[Starter Quest] Stone Soup, part 4

[Kyreen]

18 Saun 718
continued from here

As the stampede of servers fetching appetiser platters dwindled, Ky looked up from the handful of vegetables that she was dicing into tiny pieces. There was the carrot that she had broken, and couple of celery sticks and sweet pepper strips that hadn't fitted on the platters. She poured the leftover fish stock into a pan, added the diced vegetables, and set it to warm on the stove.

Now that that was taken care of, her next major task was to finish the dinner courses. The appetisers would keep the diners going while they talked and circulated, but they expected dinner as well. and her time was limited. She took a moment to draw and drain a mug of water against the ongoing heat. and considered what needed to be done. First of all the starter needed to be prepared. The main course needed to be completed and plated. Dessert and its sauce had to be made and set out on its plates.

Take them in order, she decided, and reached for one of the melons and a large knife. She cut the melon in half, as evenly as she could, and used a spoon to scoop out and discard the seeds inside. Then she cut each of the halves into four narrower pieces, keeping the full length and curve of the melon for each of them. She sliced an orange, picked out the obvious pips, and then reached for the bundle of thin wooden skewers. These were little more than very thin wooden dowels, or straight twigs stripped of their bark and buds. She slid one end of a skewer through one fleshy edge of an orange slice, pushed the slice into a curve so that she could ease the skewer back through the opposite edge, and nodded in satisfaction. She pushed the bottom end of the skewer into the middle of a melon slice and considered the result. It looked a bit like a ship, with the melon making the hull, the skewer for a mast, and the slice of orange for a sail. That should do, she thought, and set the finished melon ship in a bowl.

[Kyreen]

Ky worked her way carefully and steadily through the rest of the melon ships. Not all of them worked out as well as the first one had. Some of the orange slices were smaller and stiffer and hard to thread onto the skewers. Some of the skewers didn't sit well in the melon, so that the "masts" had a distinct lean. Ky winced and fretted over each mistake, but she didn't have the skill to fix them. All she could do was her best. When she finally finished the last one, she had half of a melon remaining, but she had plans for that later.

Instead, she lined up the ships, ready for the servers to take, and collected the pot with the rest of the cooled, cooked, millet in it. She brought it over to the plates with the salmon sat, rested it on the end of a bench, and took up a scoop in her other hand. She scooped a heap of millet out of the pot and turned it out onto the plate. The millet grains clung to each other, creating a smooth mound of grain on the plate. Ky decided that she liked the way it looked, so she didn't try to break it up, but repeated the effect on the other plates. She had just enough to go round, without any left over, for once. She set the empty pot out of her way, and returned to the main work table.

She picked up the spinach and began to peel the leaves off the main bundle, piling them loosely in front of her. Once it was only loose leaves, she took a knife, cut out the stems, and discarded them as inedible. Then she took up the lettuce and once again began seperating the leaves from the main clump and making another pile in front of her. This time, she left the stems alone. The third leafy head that she took up was a red cabbage, offering colour and contrast to the other, greener leaves. Once again, she spilt the leaves from the main head, piled them up, and cut out the stems. The lettuce and cabbage leaves were big enough that she also spent the time to slice them into smaller pieces.

[Kyreen]

Once she had all three sets of leaves piled in front of her, she took up a clean large bowl and swept all three piles into it. She dipped her hand in, pulling lower leaves up to mix with higher leaves and trying to stir them evenly together. She still wasn't sure that she'd managed it when she gave up because she was short on time. She took the bowl over to the main course plates and added handfuls of the mixed green (and red) salad to each plate. She went down the line and then went back along it, adding a bit more here, moving a leaf there to even out the amounts still further.

Finally, she abandoned the almost empty bowl on another bench, fetched the pot of apple and raisin sauce and carefully spooned sauce over the fish. It splashed a little, but she tried to keep it only on the fish. At least it poured smoothly and evenly, and the flavours had blended the way that the recipe said that they would. Ky bit her lip to keep herself focused and her hands steady. Once she poured the last of it and set the sauce pot aside, she was able to go back to the main table.

