User:Artyom.pavlov/Characters/Juniper Churlgo/Juniper's Companion to Venturesome Cookery

Arrabarran Stuffed Fish
Forgive my forgetfulness, but have we talked about Arrabar in the always beautiful Vilhon Reach? The majestic city of canals and glistening domes and villas wrapped in fragrant greenery and colorful flowering vines. Despite the city's love for lavish splendor, we are going to talk about a simple morningfeast dish you can find on the tables of nobles and commoners alike. Arrabarran stuffed fish is a simple steaming of saltwater fish stuffed with morningfeast staples and served with cheesy eggs drenched in a two-ingredient sauce. This dish will require you to cook the fish in a parchment envelope, so make sure you get a creature of an appropriate size for your oven. Arrabarran fish comes in several parts. You will need potatos, sausages, fennel, lemon, rosemary, and white wine for the fish (I used seawater bream. A huge beast with little flesh - perfect for one). For scrambled eggs, you will need butter, eggs, soft, easy-to-melt cheese, and more white wine and lemon juice for the sauce. Mist cheese from Loudwater Vale is a good pick for this particular dish. We will need to act quickly because bream cooks quickly, and you want to serve everything as it is hot. The first thing you need to do is shop potatoes into smaller cubes and cook them on a skillet in butter until soft. Fry up crumbled sausage. Mix both fried items with black and white pepper, salt, cumin, and dried fennel. Feel free to add chopped aromatic herbs. Set the frying pan aside; we will deglaze all the good sausage bits from it in a few minutes. First, de-scale your fish with the back of your knife, moving against the grain, and remove its sharp fins and ridges with a pair of sharp scissors. Dab the fish's skin and the belly cavity dry, and remove any blood and slime. Prepare an envelope of parchment. The best way to use a single big square sheet. Fold it on all sides to make a bowl of sorts. Place the fist in the center. Generously apply salt and pepper to its skin on both sides. Open the cavity and spoon in your potato, sausage, and seasoning mixture. Slightly press down and in to keep everything in place. You might want to use toothpicks to keep the stuffing in by puncturing the cavity's opening. Place several slices of lemon, fennel, and a sprig of rosemary on top of the fish. Now squeeze a bit of lemon juice into the envelope and add a drizzle of white wine. See, this is why the paper needed to be folded to resemble a bowl. Now carefully bring the sides together and fold them against each other to seal. You can use egg white as a sort of glue to keep it together or find another way to keep it in place. Now fold the other side, and roll it seal-up. We want to make it as sealed as possible to keep the steam in. Place on a sheet pan and cook for 20 minutes at 325F (but the time will differ depending on the fish's size).

Now let's make eggs. Whisk the eggs together with desired seasonings and a dash of water or cream. Preheat a pan with butter to medium-low and pour your eggs in and add shredded soft cheese. Now do not waste a moment and start moving the egg mix around the pan as you jerk the pan back and forth. Soon you will start noticing its scrambling. Do not stop moving the eggs to ensure they are gooey and creamy. When they are slightly under the consistency you desire (baby spit is the term i've heard before. Gross), remove them from the fire and transfer them carefully into a container to keep eggs covered and warm. The last part is now; we are almost done. The lemon and white sauce is easy and might not appeal to everyone due to its acidity. Remove all the fat from the pan. Return the sausage fry pan to the fire and add a glass of white wine to the pan. Deglaze and scrape all the cooked-on pieces of sausage. Add the juice of half a lemon, salt, and pepper to taste. Zest lemon and set it aside to be added very last. Pump up the heat and reduce. When 80% of the liquid is gone, turn the heat down and throw in a cube of fresh butter and stir it in. Thoroughly mix, and add another one. Check your sauce's consistency by coating the back of the spoon or moving the spatula across the pan's bottom. If it leaves behind a clean stripe - it is ready. Transfer the sauce into a sauce boat.

Carefully open the paper envelope and transfer the fish onto the platter. Place the scrambled eggs at the bream's belly. Re-decorate the fish with fresh herbs and fennel. Add hand-ripped bread to the platter and pour the sauce onto the eggs. The morningfeast is served. Arrabarran stuffed fish is exactly what you would expect from the dish—a wine-steamed soft and flaky beast with potatoes and eggs and fresh (or not so fresh) bread to dip into the sauce and eggs. I experienced this dish when visiting the Matrell family of Arrabar. The old matriarch of the clan, Hetta Matrell, insisted I share the meal, fragrant blossom tea, and delicate wafers with honey and whipped cream as we gossiped about the recent scandals of some northern cities of splendor that shall remain unnamed.

