Have you been following my Creepy Recipes From Fiction series this month? So far I’ve posted Sanguinaccio Dolce from Hannibal, Spectre Apple Pie (Cupcakes) from Big Fish, and Crimson Peak-inspired Red Velvet Lava Cakes. For the final recipe, I figured I’d go big: Frey Pie from Game of Thrones! Yup, that pie. One of the more memorable scenes from Game of Thrones last season was when we finally saw Arya in full-blown assassin mode, getting her Stark revenge on the house that murdered her family by feeding Walder Frey a savory pie made from his own sons. Watching that old man lift up the top of a meat pie and find a finger inside was a pretty satisfying moment. See Also: Direwolf Claws I really wanted to make this pie right after that episode aired, but I had just posted a Hannibal recipe for Lomo Saltado and figured that one cannibal recipe was probably enough for a young food blog. Fast forward a few months, and I still haven’t seen a Frey Pie recipe pop up, there are now two Hannibal recipes on the blog, and I’ve just accepted that Baking Mischief will have a higher-than-average number of cannibal recipes (¯_(ツ)_/¯). So here we go.
Arya’s Frey Pie doesn’t actually exist in the novels, so I didn’t have an official description to base this recipe off of. The Arya/Frey pie story line is cribbed from another character in the books, Lord Manderly (the awesome Inn at the Crossroads has actually made his pie). But the description of his pies,”…flaky crusts stuffed to bursting with carrots, onions, turnips, parsnips, mushrooms, and chunks of seasoned pork swimming in a savory brown gravy…” doesn’t quite jibe with the pie we see in the episode, which clearly uses minced, not chunked Frey.
So this pie is a blend of the two, a flaky pie crust stuffed full of carrots, onions, turnips, parsnips, mushrooms, and made with ground pork. I also added bacon for flavoring since ground pork can be a bit bland. The result is a pie that looks pretty darn close to the show pie (minus a Frey finger) and one that is suuuuuuper tasty. Seriously, this thing is so good, it might actually work its way into my regular winter rotation. We’ll just not tell people where the recipe inspiration came from. Kay? 🙂
Frey Pie Recipe Notes
To get a nice tall pie like Arya makes on the show, you are going to need an 8-inch extra-tall springform pan*. If you want to use your standard 9-inch pie pan, you will only need 1 batch of My Favorite Buttermilk Pie Crust (rather than 1 1/2 batch), and you can cut the filling in half. If you are short on time, filling and pie dough can be made a day in advance and stored covered/tightly wrapped in the refrigerator. Just make sure to let the dough sit out on the counter for 10 to 15 minutes (less on a very hot day) before rolling so your dough doesn’t crack when you roll it out. Unless you have a very large food processor (larger than 11 cups) or are making the pie crust by hand, you will have to make the top and bottom crusts separately. Don’t try to fit all that dough into a small food processor. Bad things will happen… Making this pie requires some serious chopping time for all the vegetables. Might I recommend some Fantastic Podcasts to Cook to to pass the time? (There’s a pair of great Game of Thrones podcasts in there.) Plan on serving the pie on your springform tray. This pie weighs about 6 pounds, and while quite sturdy to cut and serve with a pie server*, I do not trust the integrity of the bottom crust when warm to move as a whole (cold leftovers moved fine for storage).
Novice bakers, deep-dish pies can be a little challenging because you have to roll out and work with a huge piece of dough. I’ve included some extra dough tips below the recipe. Recipe Adapted From Michael Symon (original recipe post on the internet no longer exists)
Some more dough tips…
Don’t be afraid to use plenty of flour (over and under your dough and on the rolling pin) while rolling to make sure your dough does not stick. Just dust it off the excess with a pastry brush before draping over your pan. When rolling your dough, place your rolling pin in the center of the dough, roll up, place your pin back in the middle and roll down. Pick up your dough, give it a quarter turn, and repeat. If at any time your dough begins to stick, add more flour. After your dough is basically circle-shaped, you don’t have to pick it up and rotate it constantly, but you want to make sure that you can always pick up your dough and that it has not started to stick to your rolling surface. Don’t rush, but you want to work fairly quickly because dough will become more difficult to work with as the butter melts. And if your dough tears, don’t sweat it!! You can patch your dough using scraps and a tiny bit of water as “glue.”
