Cooking with Chaos: Serrica's Cookbook

[Wids]

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

[Wids]

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.

[Wids]

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?

[Wids]

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.

[Wids]

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.

[Wids]

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....

[Wids]

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.

[Wids]

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.

[Wids]

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....

[Wids]

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.

[Wids]

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!)