For the future, I might want to try different fish and sweeter wine with herbs, and instead of hand-ripped bread, I want to pan-fry cubes of white loaves in butter and sage. What do you think, dear reader? What improvements or regional variants can you think of? I can't wait to hear from you!

Now it is time for the eveningfeast here, and it has been a long day for this hin.

Amarast, my bezzies, and until the next meal we share.

Yours as always, Juniper Churlgo

Fryplate
Good tidings, dear reader. Today I present you with a delectable and nourishing fare from the Savage Frontier. As I traveled past the village of Mornbryn's Shield several seasons past, a dumpy caravan hand, who's passed the village many-a-times, told me about a local curiosity – the oh-so-creatively called "Shield moss." I had to investigate. Locals recommended a beautifully named eatery called Maid of the Moors, noting that a halfling of my stature would find her belly happily filed with the Maid's generously piled-up dishes. I will talk about some of the foods of note I found at the restaurant (and no, regrettably, no "Shield moss" was served to me that day).

One of Maid's staples, recommended by the eatery's delightful staff, was something called a "Fryplate." A morningfeast of vegetables and eggs. Below, I am reporting an attempt to recreate the dish in my humble burrow. Take a handful of plump tomatoes and slice them lengthwise. For the best result, find the most oblong fruits. I recommend sweet tomatoes from Mistledale. Take your favorite skillet and generously lard it up. However, drizzling it with flavorful olive oil from the Blade Kingdoms brings out grassy notes and adds complexity to the dish. Place your sliced tomatoes, cut-side up, onto the skillet. Sprinkle them with salt, minced garlic, and herbs like parsley, chives, and rosemary. You can purchase most of them from Aurora's Emporium if you are in a pinch or need to feed an entire household. Drizzle more oil over the seasoned tomatoes, turn up the heat and cook covered for about 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, throw another skillet on the flame and fill it with bacon (I personally prefer cubbed ham) and a handful of wild mushrooms. Fry it all together on high flames with a sprinkle of salt and pepper, until mushrooms are delicately golden-hued like Lathander 's "holy symbol" at dawn. Not what it's been 10 minutes, uncover the tomatoes and inhale the mouthwatering aroma. Take a utensil, a gnomish fork would do, and press down on tomatoes to flatten them and release the juices. Keep the skillet uncovered and cook until the liquid is almost completely gone and tomato skin starts getting caramelized. Now that you have 2 of 3 parts of the so-called Fryplate, you can start working on the star of the show. Take a handful of black peppercorns and crush them with a pot or a skillet. Asking a barbarian friend to help would be a bad idea, believe me. Toss the crushed peppercorns into a sauce pot, toast it on high flame for a minute or two and add a 1/4th of a tankard filled with your favorite stock. You can make your own or find an inn with an open kitchen window early in the day and scoop some stock while the cooks are distracted. Add a drizzle of brandy. My personal favorite is Sembian brandy, but you can follow your muse. Cook the ingredients together until reduced, then add fresh cream, just a bit to flavor, and thicken it sauce. Taste, season, reduce, and keep warm. (If you are looking to impress easily amused simpleton humans, add brandy first, then tilt the skillet to light it aflame. Us hin are not prone to such faff.)

Prepare yet another skillet; yes, you need many skillets! I do not envy Maid of the Moors' dishwashers! Crack three or four eggs into a bowl, season, mix well with a spoonful of cream, then deposit it onto a buttered-up skillet. On low, start moving the egg mix. You will see cooking soon, so pay attention! As the eggs start to thicken, add the peppercorn and brandy sauce, making sure not to add too much. We need eggs to be gooey, not soupy! Continue cooking the eggs while moving it around with a spatula as you jerk the skillet on the fire back and forth. When the eggs are coagulated and cooked but are still soft and creamy, take off the heat and get ready to assemble the whole Fryplate. Now your tomatoes will be ready. Carefully scoop them out and place them carefully on a serving dish. For a more rustic experience, serve it all right in the skillet! Atop the tomatoes, pile up your cooked bacon and mushrooms. Generously sprinkle them with thinly sliced almonds. Carefully transfer the eggs from one skillet to the serving dish atop the fragrant assembly. Now all you need is to make it pretty and sprinkle it with some sliced almonds, drizzle peppercorn sauce if you have any left, and strategically place fresh herbs and/or chives on the mound. And here you go—the Fryplate from Maid of the Moors of Mornbryn's Shield. Granted, my version took some liberty with the presentation, as the good folk of the Maid piled the fried goodies on a plate for you, but to people from the City of Splendors, or the Forest Kingdom, my plating, I am sure, would appeal better.

