[Cally's] The first bite

[Faith Augustin]

50th Ashan, 717

Cally's

"I know what I want to do. I simply lack the skill to do it. But that's why we've got you." Faith was nervous, there was no doubting it. Cally's was due to open soon and to her eyes things were nowhere near ready. She had lists, of course, of what had to be done when and she had a timeframe and a schedule. They were on track or ahead according to each of those things, yet she could not shake the feeling that things were not ready. She had scrimped and saved and pulled together every last copper and, when that was not enough she had gone to everywhere she could think of to get donations. It was, finally, about to happen and whilst she seemed completely calm and composed on the surface, she did not and never had fooled him.

There had been teething problems along the way and Faith had insisted that this was work, not healing people. If he was to help her, and she very much wanted him to, then he had to get paid. He was an alchemist and that was what she needed. In the face of every reassurance that he would work for nothing and it would be his pleasure, she had thanked him and told him that she knew that he would; but the bottom line was that this was a business and it had to work as one.

In the large dining area, Faith was sitting on the floor with the menu laid out around her. "I want a full experience, but specific to each dish. So..." Holding her hands out in front of her, as though clutching an invisible football, she paused as she tried to explain what she could almost see and taste and smell in front of her. But couldn't quite. "Alright, I don't entirely know what I want to do." It was a sudden realisation and she did not mind to admit it.

"You take the first bite with the eye, Padraig." Lifting her gaze from the menus again, she was struggling to put into words just what she meant. "I want them to take the first bite from the moment they walk in. The starter, I want to be a tease. To build anticipation. The main course should hold them enraptured and the dessert should be a grand finale." With a raise of an eyebrow she considered just how she was describing it, then she waved a hand. "Look. It works. I can do that with the food. The place looks beautiful. But food and surroundings is something that any restaurant can have. I have a secret weapon. You."

Looking around the room, her eyes narrowed just a little as she thought about it, visualising it. "I want theater. But not over the top and silly. I want subtle, individual little touches of theater. Like a dessert that sparkles, or an ice cube that changes colour or a scent which accompanies a particular dish to change the taste of it. Can you do that?" Handing him the menu, she smiled at him and added, in case it needed adding. "Or anything, anything at all that you can think of. Sophisticated, appropriate, individualised to the diner, theater."

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[Padraig]

Whatever she wanted or needed, Padraig would've done it at no charge. And why not, he'd asked Faith? They often worked together, combining his areas of expertise and hers, and it never cost either of them a nel. But she'd continued to insist, and eventually he'd agreed.

It was also a practical matter above and beyond business. His job at the apothecary didn't inspire him, didn't challenge him and it was, ultimately, just a job. Doing this instead would enable him to earn and be challenged at once. Besides, he knew her too well and there was no hiding her nervousness from him. If he could help in any way, then all the better.

The first bite with the eye. That he understood. A dish that didn't look appetizing, wasn't. And one that wowed, was bound to pull the diner in. Still, Padraig grinned when she tried to describe what she wanted. "You know, rapture really isn't my strong suit. Theater either," he warned her. But alchemy was, and chemistry. "So I'm assuming you want these effects to be edible ones?"

That was the first question, one he suspected he already knew the answer to. The ideas though and how to pull them off, that was trickier. "Hmm. You might start with something simple," he considered, since it was the most logical way to begin. "What about caviar that isn't caviar at all, to either put in drinks or put on other foods as garnish?" he asked. Like watermelon, he suggested. They might find a way to create watermelon caviar, or any fruit really, that she could drip into glasses of champagne or white wine.

[Faith Augustin]

"I'm afraid I have to disagree, Professor." Faith's response was immediate and her gaze turned to him with a familiar quirk of her lips. "Let us consider those two words. Theater? You have made some marvellously theatrical gestures over the near-arc we have known each other. From jumping into fast-flowing water whilst holding hands when neither of us could swim to battling pirates." Her lips lifted in a slight smile at the same moment as she lowered her head back to the menus, unable to look him in the eye without laughter escaping.

