|
Post by Wids on Jun 19, 2011 15:38:53 GMT -5
I write this cookbook with all the care, tenderness and love which my heart can yield...which, admittedly, is not much. So if you're reading this cookbook and you're not me, then give it back before I stuff your lifeforce into a teapot and toss your thieving carcass to the squids.
I learned most of what I learned about cooking from working every menial task aboard my father's ship, which included stuffing his guts and the guts of every other pirate aboard the Monsoon Rider...and how elated I was to see Umberlee ride that tub into the Black Depths. So although my childhood left a league of regret and rancor in its wake, at least I know how to make do with whatever's left in the pantry, which is often all the rubbish that was not used to make the good food.
Oh, blast...time to turn the page, it is. Very well.
--Serrica Thallys A Bloody Mad Cook with a Cause
|
|
|
Post by Wids on Jun 19, 2011 15:52:35 GMT -5
Fenberry Pie
Ingredients: Just enough fenberries to fill your mouth without choking on the blasted things. Enough flour to fill an orc's helmet. Enough water to fill a bottle of rum.
Add water to flour. Turn into dough, and turn that into pie crust.
Mash fenberries. Fill the pie crust with that glop.
Did you use all the dough? Nay? Good. Use that to cover the pie. Cut some slits in the top crust to keep the damned thing from exploding in the oven. I don't care how many slits. Just cut some.
Stoke the oven. Add pie. Take it out as soon as you start smelling smoke.
Serves eight.
|
|
|
Post by Wids on Jun 19, 2011 16:11:44 GMT -5
Baked Bass
Ingredients: A bass, preferably not a rotten one. Enough flour to pin your feet to the floor. Water or brown beer, whichever you have at hand.
Catch bass.
Kill bass. Just club it over the skull, slash its gullet, drop it into a pot of boiling water...I don't care how. You can sap it to death with the power of Enervation for all I care, though that might lend the fish a more mellow flavor.
Cut out the guts, bone it, toss the head and the guts to the sharks.
Roll bass filets in flour. Lay out on a tin and stuff it into the oven.
Sing "Lord Nasher's Mother's Knickers" from stem to stern, six times in a row.
Remove bass from the oven. If it's not cooked, you forgot to light the oven. Try again.
Serves four to twelve, depending on what size the bass was. If it feeds more than twelve, then check it again and make sure that you didn't catch a blasted shark instead.
Baked Carp Just like a bass, except it smells worse. Best served with five bottles of Berduskan Dark; get sotten to the gills, then eat. You may consider cooking the carp whilst drunk, come to that....
Baked Catfish Similar, except that catfish have tough, leathery skulls. Be prepared to club it in the top of its gob at least thrice.
Spicy Trout This one's different, if only because flour and trout mix poorly and you'll end up scorching the meat every codswallowing time....
Ingredients: A trout, preferably fresh. If it's older than three days, cut it up and use it as bait to catch a fresh trout instead. A tin of spices big enough to plant your face in. Heavy on the paprika, please. Harsh liquor, because water won't rig the sails here.
Catch trout.
Grab trout by the tail and thrash its head against the mainmast until it dies. If you're a landlubber, use a tree instead.
Behead, gut, bone, keep the filets and toss the rest into the water, especially if you're on land. Luring bears into your camp with a trail of fish guts never ends well.
Slather the filets in spices.
Roll the filets in spices.
Marinade the filets in hard liquor and spices.
Cook the bloody things already. Sit in arm's reach of the oven. When your eyes stop stinging and watering, it's time to take the fish out.
Feeds plenty...six, maybe eight, depending on the size of the trout. If you end up feeding less than six, either one of your party's a glutton or you caught a guppy by mistake. Why is a dullard like you fishing, anyway?
|
|
|
Post by Wids on Jun 19, 2011 16:18:45 GMT -5
Honey Bread
Ingredients: Wild honey, and plenty of it. A big sack of flour. Heavy dairy cream, at least two pints. If you have no earthly notion of what a pint is, just empty two bottles of ale and fill them with the cream instead. Just as much ale or beer. The browner, the better.
Raid giant beehive. Get stung a few dozen times. Scarper off with all the honey you can carry.
Extract dagger-sized stingers and milk the venom out of your wounds.
Dump honey, flour, cream and beer into a bloody huge bowl. Mix the entire mess with a broom handle until you don't have any chunks left.
Cram the bowl and honey dough into the oven.
Run off and exact your revenge on the bees whilst you wait. Use fire or poisonous gas for best results.
Come back and get the bread out of the oven. If it's burnt, eat it anyway. Waste not, want not.
Serves enough sailors to man a sloop.
|
|
|
Post by Wids on Jun 19, 2011 16:26:52 GMT -5
Cream of Shrieker Soup
Ingredients: Most of a dead shrieker. That dairy cream again. Spices, lots of spices. Get extra oregano to help cover the reek.
Run through damp cave. Kill shriekers until you finally get a dead shrieker that you didn't completely pulverize.
Chop shrieker into cubes. Dump into cookpot.
Empty bottle of creamer into cookpot.
Dump entire tin full of spice into cookpot. Believe me, when it comes to shrieker, there's no such thing as too much spice. Dog meat has a better flavor than that rot....
Stir, mash, stir until your arms get tired.
Spark fire on stovetop and bring soup to a rolling boil.
Remove cookpot from flame.
Wonder why you didn't just catch a bass instead.
Serves about six or so.
|
|
|
Post by Wids on Jun 19, 2011 16:44:07 GMT -5
Serrica's New Dish Project! Here's where I strive and struggle to find a tasty new dish, because I'm sure that there's some new delicacy I've yet to discover. Throw enough daggers at a whale and eventually one of them will stick. So, tally ho.
