It’s been a long time since I’ve written a gaming food post. Since I just published A Traveling Man’s Cookery Book a month ago, this seems like a perfect time to remedy that and pimp my book at the same time. The kinds of dishes that are good for making while traveling turn out to be a lot like the kinds of dishes that are good for making to bring to a game.

We alternate between two houses, and we precede each game with dinner. The person who hosts the game usually makes the main dish, and everyone else brings the salad, or the vegetable, or the sweet, or a drink, or the plastic and paper tableware. It’s basically a pot-luck. And so traditional pot-luck dishes are a great choice for game night.

Today, I’m going to present a great bean salad/baked bean hybrid, a slow cooked rice and ground beef, Texas-style cola spare ribs, and a hearty rosemary soda bread that would go well with any of them.

Along the way, I’m going to highlight recipes that are both in the book and that I have brought to game night. I won’t reproduce those recipes here because the PDF and ePub versions of A Traveling Man’s Cookery Book are free to download. Only the print version costs money, and not much.

Besides our general game-night meals, we usually celebrate themed meals four times a year: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and St. Patrick’s Day. Other holidays might get thrown in if game night literally coincides with it, but those are the Big Four holidays we’ve done every year so far.

St. Patrick’s Day is my favorite, and it’s not just because of the green-tinted mashed potatoes our Dungeon Master always brings! One of my favorite quick breads is Irish soda bread. I’ve made several variations. The basic Irish soda bread in the book is probably still my favorite, but some of the others are a tasty variations.

Irish Soda Bread

You can’t really go wrong with cabbage on St. Patrick’s Day. I don’t even remember what recipe this was.

Rosemary Soda Bread

Yes, that’s green mashed potatoes.

The rosemary soda bread pictured here is a new discovery. I’m not sure whether I’ll put it in the next edition of A Traveling Man’s Cookery. It contains soy flour, which can be difficult to source while traveling. But rosemary rather than raisins is a great variant flavor for soda bread.

Rosemary Soda Bread

Servings: 8
Preparation Time: 1 hour, 30 minutes
Charles Schafer and Violet Schafer
Review: Teacraft (Jerry@Goodreads)

Ingredients

• ⅔ cup whole wheat flour
• ⅓ cup soy flour
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 rounded tablespoons sugar
• ½ tsp salt
• 1-½ tsp baking powder
• ½ tsp soda
• 1 tsp powdered rosemary
• ¼ cup toasted sunflower seeds
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 1 tbsp melted butter
• 1 cup buttermilk

Steps

1. Sift the flours and other dry ingredients together into a bowl.
2. Add sunflower seeds.
3. Beat egg with butter and buttermilk.
4. Stir into dry ingredients until moistened throughout.
5. Knead lightly in the bowl.
6. Form a ball, slightly flattened.
7. Cut a cross on top of the loaf to scare off the devil.
8. Bake on a buttered pan at 350° for 40 minutes until golden brown.
9. Allow to cool at least slightly before serving.

I don’t know the individual favorite celebrations among the rest of the group, but for the group as a whole it has to be Halloween. We wear costumes and it’s the only time we get a group photo, which I’m sure will amuse future gaming historians no end. We always have a pumpkin out, and because of that I always have a batch of pumpkin seeds.

If Halloween is held at my house, there’s usually also a pumpkin soup. Soup is not something that’s easily carried, so I only make it if I’m the host. But pumpkin is a great flavor for a creamy soup, whether it’s the Pumpkin Tureen horseradish-flavored soup from The Enchanted Broccoli Forest (made in a pumpkin shell!), or the creamy coconut soup in the photo. That’s from Carole Clements’s Gourmet Soup Book, and if you enjoy soups I recommend the entire book.

As with soup, so with barbecue: only the person doing the hosting generally makes barbecue. The spare ribs pictured here are an especially Texas-style barbecue because it marinates the ribs in a Dr. Pepper sauce. I had meant to link to the recipe on the Food & Wine web site, because this is from Zakary Pelaccio in their 2012 collection. Sadly, they haven’t made it available. So for your enjoyment I’ve made it a bonus recipe at the end of the post.

The original recipe called for root beer, but I live in Texas.

Pumpkin-Coconut Soup

Toasted pumpkin seeds

Spanish Rice

The Spanish rice is a standard Crock•Pot recipe. Literally standard: it’s in their manual. It’s not likely Spanish in any sense of the word, but it is good, hearty, and filling. Crockpots are great tools for potlucks. It’s in the name: the same pot used for cooking is used for carrying.