As it was, her voice shook slightly with mirth, though she quickly got it under control. "As for rapture, I would say you have quite the talent. If we could bottle that," she had to admit the simple truth of it. "I would hoarde all the bottles, just for me." Leaning back onto her heels, Faith ignored the menus and the business and everything around them. "I couldn't do this without you. I don't mean this business, these jobs. I mean all of it. All of me." As emotion threatened, though, she reverted to what she knew as always.

"It doesn't have to be edible, no." Faith considered. "During a dessert, for example, there might be a small table firework which coincides with the taste or a scent which is released and changes the taste in your mouth. So, it needs to be around taste and flavour and eating, but not necessarily edible."

Caviar that wasn't caviar? That was intriguing and Faith listened to what he said and nodded with an eager smile. "That sounds excellent. Could you make it so that adding it to a drink did something? Changed the taste, or the colour or something?" A watermelon caviar would be a great idea, and Faith considered and then wondered. "Or actually, could we make it so that we made four or five different fruits, but for one of them each tiny little eeny weeny caviar gave an explosion of a taste in the mouth? So, make three flavours which work together and then combine them? Like the sunburst fruit?" That, she explained, would make an excellent palate cleanser and could be put in a sorbet, too, for between courses on the diamond menu, for example. "I mean, if you can?" He could, she was quite sure.

[Padraig]

Padraig grinned and chuckled when she reminded him of a time just after they'd met, when at his urging they'd plunged into a swift flowing river in order to escape a group of bandits. "I'm not sure I'd classify that impulse as theater," he told her. "Caution to the wind, foolhardy, death wish. At the least, a desperate act of last resort."

Point made, however, he could rise to the occasion when it was necessary, he guessed. But if they were to head off in the direction of speak of rapture, they wouldn't get a thing done. At least nothing that would do any good for her business. He smiled though and shook his head, and leaned in to kiss her gently. "You have always been strong. Much stronger than you realized at first. I'm just happy to be by your side in order to see it."

So, fireworks? And it didn't have to be edible? The second option was simple. The first, achievable he thought and told her so. After all, the ingredients that he used to create hand tossed explosives weren't so different than those used to create fireworks. Just on a smaller and less damaging scale. As for whether the fruit based caviar might do more than he'd suggested already, change color, taste, he didn't see why not and said so. "Combining a number of fruits though, that's the simplest approach, so let's start there," he suggested.

Of course his lab was at home, occupying a room all it's own. But they could as easily, Padraig thought, use Faith's kitchen and the equipment there. Did she have any sunburst fruit on hand, he asked? Any sort of fruit would do though, and he suggested that they begin there, in her kitchen.

The first thing he'd need was some agar agar, which was a gelling agent extracted from red algae. "Do you use it already?" he asked. As a cook, he imagined that she might, or would at least be familiar with it. Meanwhile he gathered the pots, ingredients and other materials they'd need. Cold oil, which might be vegetable, almond, olve, whatever she had on hand and poured into a tall glass.

Then once they had the fruit juice she wanted to use, they could combine it with the agar agar in a small saucepan. Alchemy, with food, which he found surprisingly fascinating. Cook the stuff just long enough to cause the agar agar to dissolve completely, then set it aside to cool for a number of bits. 'You have a syringe, or a glass straw?" he finally asked when the stuff had cooled enough.

If she did, they could fill either from the cooled pot, and then loose small droplets into the cold oil, where individual orbs would form. "Small drops, small caviar. Larger ones, larger orbs," he told her with a grin. And moreover, the orbs would be the color of the fruit they'd chosen, and the flavor of each one would be as intense as the fruit juice was concentrated.

The orbs would sink to the bottom, then all they needed to do was strain the things out and rinse them with water. "Store them in water till you're ready to use them," he advised. "And before you do, if you're going to scatter them on top of food rather than dropping them in glasses of liquid, pat them dry first," he advised. But, he added, if she wanted to use something besides fruit for other dishes? Chances were, she could just as easily.