Remember to serve some hot flatbreads with your dish. I hope you enjoy this exotic recipe from the fairway banks of the River Surbrin.

"Amarast" for now my friends.

Yours truly, Juniper Churlgo.

Goldenstars
Berdusk, the Jewel of the Vale. A lovely city to visit, and it's not far from Iriarbor. Imagine you are waking up at a cozy inn with the first rays of sun cheerfully prancing along the glittering waters of the River Chionthar. You find the latest issue of The Twilight Tome and sit down by the water with a handful of freshly-fried egg-fried hand-buns filled with gravy, sausage, and potatoes from a river-side bakery—true halfling bliss.

Anyone who's ever visited Berdusk knows of goldenstars, a local specialty, sold virtually on every corner and served for morningfeast, highsunfeast, and eveningfeast alike. This is an easy but finicky recipe that you will not regret learning. A typical meal in Berdusk consists of a plateful of goldenstars, a healthy serving of stew, or a platter of fried sausages, bacon, and chicken, all drowned in thick chicken gravy. As in so many cases with dough, we can prepare it ahead of time. The same can be said with chicken drumsticks that we'll roast to serve with fried bacon, sausage, and cabbage sprouts. Make a quick marinade using yogurt, garlic, oil, ginger, cumin, paprika, tumeric, salt and pepper. Mix well and submerge drumsticks in the marinade. Keep cool overnight. The next day, release your baking dish very generously and bake on high flame for twenty-five minutes, then flip and bake for ten more. Easy. Now dough. Simply mix four tankards full of sifted flour, a spoonful of salt, one and a half tankards of boiling hot water, and half-a tankard of high-proof clear alcohol. Keep working until the dough is smooth. Rub with melted tallow and leave chilled to rest. Make brown gravy with generous amounts of seasoning to your liking and vegetables. Strain and potion them to freeze. Frozen gravy is much easier to add to the stuffing later, Now – the stuffing. We will need sausage meat (remove casings if your sausages are already portioned by the butcher), finely diced potatoes, finely diced onions, and fresh green parsley. Separately, fry onions and potatoes in a bit of tallow until golden. Add both vegetables to the sausage, as well as chopped parsley, salt, and pepper. Roll your sleeves and mash the meat until mixed well. If you are unsure about seasoning, pinch a small piece of meat stuffing, fry it off, and taste. Cover the stuffing and chill until ready to shape the handpies. Divide your dough in two and roll it out as thin as you think you can handle it. It is a dry kind of dough, and it will seal and harden quite well as you fry your pies. Use a cutter to portion out squares of dough. We then will add a spoonful of the meat mixture to each and a piece of frozen gravy. Use water or egg white to seal the dough in a roughly triangle shape. Add fat or vegetable oil to a skillet and pre-heat. When the oil is well heated and rippling, reduce the heat to medium flame and fie your triangles on both sides. Pat your patties dry off of all oil. Now beat together four eggs with a small drizzle of water and two spoonfuls of wheat flour. Add salt, and pepper. Now you need to be fast. Dunk your patties in the egg mix, let them absorb the egg, and quickly transfer them one at a time to a pan filled with hot oil. Your eggs will bubble up and cook quickly. Flip, drain, and prepare to serve while they are still hot and golden.

Serve them in a big generous pile, and toss in any pieces of fluffy fried egg that were leftover or fell off as you fried the bread. Serve with a platter full of fried sausage patties, bacon, drumsticks, and cabbage. I added some sweet-pickled tomatoes as the flavor cut well the sauce-pot worth of yellow chicken gravy that the entire plate is drowned in.

A beautiful Berduskan morningfeast that can satisfy even the hungriest halfling. If you have goldenstars for any other meal, I recommend you a huge pitcher of Berduskan Dark to go along with it.

A always, dear friends, be fearless in the kitchen and be fearless when you see that exotic food on the menu! Amarast, and until the next tenday.