Crockpot Spanish Rice

Servings: 8
Preparation Time: 1 hour, 15 minutes

Ingredients

• 1 lb ground beef
• 1 lb pork sausage
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1 red bell pepper, chopped
• ½ jalapeño, chopped
• 28-ounces tomatoes, chopped
• 16 ounces tomato sauce
• 1 cup water
• 2-½ tsp chili powder
• ½ tsp salt
• 2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1 cup rice

Steps

1. Soak rice for an hour; drain.
2. Brown the meats and drain off fat.
3. Stir all ingredients into crockpot.
4. Cover and cook on low for 7-9 hours.

Sometimes we do pop-up holidays. Someone had the idea for a Lord of the Rings-themed meal at our latest game, so I made a dish that’s literally called Hobbit Mushroom Pudding in the book I got it from. You can find my variation on this mushroom pudding, as well as the salmon fillets and cornbread pictured below, in A Traveling Man’s Cookery Book.

Salmon Fillets with Braised Leeks

Mexican Cornbread

Hobbit Mushroom Pudding

Hobbit Bean Soup

The beans are a new recipe. In what may be the earliest example of autocorrect I’ve ever seen, cookbook or not, the 1994 cookbook I got this from called it “Green Bean Soup”. It doesn’t, as you’ve probably already guessed from the photo, contain any green beans. What it does contains are great beans, great northern beans to be precise. Historically Delicious is a Michigan cookbook, and Michigan is—or was—known for its great northerns.

Caraway Beans

Servings: 4
Preparation Time: 1 hour, 15 minutes
Linda Cleveringa

Ingredients

• ½ lb pinto beans
• ½ lb black beans
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 onion, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic
• ¼ cup oil
• 2 tsp vinegar
• 4 tbsp catsup
• 1 tsp caraway seeds
• ½ tsp rosemary
• salt and pepper

Steps

1. Soak beans overnight in water to cover.
2. Pour into pressure cooker with water.
3. Stir in remaining ingredients except caraway and rosemary.
4. Tie the caraway and rosemary in muslin cloth and add to pot.
5. Cook at high pressure for about one hour.

It’s more of a stew than a soup, and not much of that. It ends up being very much like baked beans but where the beans have more definition. Somewhat of a cross between black bean salad and baked beans. It’s hard to describe, but easy to eat.

I am a dessert person, so here are a couple of desserts taken at random from the book. I am a huge fan of boiled cider since discovering it in Vrest Orton’s American Cider Book. One of the best ways of using it is in an apple pie, which I’ve already covered for Pi Day.

We had six people the night I made these. There were no leftovers.

I think this cookie cutter is supposed to be an owl, I think it looks like a ghost, and our DM thinks it looks like an owlbear.

This coconut pie recipe dates back to 1876, and is well worth making a century and a half later.

Traveling cakes need a traveling cake tin. Although in this case the cake is a pie: specifically, it’s got the 1876 coconut pie inside.

The brownies you can find in Renny Darling’s Great Beginnings under “The world’s best velvet chocolate brownie”. I’m not going to go out on a limb and say she’s right, but she’s very close.

The cocoanut pie is from Mrs. Winslow’s Domestic Receipt Book from 1876. It is a great relic of a hundred and fifty years ago. I’ve scanned it in and am preparing it for publication soon, so keep an eye on The Padgett Sunday Supper Club for the recipe and for the entire pamphlet. It’s a fascinating bit of quackery with great recipes scattered throughout.

Finally, Zakary Pelaccio’s Root Beer Spare Ribs, Texas style!

Grilled Dr. Pepper Pork Ribs

Servings: 6
Preparation Time: 3 hours, 20 minutes
Zakary Pelaccio
Review: Food & Wine Annual Cookbook 2012 (Jerry@Goodreads)

Ingredients

• 4 12-oz bottles Dr. Pepper
• 1 cup Asian fish sauce
• 1 head of garlic, cloves crushed
• ¼ cup black peppercorns, cracked
• 2 large shallots, thinly sliced
• 16 cups ice
• 2 5-pound racks of pork spare ribs
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 tbsp ground black pepper
• ¼ cup lime juice

Steps

1. Bring two bottles of Dr. Pepper to a boil with the fish sauce, garlic, peppercorns, and shallots.
2. Remove from heat, cover, and steep for 25 minutes.
3. Transfer to a large roasting pan, and add ice and ribs.
4. Cover and refrigerate overnight.
5. Remove the ribs from the marinade and scrape off most of the solids.
6. Cover ribs in a large rimmed baking sheet with foil and bake at 325° about two hours, until the meat is very tender but not falling off the bones.
7. You may wish to start the grill if using a charcoal grill.
8. Meanwhile, bring the remaining two bottles of Dr. Pepper, the vanilla, and the ground pepper to boil over moderately high heat until reduce to ⅔ cup, about 25 minutes.
9. Add the lime juice and simmer for two minutes more.
10. Grill the ribs over high heat until richly browned, about four minutes per side.
11. Transfer to a carving board and cut between the ribs.
12. Serve with the Dr. Pepper sauce in a separate bowl.