[Faith Augustin]

Faith shook her head when he said that she was strong. He saw things, her specifically, through rose tinted glasses, she had no doubt. But sitting on the floor of the new restaurant was not really the place to discuss it, she thought. Instead, she returned his kiss and then turned her attention back to what they were doing. Which was starting at combining fruits in a new type of caviar, although they both had many other ideas running around their heads, she knew.

Before they went into the kitchen, Faith tidied up the papers and notes, menus and so on. It was all kept neatly, of course, and she needed that in order to be able to run the business properly. "Eventually," she said, taking his hand as she stood. "I'd like to have our own vineyard and press. Some of the fruits on Scalvoris are exquisite and, like the sunburst fruit, they combine. So, a sunsphere wine, with suntips caviar, for example. That would be amazing." She smiled at him as they made their way into the kitchen. "I've got you pegged for that, too. Now that I'm a member of the Merchants' Guild, I get an amount of money off construction work, but I thought you might be able to design a press and so on. It would be another skill that we can teach people, too. I want it to be a real place of learning, where people can learn skills to help them in their life." Come to that, Faith said, if the press was wooden, she could make it and teach some carpentry skills along the way.

In fairness, Faith had wanted high end, and that was what she had paid for so yes, there were lots of ingredients and equipment. As he got himself the equipment he needed, Faith took a basket and brought back samples. "Alright, so we've got a lot of things here." It appeared that she was queen of understatement as she started to empty the overflowing contents. "This has a really high liquid content, but it's very flavourful if you use it right. Most people can't, but I'm going to branch out into making jams and preserves eventually, and selling them. So you taste them here, then take them home." She put down what she told him was a snekfruit. Then, what looked initially like a coconut but was, she showed him, a cocolime. "The two parts have different tastes. They taste delicious together, or separately."

Then, there was the very strange looking sunburst fruit, which she showed him the three distinct parts of. "Those are the unusual ones. There's oranges, watermelon, peaches and lots of berries." Cally's was not opening for a few trials yet, so it might seem odd that she had these, but then the kitchen was filled with jars and large pots in which different fruits were bubbling away and which she gestured towards. "Relishes, garnishes, jams and chutneys." It was all the explanation he would need, she was sure.

Agar agar? She nodded and retrieved some. "Is this enough?" They had plenty because they used it in the making of the accompaniments which were being prepared now. She had both a syringe and a straw, so he had the choice of whichever one he wanted. "It's ingenious, really," she said, holding the straw. "Like, wheel-level of clever. The straw, I mean."

So, she watched and she learned how to do what he was doing here. Of course, though, she had questions. "Does the oil flavour it at all? If it doesn't, could it?" Then, once the spheres were forming, she watched with fascination. "Does it have to be oil or could it be anything which is thicker?" How robust were these little spheres, she wondered and what was the largest and smallest they could be? Could she coat them in sugar, for example?

Then, as she started to experiment with more concentrated snekfruit juice, Faith lifted her head up and looked at him with a fascinated expression. "What else, if not just fruit? Does it have to be something which can be liquid, or ... what are the parameters I have to work in here?" She had, suddenly, a hundred ideas going around in her head. "Could I put them in hot soup? Could they be hot?" Stopping, Faith grinned suddenly. "Sorry. This is very exciting, isn't it?"

[Padraig]

"The wine sounds wonderful," Padraig said when Faith described what she wanted to do. And he could he told her, maybe, work out a new way to do it, as opposed to the age old tradition. Still, he grinned when he asked, "Are you sure you don't want to go about it the traditional way? I might like to see you stomping grapes." But joking aside, if it was what she wanted, then he'd toy with some ideas and put them down on paper.

"The fluid content of the fruit shouldn't adversely affect the process. After all," he reminded her, "we've already used watermelon, which is mostly water." He thought though that the amount of water might impact the consistency, the bite of the caviar itself, so long as they didn't add any additional liquids.

The unusual fruits were fascinating though, and he tasted each so long as she let him. Surely she'd cooked with them before, but this time he wanted a taste in order to guess how each might perform as caviar. There was plenty of agar agar, he told her. And no, so long as the oil was as cold as possible when she put the droplets in, and so long as she rinsed them in water after removal, there'd be no residual oil taste at all.

