In honor of the most recent ES, I wanted to start a thread all about food. Tell me about dishes, food trends, stalls or even fancy resutrants one can find exploring London’s culinary side.
I’m going to make one. A shop based on my very specific interests.
Candice’s Candied Candles (previously just Candice’s Candles.) is a shop in the heart of recent fad. Edible candles. It first started with a shipment of sheep fat candles from the surface, causing poor newcomers to melt them down for a taste of the surface. Now it boasts animal fat candles of all sorts f surface tastes - pig, cow, duck, hippo. . . Of course, for those with less coin to spend, there are candles from zee-creatures, or beasts hunted from the marsh. For those with a sweet tooth - wax from the neaths and surface bees, holding crystalline honey just below the surface. Fruits preserved in wax. The Bishop of Fiacre personally ensures that he gets to taste Candice’s latest creation.
the forgotten delight, everything is draped in irrigo your meal your conversation your company all forgotten. However the menus are covered in violant and coded, ensuring you know what you have eaten, even if you don’t know what it looks like. Those more immune to irrigo regard the restaurant as having a Vienna like feel, with so many memory’s of the surface as to make it feel like the surface. No one knows the chief or the cost of the dishes.
I once wrote a little role-play post about a very special restaurant, The Preying Mantis.
Re-posting it here:
"There’s this new restaurant in Evisceration Lane, The Preying Mantis, you must’ve heard of it? Every food they serve is poisoned, so all the customers die - guaranteed! You get a refund if you don’t die. The chef there is a former assassin of the Gracious Widow, he’s well-versed in the use of all known poisons, and invents new ones all the time. So you never know excactly how you’re going to die! Will it be fast or slow? Very painful or not at all? Will you have funny visions and hallucinations before you go? Or will your skin turn an interesting colour? It’s so exciting, I’ve been there every single evening this past week— no, wait: I’ve missed out on Wednesday because I was still dead from Tuesday’s dinner. That happens sometimes, but they have a special room with cozy death-beds for cases of more prolonged death. If you’ve got the coin, you can even arrange homeward transportation of your corpse with the staff there in advance. Really, the place is fabulous!"
edited by phryne on 1/9/2020
Professor Kan’s chef knows one particularly delightful little dish, but I think I will hold off on the details for just a little while. Stay tuned to the end of the Ball thread.
Oh, professor, you are teasing your guests so! What have you in store for us?!?!
Blood Amber.
Rubbery lumps, aged 10 days, covered in prisoner’s honey. Fried in the blood of a weasel. Cooled for a month.
This is a more Sunless Skies themed dish that I thought of right after the competition closed, but I thought I’d share it nonetheless.
Shell Chocolate
The recipe itself is simple, if foul tasting. There are many tweaks to it, the most basic listed here.
Ingredients:
-hot engine water for authenticity (boiled water in a pan is fine otherwise).
-A military chocolate ration (store-brought is fine as wel).
-a spent shell casing for that taste of gunpowder (surprisingly easy to find, with a war going on, though not as palatable as say, brandy or dark chocolate grains).
Directions:
Pour into a pot or shell and stir. Drink.
Of course, the recipe is simple, but the story behind it is not. Attached is a literary report of sorts that was published on this recipe in New Winchester by a Mr. P_____, a reporter and rumored spy (whose loyalties seem to be mainly coin or glory). It follows here:
The recipe’s origins are buried under layers of inflation, propaganda, and nonsense, but the two most plausible (and used to posture by the Tacketies and Stovepipes respectively) are that a Tackety or Stovepipe crewman were set upon by the opposite side, with both engines’ crews dying sans the sole crew member.
The Tackety was said to be a grizzled old man, a salty dog of the Skies who was used to hard living. Both ships were almost completely destroyed, food stores, engine and all. He raided the Stovepipes’ ships for supplies, finding only the captains’ stash of chocolate (a hard plant to find in the High Wilderness. My investigating lends credence to the story, as it seems only Port Prosper’s luxury greenhouses hold the few strains of cocoa to make it to the High Wilderness, making it less likely to be found on any random ship). He poured water and the chocolate into a spent shell and drank. It tasted abysmal of course, but he had little choice. And he says whenever he felt the touch of the Waif, or even supposedly saw her (hypothermia and fatigue for the less superstitious), he’d take a swig of that bittersweet concoction. Did it work? It’s said he survived for ten days, when he managed to get to a nearby settlement.
And then there’s the Stovepipes, said to be a bright lieutenant that represents the iron jawed youth of empire that Albion cherishes so much in their propaganda. Similar to tue grizzled old man, he raided a Tackety ship for ammo and the like, as he had a chocolate ration that may see him through the days. He thought it may be easier to eat if boiled in water to make it less hard, and so he too mixed with water in a spent Tackety shell. He’d heard rumors that gunpowder had some medicinal effect, so some good might come out of a rotten tasting beverage. And so it did. For ten days he survived on it in the void (one common thread in both stories), until he reached civilization.
