Eat Your Way Through the Game of Thrones Finale

This has been an…intense season of Game of Thrones. So much violence, so much backstabbing, so many twists and turns. Sunday is the finale, and all the characters are at risk. Our advice to you: Throw a season finale party! Break out the nice wine, the tissues, and make a medieval-ish pie! Beef pie with a bacon lattice top, or a mushroom hobbit pie. Print some fun Game of Thrones themed wine labels and put them on your wine bottles! All this will make you feel better when your favorite character dies horribly.

Beef Pie with a Bacon Lattice Top

4 strips bacon

2-3 onions

1 tsp. smoked paprika

2 cloves garlic, chopped

1 cup flour (or only enough to coat the meat with)

3-4 pounds stew meat or beef chuck

2 cans (14.5 oz each) diced tomatoes

3 red potatoes

1 bag baby carrots

2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. pepper

1-2 bottles Guinness extra stout, or use beef stock

1 chipotle pepper from a can of chipotle peppers in adobo, chopped.

Cook bacon, cool, crumble and transfer to slow cooker. Cook onions and garlic in bacon fat with paprika and chipotle pepper until the onions are soft. Transfer to slow cooker. Salt and pepper stew meat, and coat in flour. Sear outside of stew meat in very hot pan, and transfer to slow cooker. Add the rest of the ingredients to slow cooker. Cook on high for 4-5 hours, or on low for 7-8 hours.

Pie Crust

2 ½ cups flour

1 tsp. salt

2 tbsp. sugar

8 tbsp. shortening

12 tbsp. unsalted butter

6-8 tbsp. orange juice

This is enough crust to make a top and a bottom crust. If you use the bacon lattice top, you can either halve this, or make pie crust cookies by cutting the remaining pie crust into cookie size pieces, coating lightly with sugar and cinnamon and cooking at 350 for 10-15 minutes until they are crisp. Here is a gluten free crust if you need it.

To make Crust:

Add flour salt and sugar to the bowl or food processor. Mix. Cut shortening and butter into small chunks. Add and use food processor or pastry cutter to combine with flour mixture until it looks like pebbles. Add orange juice slowly until barely holds together. Divide in 2, wrap in plastic and put in the fridge for 30 min. or longer to cool.

Bacon Lattice Top

Preheat oven to 350. Use all the bacon from a one pound package of thin or regular size bacon. On a cookie sheet weave the bacon together until it is a square, and all the bacon is used. Cook for 20-30 until it shrinks and is barely cooked.

Assemble the pie by rolling out one of the pie crusts. Put into a greased pie tin letting the edges lay over the sides. Add beef stew to pie crust. Add fresh rosemary and thyme if you have it. Put bacon lattice on top and fold the pie crust edges over the bacon lattice around the perimeter. Let cook in a 350 oven for 30 min. or until crust is done.

Pair this savory, bacon pie with a big, bold red wine or a fine stout if you’re more of a beer person. Some of our favorites are Predator Old Vine Zinfandel, Infinite Monkey Theorem Malbec. For a stout, we love Great Divide Yeti.

As an alternative make a mushroom hobbit pie without meat and with lots of cheese. For the Mushroom Hobbit pie, pair with a dry white dinner wine like Foxglove Chardonnay.

Need some more medieval food for your Don’t-Kill-My-Favorite-Character party? Check out The Inn at the Crossroads where we found the idea of making a bacon lattice top. Here is another fun medieval recipe site.