“The fish and greens are already cooking in a stew, but that will be for supper. We decide to save the strawberries and bakery bread for this evening’s meal, to make it special we say.”
–Katniss Everdeen, The Hunger Games
In this scene from The Hunger Games
In all my researching about fish stew, pretty much every one that I saw was a red stew, which really annoyed me because the fish stew I was imagining was white. Which meant I had to do that awful thing called “winging it” and just come up with my own recipe. Funnily enough, the fish and greens were no problem for me to get. My husband raises tilapia right under our front doorstep and his spinach plants had just enough leaves for me to snip for this dish. Unfortunately, he doesn’t raise any old type of tilapia.
He raises zombie tilapia.
I am so not kidding. I scaled him and his mouth kept opening and closing like he was trying to tell me something. I cut off his head and gutted him and his tail kept flapping up and slapping my arm. I’m filleting him and the meat is twitching in my hand. Ugh. I love eating fish but zombie fish are so hard to deal with. I have to find out from my cousin if she’ll teach me Killing Fish Dead 101. I’m sure the neighbors are sick of hearing me shriek in the kitchen whenever I’m cleaning one of these.
Here’s my ingredients. I tried to stick with things that Katniss could harvest or grow herself. The herbs are parsley and thyme from our garden and then the spinach leaves, which I didn’t add until I was finished cooking. I tried to grow wild strawberries, really, I did. I have been growing them for 9 months now and I’ve only gotten one tiny strawberry. I ended up just buying organic ones at Safeway along with a loaf of artisan bread. Katniss trades for her bread anyway, so I felt this was still fitting.
I started by boiling the bones and head in water in a cast iron pot to make fish broth. I added two cloves of garlic cut in half and two slices worth of onion, which looked goofy while cooking, but disintegrated to where you couldn’t see the hoops. Not wanting to waste any of the meat attached to the bones, I began just picking the bones out one by one, letting the little flecks of meat stay in the broth. After skimming all the foamy gunk out of the pot from time to time, I added the thyme and parsley, then I seasoned it with salt, which Katniss trades for at the Hob that morning.
Since the only grain they have is ration grain, I went with the assumption that the Everdeens don’t have flour or cornstarch to thicken their stew, so I looked online and saw that you can grate potato into a soup to thicken it up. Since Katniss says that the katniss root is ‘as good as any potato’, I substituted with potato. I’m trying to grow some katniss, but I’m pretty sure the birds are eating my seeds. 
Anyway, I grated about half of a russet potato into the soup and let it simmer. It worked! The potato cooked down to nothing and I was left with a lightly thickened broth. Lastly, I stirred in the spinach leaves.
Cook a gentle green like this for too long and you wind up with really sickly looking greens in your meal. Since Katniss says the fish and greens are cooking, I’m guessing she used a hardier green, perhaps like collards or kale. I have kale in the back yard, but it’s so full of aphids I didn’t feel like spending two hours picking them all off.
Here’s the final photo again. Later, when Katniss is on the train to the Capitol, she thinks about this meal again, trying to imagine if it went uneaten by Prim and her mother.
“In the distance, I see the lights of another district. 7? 10? I don’t know. I think about the people in their houses, settling in for bed. I imagine my home, with its shutters drawn tight. What are they doing now, my mother and Prim? Were they able to eat supper? The fish stew and the strawberries? Or did it lie untouched on their plates? Did they watch the recap of the day’s events on the battered old TV that sits on the table against the wall? Surely, there were more tears. Is my mother holding up, being strong for Prim? Or has she already started to slip away, leaving the weight of the world on my sister’s fragile shoulders?”
The complete and utter sadness of this meal aside, I am definitely happy with how it tastes. While I can imagine Prim and her mother being unable to eat, I can’t see it going completely to waste and I assume this gets eaten eventually. I had to keep it extremely simple while still making it warm and hearty and I think I accomplished that. In closing, I almost set fire to the kitchen, real or not real?
Real.
No seriously, I smelled something burning and turned and saw that I’d left my oven mitt on the cast iron pot and it had already turned part of the mitt brown. I know, facepalm. Luckily I saw it though. A flaming stew is not what I had in mind!
You might consider wrapping your fish bones and head in cheesecloth. If you use several layers and tie it really well, you’ll still get the flavor without having to worry that you’ve left a bone in the stew. I do this when I make chicken soup; it really cuts down on the number of vertebrae in the broth.
Yeah, but then I’d still have wanted the meat on the bones, so I probably would have picked it out anyway!
I love how detailed you get with your recreations! The fact that you’ve got literally fresh caught tilapia and are trying to grow katniss totally blows me away.
Another suggestion for thickening would be to possibly use 1/4 cup of grain added to the stew rather than the potato. (I’m imagining millet, myself.) It might be quite a starchy meal with the addition of the bread but I figure for folks as poor as the Everdeens, anything that stretches a meal would be welcome.
Thanks Michelle! I really need to plant the katniss better. Maybe with the tilapia!
So my question is did this actually taste good and worth making? I wouldn’t want to make it if it turned out tasting not that great…. Like how you made the district bread that was really bad tasting or something like that! Haha.
I thought it tasted good, but as dumb as this sounds, it was VERY fishy tasting! LOL!
Hi,
I just found your page today and im blown away. I love this idea of making food from books! its so unusual and interesting. I read through all of your posts and as a huge hunger games fan I loved them. While I cant say I would eat all the dishes you made I can say that I really enjoyed reading through your posts and seeing the pictures. Cant wait to see what you do next.
Thanks for such a sweet comment, Crystal! And nice name, I have the same one!
After reading the story about the zombie tilapia, it’s sort of funny. It reminds me of the many times I have had the same thing happen to me. With the holidays rapidly approaching, you cant have food moving around when you are preparing it. Sometimes fish like to bite back.
What an awesome food blog! I have been a costumer for 10 years, so of course creating the fashion of books is always the first thing I think of when reading. But food in books, especially where the worlds are very inventive, is such a cool thing to recreate. I found your blog while looking for some inspiration for a Hunger Games party at my library (I am a youth services librarian)… I can’t wait to see more! And my head is spinning, trying to think of other literary worlds of cuisine you could attempt!
Maybe cut off the head first so that the fish doesn’t suffer :'( poor fishy…imagine being skinned alive. Ew.
The fish is actually dead. The twitching is just it’s body still moving. I’ve cut off the head before only to have the meat twitch and move!
Another option to thicken would be to use arrowroot powder.
I, like the other person Crystal, just found your site today and I love it! The way you cook it makes it look very appetizing and you are so dedicated! I would get very lazy right away. And I have to say, the zombie fish thing freaked me out. I was reading and I literally shuddered and made a noise in the back of my throat. I think it’s like the fish maybe sent out a LOT of electric pulses and commands and they just…kept going! I would have shrieked and thrown it away, I would NOT have eaten it, as much of a waste as that is!
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Just made this tonight for dinner! Delicious! Loved by the whole family (especially all the “Hunger Games” fans among us!).
Awesome! Did you have it with strawberries and bread?
Yes! The kids loved having “store” bread. A success all the way around. We had leftover soup the next day for lunch. Even better the next day in our opinions!
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I can’t wait to try and make this!! Next time my neighbor goes fishing I’ll have to ask him if I can buy one of his fish. I don’t think it’s tilapia but it’s somewhat similar.
My mouth watered while I read this post. I need to make this!
WE ARE SUCH HUGE FANS OF the hunger games going to make what I can you anything you yours. we love it one us can cook and one of us can burn water. guess which one will be cooking.
could you maybe try to make some food from the matched series by ally condle?
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