But these both are touched by propaganda. Some seemingly neutral passerby commented on their variations and experiences with the tale:
-A doctor: “Gunpowder’s said to promote blood flow and stave off frostbite. Like that tale of those big dogs that’d find people in the Alps with little flasks of brandy to warm you up? And in my opinion, brandy’s much better tasting. I do use it for time to time with some of my patients, so something good came out of all this morbid propaganda and bloodshed.”
-An urchin: “Some old man was telling us it’d put hair on er chests and all. He was sorta right. I mean, we cooked up a batch and my sister tried, and in a day she grew a beard that’d put every captain to shame.” (Clearly false, but entertaining.)
-Two gentlemen in the Promise of Days: “Me thinks both stories are rubbish.” Says the older gentlemen.
“I think,” says the younger man, with a pointed but friendly glare, “that both stories are true in a way.”
“Mmm. No. It’s a metaphor for friendship, I think. The Stovepipe borrowed something from a Tackety vessel, and vice versa. Plus the Waif’s a dark god of vengeance and abandonment, not so easily staved off by a drink. The drink symbolizes warmth and friendship, things the Waif don’t understand and fears, and that’s how the Stovepipe and Tackety survived.”
“No, no. It’s a metaphor for peace. The Tackety had to understand how the Stovepipes think, go into the home of his hated enemy. Less metaphorically, perhaps he made peace with some member of the Stovepipes? Propaganda definitely would change that.”
The grizzled old man shrugs, and both drink their cups of shell chocolate. Their cups seem to be ragged and pocked metal carved and beaten from something much larger. They both take their leave from me, one shrugging on a Tackety uniform and the other a Stovepipe one, both of which are a few years out of date. They walk into the streets, sipping from their cups occasionally. They have found a drink that, when shared together, makes a small little corner when they may find friendship and peace in a world that has little of both.
edited by Ixc on 2/11/2020
The Cruel Cocktail.
Ingredients:
- Lacre - a Pail of So-Called Snow Or a Vial of Tears of the Bazaar
- A soul (I prefer a Silent or Brilliant one, but a simple Soul, Queer Soul or a Coruscating Soul will do just fine)
- Gin and the spices you like for it. (I advice something not too spiced as the soul will add a nice touch)
Tools required:
- Some crushed moon-pearls to decorate the glass.
- A Spirifier’s Fork.
- A glass to serve it in. (I prefer a crystal champagne saucer that has it’s rim coated in a very thin amount of Nevercold Brass for this.)
Directions:
The first step is rather dangerous, first lace the glass with half a droplet of the Tears of the Bazaar or if you’re using lacre, follow the alternative steps.
After that is done, prepare your Spirifier’s Fork, we don’t want the soul to go anywhere. Uncork the bottle with the soul in it, and open the Gin bottle, get the soul spun around your fork so it doesn’t flee. Then begin pouring the gin in slowly whilst stirring with the fork, making sure the soul dissolves slowly, adding more taste to this spirit.
Alternative steps: [spoiler]
You’ll need a tea spoon as we’ll work with lacre.
Firstly, use the tea spoon to get a little bit of lacre, not too much! Then put said lacre in the glass and add in the gin, stir as you add it in.
Once the lacre is dissolved fully, uncork your soul’s bottle and stir carefully until it is fully dissolved as well.
[/spoiler]
Once the soul is fully dissolved and the spices are added it is ready to drink.
To make this cocktail even more appealing to the eye, you can add in crushed moon-pearls for a shimmer in the stirring liquid. Cheers!
You can add your herbs or spices at any point in this recipe, I do it after the Spirit has dissolved. You can thin this drink with a bitter liquid if you prefer your drinks not too strong.
A nice little snack with this would be some honey hearts.
They are easy to make.
Honeyed Hearts
Ingredients:
- A cup of Honey (Prisoners or Surface, depending on your tastes)
- Dark-Dewed Cherries (or Alternatively Solacefruit if you are feeling hedonistic and daring enough)
- One cup of water
- A table spoon of Baking Soda.
Tools:
- A knife.
- A pot to boil water.
- A stove.
- A Soup Plate
Directions:
Cut the cherries or solacefruit into small hearts, no bigger than the size of a penny. Place them in the soup plate, spaced apart a little bit.
Pour the water into the pot, and as it is heating up on the stove, add the honey to it, wait until it is boiling and bubbling nicely, then add the baking soda and wait until it is nicely dissolved.
As soon as this is done pour out the contents of the pot into the soup bowl. Wait for it to harden and crack the hardened honey. The fruit adds some extra flavour to this!
Enjoy!
edited by Honeyaddict on 2/20/2020