She checked the recipe book, broke a piece of cinnamon stick into a mortar and began to pound and grind it with her pestle. She worked briskly, twisting the pestle back and forth so that the cinnamon was caught between the pestle, and the sides of the mortar. Once she had managed to get the cinnamon down to a powder, she poured some honey into a small jug, sprinkled the cinnamon in, and stirred until the cinnamon dissolved into the honey and the flavours mingled. She tasted the tiniest dab, just to check, and closed her eyes in quiet bliss.

But bliss wouldn't get the meal finished, so she opened her eyes once more and reached for the remaining half of the melon. She used a sharp knife to cut the melon flesh free of the rind and then cut it into pieces perhaps an inch square. She reached for more of the wooden skewers and threaded pieces of melon onto them, interspersed with berries and grapes to make small fruit kebabs.

She lined up yet another set of plates, as the servers poured in to take the first course, the melon ships, out to the diners. Once the servers had been and gone, she placed the fruit kebabs onto the plates. She took the cinnamon honey sauce that she had made and drizzled it across the fruit kebabs in zigzags that trailed onto the plates. Once that was done, she could finally relax a little, although she wasn't yet finished. She had one more meal to put together.

[Kyreen]

The fish broth, when she tasted it, was savoury but bland. Ky grimaced a little, but decanted it into a bowl anyway. She took a seperate plate and added the scorched flatbread and the scant remains of the leafy salad. It wasn't enough, to her eye and she looked round for more. The celery leaves and carrot greens caught her eye, and she chopped them briskly and used them to bulk out the salad. That worked, but they were more bitter than the main salad, so she shaped all the greens into a sort of nest and scraped the remnants of the sweet millet ball mixture into the middle. With any luck, the sweetness of the millet would counter the bitterness of the greens.

She sliced the ragged egg and added it to the plate, then called the scrubber over. "Time to eat!" The startled look of delight on the girl's face when she saw her meal was a reward in and of itself. Ky grinned at her, as the servers swarmed in again, returning the almost empty appetiser plates and vanishing with the main course. The scrubber grinned back and dove into the food as if it might be snatched from her at any moment, dunking flatbread in the broth to soften it, and shoveling in mouthfuls of greens and millet.

Ky had more nerves than hunger, so she busied herself cleaning and tidying benches, and snagged mouthfuls off the appetiser leftovers for her own meal. A quarter of an egg. One and a half flatbread rolls with the hot radish cheese inside. A sweet millet ball to cool her mouth from the cheese. Two sticks of plain celery and one of carrot.

She was almost done when Leshli slipped in shortly after the final swarm of servers, and set a small pouch of coins on the table. The other woman's thanks were effusive, and Ky deflected automatically with humour, scooped up her pay, and headed out into the warm evening.

Menu

Appetisers
Rolled Flatbreads with Hot Radish Cheese
Hard Boiled Eggs
Hot Radish Cheese Dip with crudites
Sweet Millet Balls

Dinner
Melon Boats
Baked Salmon with Apple and Raisin sauce, Millet, and a Leafy Salad
Fruit Kebabs with Cinnamon Honey Sauce

Scrubber's meal
Fish and vegetable broth
Flatbread
Leafy Salad
Hard Boiled Egg
Sweet Millet and Fruit

[Bolt]

This was an in-detail thread about cooking and I’m not sure I understood half of the cooking lingo in the thread. At least I can tell that you know your stuff! If I were to want anything from future threads it’d be to see more of Kyreen’s personality. I don’t think I learned much about ya, but I guess that’s to be expected when Kyreen has so much stuff to make!


Rewards:
XP: 10
Loot: 25 gn - approved by pegasus
Injuries: N/A
Renown: 5 - finished starter quest. Helped to feed many people

Knowledge:

Baking: cinnamon-honey sauce
Baking: Fruit kebabs
Cooking: Melon boats
Cooking: Preparing a leafy salad
Cooking: Dicing vegetables
Etiquette: feed your scrubbers

Stamp Code:

Code: Select all

[center][img]/gallery/image.php?album_id=39&image_id=7932[/img][/center]

[/color]