First Trial Ingredients: Fenberries Flour Slime Ichor
Result: Utter Failure
Second Trial Ingredients: Flour Spices Slime Ichor Ettercap's Silk Gland
Result: Bleck.
Third Trial Ingredients: Flour Heavy Cream Spices Garlic Some hunk of meat that I found. I'm rather sure that it's ham.
Result: Still inedible. The meat smells funny now.
Fourth Trial Ingredients: That smelly meat again Slime ichor A flask of acid Garlic
Result: Don't ask.
Fifth Trial Ingredients: Mysterious meat Flour Heavy cream Berduskan Dark Garlic Some ironwood planks that I found in the forest
Result: A very pungent odor which lasted for almost ten minutes.
Sixth Trial Ingredients: Flour Spices A fistful of harpy feathers Meat Ettercap silk gland
Result: A short-lived oven fire which was promptly extinguished.
Seventh Trial Ingredients: Flour Spices Heavy Cream Garlic A flask of acid Slime ichor A few dashes of alchemist's fire Some knuckle bones left behind after my last minion was killed. Harpy feathers Vulchling feathers That meat again, which has become all but pickled at this point. A variety of beers and wines Holy water Ironwood Plain old iron, one ingot's worth An entire fenberry pie A copy of Trial of the Magi, by that pompous, pointy-eared git who writes all the books
Result: Five minutes of convulsions, followed by copious diarrhea and a hasty dash to the outhouse. Good thing I had the clarity to bring a second copy of Trial of the Magi along....
And so my quest for a new recipe continues. I wonder if mutton is in season on Cyclops Island....
|
|
|
Post by Wids on Jun 29, 2011 3:10:38 GMT -5
Roasted Mutton Chops
Ingredients: Five or six pounds of mutton Enough spice to coat a large rat. Go heavy on the sea salt and basil.
Go to Ilthan Island. Kill a sheep and butcher it in the field. Or, wait for a cyclops to do just that, then scavenge his kill.
Get punched by various cyclopes while you do so.
Pointlessly wonder why the plural of "cyclops" is "cyclopes".
Kill cyclopes and return to kitchen with stolen mutton.
Cut mutton into chops of desired thickness and toss the excess to the sharks. Marinate overnight if you have time.
Encrust chops with spices and breading.
Preheat oven, add chops to baking pan and place in oven. Bake over medium flame for 20 minutes. If you're not sure how long 20 minutes is, sing the entirety of "The Long Road to Thay" eight times. That should be just about right.
Remove from oven and serve hot. Serves two or four, depending on how much of the fat boils off.
|
|
|
Post by Wids on Jun 30, 2011 3:07:47 GMT -5
Eighth Trial Ingredients: Plenty of catfish Plenty of carp Plenty of bass Plenty of trout Plenty of mutton A handful of fenberries A pint of heavy cream A bloody great dollop of wild honey 4 pints of water
Result: Not quite the ultimate stew I'd expected. I got clubbed near to death by cyclopes for this?
What I would give to find a master scullery cook on this island, with a cookbook the size of a small wagon. I could spend months studying from some such teacher, truly.
|
|
|
Post by Wids on Jul 7, 2011 7:59:51 GMT -5
I'm led to believe that this peculiar seaweed which I found whilst paddling along the ocean floor may in some way be edible. I'll grant that I've found Valkur's Blessing once or twice ere this night, but I never truly bothered to sample it before.
The seaweed is rather slimy, limp and noxious. Can anyone truly blame me for not thinking to eat the blasted stuff before?
Ninth Trial Ingredients: A clump of Valkur's Blessing Enough flour to sink a merrow
Result: Dismal failure.
Tenth Trial Ingredients: Valkur's Blessing A can of spices
Result: Frustration
Eleventh Trial Ingredients: That Valkur's Blessing again The same old can of spices Enough flour to fill a washtub Two pints of heavy cream
Result: A recurring urge to slap Valkur across the face with this precious seaweed of his.
I'll have to try cooking this seaweed with other combinations and measures of ingredients. My noble quest continues....
|
|
|
Post by Wids on Jul 16, 2011 2:25:06 GMT -5
Twelfth Trial Ingredients: A fist-sized clump of Valkur's Blessing seaweed A fist-sized clump of ordinary seaweed
Result: Not a salad.
Thirteenth Trial Ingredients: Two fist-sized clumps of Valkur's Blessing seaweed A fist-sized clump of ordinary seaweed
Result: Still not a salad.
Fourteenth Trial Ingredients: Two fist-sized clumps of Valkur's Blessing seaweed A fist-sized clump of ordinary seaweed A fresh carp A fresh bass A fresh catfish A pint of heavy cream Two tins of spices, heavy on the cracked pepper
Result: The farthest thing from a salad.
What could this Valkur's Blessing possibly be good for cooking up? The local folk claim that Valkur's Blessing is good eating, but I note that they're shy in describing how one would prepare it and eat it. Perhaps they're as ignorant of it as I am, and they merely perpetuate a rumor in which they've aught for experience firsthand.
However, I do wonder if there's any truth to the legend that Valkur himself blessed this seaweed. Mayhaps I've an entirely different use for Valkur's Blessing, if that be so.
|
|
|
Post by Wids on Nov 19, 2011 12:14:42 GMT -5
Ah, something new! I discovered a small patch of rare and exquisite flowers along the western promontory of Trollrock Headland last night: sweet-smelling purple roses!
Naturally, I must try to cook their petals in something or other.
I'm going to need another two armfuls of ingredients first, so I'll just leave my cookbook here on the docks and go fetch them. Surely I'll be back well before someone has a chance to nick my cookbook. Then the culinary adventure continues!
(fin!)
|
|