybe this is what the servants in noble houses whip up when their masters let them take leftovers home. :)

I'd be interested to see you try to recreate the seed corn and slime mixture that one of the Elantrians eats in Elantris. :P
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andygal

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Re: Fan ..... food? Baywraps!
« Reply #2 on: January 17, 2011, 06:48:18 AM »
the boiled barely mix sounds delici0us..a little tempted to try it myself...

I'd be interested to see what you could get out of WoK in the way of food...

Argent

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Re: Fan ..... food? Baywraps!
« Reply #3 on: January 17, 2011, 08:46:46 AM »
The wonderful wonders fantasy fiction does to the world...
Power doesn't always have to corrupt. In many ways, it can change a man for the better.

Phaz

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Re: Fan ..... food? Baywraps!
« Reply #4 on: January 17, 2011, 03:33:05 PM »
the boiled barely mix sounds delici0us..a little tempted to try it myself...

I'd be interested to see what you could get out of WoK in the way of food...

It's really good.  I think next time though I'm going to try adding more bacon (of course) as well as a little of the bacon grease to the mix to add more flavor.  I'm also going to try and use home made chicken stock instead of water to cook the barley for extra flavor.

If you want to try some, just use 1 cup of barely, 2 cups of boiling water, 2 teaspoons of salt and 1 tbsp of butter.  Put them in a casserole dish or something that's safe for the oven with a lid, and stir it well.  Throw it in the oven (well covered) at 375 for an hour.  After it comes out, use a large fork or something to stir it so it doesn't harden, you just want to separate the barley from each other (but not mush them up).  It will make sense when you do it.  At that point for the salad I added 1 small fennel head, 3 tbsp of orange juice, 2 tbsp of olive oil, 1/2 a cup of bacon, about 1/2 a cup of cheese (parmesan would work too) and 1/2 a cup of bacon.

If anyone is reading through any of Brandon's other books (Such as WoK) and comes across any meal descriptions and could give me the page numbers that would be awesome.

CabbyHat

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Re: Fan ..... food? Baywraps!
« Reply #5 on: January 18, 2011, 02:01:17 AM »
In all seriousness, I'd love to see you take a stab at Ashir's "experiment" from Geranid's interlude (starting page 711 in TWoK.) Some of the description of it:

"The small stone room smelled sharply of spices. Ashir was trying another new experiment. It involved some kind of curry powder and a rare Shin fruit that he'd caramelized."
"She eyed the contents. Bits of bread covered with a red sauce."
"'Yes. It was really fascinating the way that Shin vegetable caramelized.'"
"'Yes, but you'd hate it. No fruit. Is this fish you added?'
'A dried handful of the little minnows I caught outside this morning.'"

It sounds like an interesting dish, and certainly quite challenging. :)
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Phaz

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Re: Fan ..... food? Baywraps!
« Reply #6 on: January 18, 2011, 06:04:29 AM »
In all seriousness, I'd love to see you take a stab at Ashir's "experiment" from Geranid's interlude (starting page 711 in TWoK.) Some of the description of it:

"The small stone room smelled sharply of spices. Ashir was trying another new experiment. It involved some kind of curry powder and a rare Shin fruit that he'd caramelized."
"She eyed the contents. Bits of bread covered with a red sauce."
"'Yes. It was really fascinating the way that Shin vegetable caramelized.'"
"'Yes, but you'd hate it. No fruit. Is this fish you added?'
'A dried handful of the little minnows I caught outside this morning.'"

It sounds like an interesting dish, and certainly quite challenging. :)

Good find.  That does sound intriguing.

I wonder what kind of process Brandon goes through when describing food.

Morderkaine

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Re: Fan ..... food? Baywraps!
« Reply #7 on: January 18, 2011, 07:52:45 AM »
I can't remember any specific dishes right now but there's a character in Elantris, Kiin I think, who's a master chef. IIRC he prepares two or three feast throughout the book so I's skim through it and see if there's anything interesting there. He mostly appears in Sarene Chapters I believe.

ps. Make sure to post your final recipes so we can all try them.  ;D

Sprouts

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Re: Fan ..... food? Baywraps!
« Reply #8 on: January 20, 2011, 02:47:24 AM »
That's really cool, I've never really heard of fans making food from books before.  I agree with the think about Kiin from Elantris, I don't know any specific descriptions, but I'm sure there are quite  a few foods described.

Peter Ahlstrom

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Re: Fan ..... food? Baywraps!
« Reply #9 on: January 20, 2011, 06:59:38 AM »
Phaz, you've never had barley?! Man, I LOVE barley soup, the more barley the better. Also, barley is what makes grape nuts yummy.
All Saiyuki fans should check out Dazzle! Emotionally wrenching action-adventure and quirky humor! (At least read chapter 6 and tell me if you're not hooked.) Volume 10 out now!

Phaz

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Re: Fan ..... food? Baywraps!
« Reply #10 on: January 20, 2011, 03:27:46 PM »
Phaz, you've never had barley?! Man, I LOVE barley soup, the more barley the better. Also, barley is what makes grape nuts yummy.

It was surprisingly hard to find out here.  I could also only find pearled barley.  I've heard the hulled has more flavor potential.

You are right though, it is great.  I'm going to try some other things with it.  One I really want to do is try cooking some like a risotto and see how much flavor I can infuse into the barley itself.

socom-delta

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Re: Fan ..... food? Baywraps!
« Reply #11 on: January 22, 2011, 09:14:23 PM »
rolls of thin flatbread stuffed with stuff... reminds me of burritos. difference is that burrito wraps are corn-based iirc.

Phaz

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Re: Fan ..... food? Baywraps!
« Reply #12 on: January 30, 2011, 09:29:34 PM »
Yesterday I made a batch of these to share with the group I work out with for our drink club after our 3 hour workout.  People loved them, and on this batch I even did something different with the naan and barley which I thought came out worse than the last batch.  However I did the veggies much more simply and they came out better.   People were really impressed though.  It's easy to like something when you are the one that makes/creates it, but it's nice to see that these have universal appeal.

I think one more iteration and I'll have a finalized recipe.

Also Peter, based on your suggestion I made some barley soup last week.  It blew me away.  So much so I'm making another batch today.  I used this recipe which I'm going to nickname 'Man stew"

dhalagirl

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Re: Fan ..... food? Baywraps!
« Reply #13 on: January 31, 2011, 10:21:35 PM »
The pie I baked (and slightly burned) last night looked like the shattered plains.  Here's the addy if you want to see the pic.

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=173440506034293&set=a.103145006397177.1892.100001050334738

andygal

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Re: Fan ..... food? Baywraps!
« Reply #14 on: February 01, 2011, 12:47:17 AM »
*accidental*  fan food! I love it!