Trammel, Chesapeake (PaxLair Times) – October 24, 2012 – by Ashlynn – As part of a new feature here at the Times I have asked people from across the realm to send in their favourite (and not so favourite) dishes, where they come from and how they are typically made.
I must add there are certainly some strange dishes out there and I intend to cover more in future editions!
Braised Bear Steak – Tancred RedStar
One of the lesser known dishes of Gyldenfeld but a local favorite nonetheless is Braised Bear Steak. Many years ago, Lissa Eldi, whose home is at the northern edge of town, would often toss food scraps out her kitchen window. Over time, this had the unwanted effect of attracting curious bears from the forest beyond town.Despite complaints and admonitions for her to cease this somewhat dangerous activity, the bears still came looking for an easy meal. Lissa swore up and down to the Eight Virtues that she had already stopped feeding the bears, although many townspeople believed this oath with a smile. Nonetheless, the bear problem wouldn’t go away despite the best of intentions and wishes.
Finally, one day, a lass by the name of Faith took it upon herself and her bow to solve this domestic issue and shot a rather large bear dead with but a single arrow. Truly, an amazing shot, but one problem solved led to a new problem: what to do with a giant dead bear laying in the middle of town? A stodgy old cook by the name of Alton took it upon himself for the greater good and dragged the carcass back to his bakery. While he was well-known for his pies and cakes and weekly batch of cookies, he’d never been much known for else.
He took the bear, skinned and then quartered it, then took the fattiest pieces of the rib and short loin and braised them quickly in bear fat. The meat was then removed from the searing pan, salted with the somewhat expensive Nujel’mer salt and dashed with Old Maginician pepper before tossing the mess into a roast pan with locally grown potatoes and carrots with a few bulbs of garlic taken from a dead orc (claimed the orc stench actually gave an earthy note to the meat) and roasted for 3 hours.Everyone walked around town with drooling jaws as this bear meat bubbled and popped away in Alton’s oven. When he at last pulled the steaming heap out, the aroma was heavenly beyond description, orc funk and all. The whole town sat outside Alton’s bakery, right in the road, as we feasted on this tasty bounty. A problem well resolved, the braised bear was long remembered as one of the finest non-holiday meals in town memory.
The following week, it was noticed in passing that food scraps were mysteriously flying out of Lady Eldi’s window once more.
Goblin Ice Cream – Ozog
Editors Note: Naturally the description I got from the goblin was in “Pidgin Britannian” or whatever their strange tongue would be called. Still I think you can get a basic idea of the history of their (in)famous ice cream.
Just one more thing – there are no cows on Pitmuck island. So you should draw your own conclusions on that front.
Well mesanna gibed usins majik spell. wees casts it on ebery batch. Make the ice creams taste like wot ebery you. any flavor. Ozog founds ice creams when himz left da abyss. some how he got to ice island and started makin ice creams din himz went to luna and was gibin it away.
Gazer Eye Soup – Ashlynn
One of the best things about visiting new places is usually the cuisine. The spiced meats of Nujelm, the shark fin dishes of Buccaneers Den, and the delicious fish pie of Cove. All these I have tried and all of them I found to be wonderful or at least tasty. But occasionally you stumble across something a little less palatable – something one would not dare eat. In this case I speak of Gazer Eye Soup.
Delucia is somewhat isolated, located in a valley over a mountain range that must be passed through rather than crossed. There is no moongate and trade caravans must take a long and perilous journey to reach it. With so little farmland, the Delucians seem to consider anything edible including the large juicy eyes from gazers slain by adventurers and hunters alike.
The recipe is simple – the gazer eyes are removed from the creature’s corpse and are then boiled in a simple root, herb and vegetable stock for twenty or so minutes and then it is served up.
As for what it tastes like, I could not tell you. In the ended I opted for the roasted ostard ribs.
Stolen Apple Pie – Tancred RedStar
When I was a young man, or perhaps a very old boy, I wandered the
streets of Britain in the olden days, always ready to make a profit, enjoin to some hare-brained enterprise or join some ill-begotten foray into some dreary old dungeon too naive to know any better. In those days, too put it mildly, adequate funds were seemingly always more of a goal than a reality. Living in the rough and tumble alleyways of Britain was often a tenuous affair and young persons such as myself often scraped along by whatever means necessary.
Now in those olden days, the truly foolish attempted to pick the pockets of traders and adventurers doing their business at the bank. I pursued a more earnest and honest means of viability, and specifically when it came to procuring foods. One of my favorite dishes came out of pure coincidence, that being my somewhat honorary title of Royal Rotted and Over Abundant Fruit Minister. The funny thing about that title was no one ever asked me from whom it was bestowed and at this point it has long, long faded from memory.
Anyway, so I’d pick the King’s fruit from his very orchard within the grounds of Castle Britannia. Nothing was ever too fine for such a high and glorious man, so it was my royal duty to ensure he may never pick an apple that was not at the absolute peak of ripeness, crispness and sweetness.I routinely picked and ate fruit to ensure it was not in an imperfect state. My premise was that apples only achieve purity of perfection for but an hour or two in their whole life. Of all the apples I ever picked, with honor in my heart, I never once ate an apple that should have been ideally suited for the King Lord British himself .Better yet, those apples, when I’d eaten my fill each morning, made the best project for each afternoon to make into a fine dessert for the evening.
Take a dozen apples, crush and pulp half of them until there’s nothing but juice, strain out and pour juice into a pan. Add a hand-cup full of water and then set to a medium fire for about 15 minutes, or until the mixture is slowly bubbling from within. Drop in the remainder of the apples, skinned, seeded and quartered and simmer another 10 minutes. Pour into an unbaked pie crust, crimp shut the top, draw your favorite tax collector’s fat, stupid face, bake for 30 minutes and then enjoy. Nothing beats walking around the bank and waving at the tax collector as you bite into one of these pies. Other variations include cutting in a pattern of the trade guild’s logo you seek concessions from into the top crust and bringing along as an icebreaking gift during negotiations.Otherwise, crosshatched lacing is always the mark of a cook who knows his pie, not some sloppy square lattice, the true work of an amateur!
No matter the bakeries in Britain, for all their 5-gold coin pies, mine always tasted the better as the best things in life are always free!