When I think back to the most vivid food descriptions of my reading career, it doesn’t take long for Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games trilogy to come to mind. As the title suggests, food plays a major role in the plot and is symbolic throughout the book. In the next installment of my literary recipes series, I cook up some Capitol-inspired cuisine!
In one particularly mouth-watering scene, Katniss describes her first meal in the Capitol with such detail that readers can practically taste it themselves: “Chicken and chunks of oranges cooked in a creamy sauce laid on a bed of pearly white grain, tiny green peas and onions, rolls shaped like flowers, and for dessert, a pudding the color of honey.”
To make this decadent dish for yourself, start by tossing chicken in flour, salt and pepper, then sautéing it in plenty of butter. Next, add one cup of heavy cream and two tablespoons of unsweetened, frozen orange juice concentrate. Allow it to simmer. Once your sauce has thickened, season with additional salt, pepper and chives; stir in chunks of a single orange; and serve over fluffy white rice along with steamed peas and pearl onions. It’s savory with just a hint of sweetness, and so creamy it might just become your new favorite comfort food.
Happy cooking, and may the odds be ever in your flavor!