"It should be oil, like vegetable, oil, almond. It's the right consistency." And so long as it was done gently, he saw no reason she couldn't roll them in sugar. "Don't do that however until you're ready to serve them. Until then, they need to be stored in cold water."

He didn't see why she couldn't use something else besides fruit. Like meat for instance, so long as she was able to reduce it to liquid first in order to form the droplets. As for whether or not it would melt? Frowning, he considered it a trill or three before concluding. "They'd probably melt on contact with heat...unless," he considered.

"You could use something besides oil after all. Or rather in addition to it...Dropping them into a calcium bath afterwards would produce firmer orbs. But remember that unless you rinse them immediately after straining them out of the bath, they'll continue to grow firmer still," he warned.

[Faith Augustin]

She chuckled when he talked about her stamping grapes, shaking her head slightly. "As far as I can tell, the traditional way around things is something we avoid either by design or accident at every available opportunity." It was true enough, too, both for the pair of them and separately.

Watching him work, though, was fascinating and Faith sat, perched on the bench and made notes, asked questions. If he wanted to taste, she agreed that he could taste all that he wanted, that was fine. "They're unusual to us, but they're pretty common here." So, taste away that was fine.

He answered all her questions, but as was typical of the ever-curious young woman, that just left Faith with more. Her mind ticked over as she considered possibility and impossibilities too. Chewing the pencil she was writing with, she waited until he'd explained and then asked. "Alright, so that leaves me with two questions, two things I'd like to try. We can make these, these will be great." There was no doubt that she thought they would be, she was delighted with the prospect, but they could take it further, she was sure, do more.

"This calcium bath. I'd like to consider that. Could we make one which has a hard inner center or outer shell? Of a different flavour? And if it hardens it, could I use it to make a powder of concentrated fruit?" That was the questions she had from the calcium bath, she thought, except, "And it won't make it taste chalky, will it?"

Then, though, Faith went and retrieved a container, from which she pulled a single leaf. Handing it to him, she explained. "This is a sweetwine vine leaf, as you know. It has two properties which make it interesting to me. It transfers flavour, which is very useful in terms of not going off as quickly as some liquids and it reduces the cost of things, too, although that leaf cost fifteen gold. However, it's got another use and I want to work it out." There was a legend, Faith explained, that a properly prepared sweetwine vine leaf could be made into a 'cup' which, when water was put into it, or any liquid, transformed the liquid itself into the drinker's most pleasurable taste.

"I think it can be done. I think I can do it. If I can, could we take that liquid and make it into caviar? If we did that, then it just might be that it tastes differently to each person. Plus, it would be stretching the boundaries, discovering new things." She would have to work out how to prepare the vine leaf appropriately first, she explained. But once she had, she'd like to try.

In the meantime, though, sunburst fruit would produce three types of caviar, one for each type. However, there again Faith wanted to experiment. "The way I prepare it is to prepare three textures. Most people do that and try to balance the three tastes that way. That isn't right, it isn't perfect." What she did, and what she wanted to do here was to prepare three sunburst fruit mixes. Each one a balanced mix, but with an emphasis in a different place. Then, combined, they should produce a taste experience like no other. "If we can add texture to that, that would be ideal. The absolute ideal would be one mix to be soft and explode fluid in the mouth, the other to be a more crunchy, firmer sphere and the third one to have been made into a powder that I can roll the first two in?" Or, one having no time in the calcium bath, one have a short time and one being left a while, maybe, she wondered?

Although, she was also very quick to point out that right now, she was happy with making the caviar orbs in these fruits they had in front of them. That would be interesting and would add a dimension to what they were doing here. Other things could come later, she assured him, aware that she wanted to run ahead, as always, and dive straight in.

[Padraig]

"Only two?" Padraig asked and grinned. Only two questions, two things she'd like to try? Somehow he suspected that Faith had more than just two ideas rolling round in her mind. Would be unheard of if it wasn't the case.

A short calcium bath, he told her, would result in a firm outer shell and a liquid center. A little longer, the center would remain soft, and the longer she left it in, the firmer it would be. "Remember though to rinse them off when you strain them out of the bath. They'll continue to calcify otherwise." But he didn't see any reason why, at their firmest, she couldn't grate them or reduce them to powder.

"You've cured egg yolks after all haven't you?" he asked. "They end up much saltier than these will. But the consistency ends up resembling that of cheese and can be crumbled or grated." The sweetvine leaf was interesting in its own right. But what she wanted to do was fascinating, and yet quiet achievable. "I don't see why not," Padraig considered. "If the sweetvine works in liquid form, it ought to work similarly as caviar."

But if she wanted three different textures, or firmness levels of caviar made with the sunburst fruit, Padraig saw no reason that it couldn't be done. Still, perhaps that was for another trial, he suggested. In order to not waste the fruit, practice made perfect so the rest of the trial? Well, by the end of it they'd probably have quite a lot of ordinary watermelon caviar, and any other fruit she wanted to try.

[Gangui]

FAITH

Knowledge:

Entrepreneur: I am an earnest leader even in the face of emotional nervousness.
Business Ethics: I always pay all those who help my business, above myself and regardless of anything else.
Business Strategy: Putting all my eggs in one basket: Relying on an Legend.
Leadership: Encouragement through genuine expression of ones feelings and thoughts.
Leadership: Bouncing ideas and taking considerations among equals.
Bringing a higher level of order to something already ordered.
Chemistry: Use of a Syringe.
Alchemy: Making Scalvorian Fruit "Caviar"
Alchemy: Fluid contents of Fruit does not affect the Fruit "caviar" creation process
Sweetwine Leaves: Using them how a Legendary cook should.
Legendary Cooking: Processing how to figure out a new dish using logic.
Scalvorian Fruits: Snekfruit, Cocolime, Sunburst Fruit

Loot:

New Recipe: Scalvorian Fruit Caviar

Injuries:

N/A

Fame:

N/A

Magic:

These points can NOT be used for Domain Magic

Devotion:

N/A

Story:

5/5

Collaboration:

5/5

Structure:

5/5

I found it very interesting to read Faith's style of verbally going through her logic and communicating in what I perceived as a stream of consciousness explanation of her thoughts. A few of the Knowledge that I gave you are out of the ordinary. I give them to you as a challenge to Roleplaying the business consequences of Adhering to such ideas. For example, Roleplay in the future the financial and physical strain of paying out employees regardless of hard times or Roleplaying times when relying totally on a single person made you loose profits. Then you can have those pivotal and heart-wrenching moments in any businessman/woman's career of making the tough decisions that makes them the leader of said company. In the end it is up to you.

PADRIAG

Knowledge:

Faith: Wears her nervousness on her sleeve.
Communication: Translating another's rough descriptions into a plan.
Communication: Humility.
Business Philosophy: Principle: Simplicity.
Cooking: Gathering Ingredients
Alchemy: Creating Scalvorian Fruit "Caviar"
Teaching: Using Recommendations based on experience.
Scalvorian Fruits: Snekfruit, Cocolime, Sunburst Fruit.
Teaching: Answering Questions.
Cooking: Tasting Foods before using them in meal.
Cooking: Using Alchemey to make a food dish.
Leadership: Flexibility.

Loot:

New Formula: Synthesizing Fruits

Injuries:

N/A

Fame:

N/A

Magic:

These points can NOT be used for Domain Magic

Devotion:

N/A

Story:

5/5

Collaboration:

5/5

Structure:

5/5

Padriag I really appreciated your character's ability to understand Faith, because being candid she confuses me slightly. I like the perceived effort Padriag makes go above and beyond to assist Faith instead of allowing her to take the enitre burden of the leadership role. Just how I told Faith, I've given you a couple out of the ordinary Knowledges as a challenge to see how such styles and practices plays out in the future.

To both of you:
This was a challenging thread for me to read, because it was very much out of the sphere of writing I do on the website. Regardless, I am happy I read it because I learned a lot about your characters. Please message me with any comments or concerns! Thank you for writing here and paying a lot of attention to detail. I really appreciate that.