Yours truly, Juniper Churlgo

Blood sauce and Beer-Battered Fishfry
Today, like every self-respecting halfling, I am craving good ale, good fry, and good spice. So today’s dish is very familiar to anyone traveling the Sword Coast. What is more abundant than fish and fries in the eateries and pubs of Luskan, Baldur’s Gate, and Waterdeep? Well, freshly fried fish. Some get to be seasoned and fried whole to be munched on with spiced ales, while others get dunked and battered and sauced. I’ve passed the City of Splendors many months ago, and what I found peculiar is the sauces they serve with such fried marine grub. This particular meal comes from the famed Yawning Portal. If you’re an adventuring sort, a heroic trill-seeker, or a fortune-finder like my dear brother Porto, you’ve spent many-a-nights at the Portal and had the pleasure of meeting Durnan, the grumpy proprietor of the fine establishment. Its ever-changing menu had battered fish the night of my visit. Nothing special about the fish. Whitefish served with battered zucchinis, but a duo of bickering cooks, Frinli Hinkille and Merin Falle whipped up a batch of what they called blood sauce to be smudged atop the fishfry. My research uncovered that the sauce originated from the sweltering Calimshan where it was prepared with handfuls of hot peppers, but Waterdeep’s version used more commonly available horseradish. So let’s talk about how to make this easy sauce… and the fish too, I suppose. You can use any fish for this fry. Fatty fish goes better with horseradish, but flat and white fish such as cod or snapper is what they used at the Yawning Portal. First thing first: slice the fish and a vegetable of your choice (zucchini, in my case) into somewhat uniform flat slices to help with cooking times. Toss them with salt and pepper and leave them be. What we want is for the salt to draw excess liquid out of the things we are frying. We will dab them dry before battering, so be ready to make a bit of a mess.

While the salt is doing its magic, make ale batter. You want to use a cup of nice thick-bodied bready beer or ale. Mix it with a cup and a handful of flour, egg, salt, pepper, pepper, hot pepper flakes, and powdered garlic, and stir it all together until all clumps are gone. Prepare a plate with flour with a dash of salt and pepper for dusting. When you know your fish and vegetables and well-dried and dabbed, dust them with flour, dip them in batter and throw them into a pre-heated frying oil cauldron. If you are like me, pan-frying is an option, but instead of getting fluffy bits, you will be left with flattened pancake-like pieces. Both fish and zucchinis cook quickly, so keep an eye out and take out once the batter is dark golden and crispy. Let the freshly fried bits rest and drop oil on a wire rack and serve as soon as you can, maybe a minute after you take them out. Serve the blood sauce on the side and sprinkle with crispy fried garlic, onions, or leeks. Now, lets talk about the star of the event – the blood sauce. You can make it ahead of time, and the ladies at the Yawning Portal cooked it in a massive pot that was bigger than a well-fed halfling. You will need tomatoes, preferably from down south, hot peppers from the Vilhon or Maztica, bell peppers, garlic, horseradish, salt, a dash of sugar, and a drizzle of lemon juice. You can remove tomato skin by putting them into boiling water for a minute, but it’s not necessary. For horseradish, you will have to grate or purchase jarred preserves. Crudely chop all the ingredients and place them on medium heat, cover, and cook until all the vegetables are soft and can be mashed. Remember, the of peppers and horseradish reduces as you heat the sauce, so make sure to save some minced and mashed on the side to add at the end when the blood sauce is chilled. When everything is soft, remove the cover, mash, and cook until the liquid evaporates, leaving a thick sauce behind. For me, it took about 2 hours, but my pot was also snack-sized. When the sauce is thick and reduced, take it off the flame and let it chill. When cold, add in seasoning, acid, mashed peppers, and horseradish to taste. Serve the delicious, refreshing blood sauce cold. But one thing you need to remember if you are planning to jar it and preserve it, you need to make sure everything is heated up and sterile before you seal it for the future.

And here we go. Boring old fish fry with a lovely bowl of sauce. Feel free to use different ingredients! I’ve heard some made the blood sauce with carrots and apples to add it sweetness or smoked and red bell peppers from Maztica that are especially mouth-incinerating.

Speaking of Maztica, my dear reader. I have a hearthy recipe for a bean stew from Palul to share with you, as well as flaming-hot mayzcakes. Please remind me if I get distracted.

Another venture into the relaxing world of Torillian cookery is done. I hope you’ve enjoyed our time together. Amarast, as always, Juniper Churlgo

Boar Dumplings
Today's meal takes us to the Arnise Hold, one of the few friendly keeps in the lush Zehoarastria floodplains region of Amn. The small caste and its surrounding buildings are known for their friendliness, and the Hold's guest house has its doors always open to travelers and other guests. It's hard to believe the Arnise Hold was once taken over by monsters, and the lord of the hose was brutally murdered. I say Lady Nalia de'Arnise, the latest Lord of the keep, runs it well into prosperity. Among meals offered by the staff were simple and hearty dishes of game found in abundance around the keep. The wild boar dumplings are the dish we are talking about today. You will need a handful of wild mushrooms, wild boar meat (minced), flour, hot peppers, some stewing tubers, and vegetables, as well as herbs.

Boar is hunted in abundance, and you should not have a problem finding a hunter or a butcher with a freshly minced wild pig. You will need to make a dumpling mix using minced boar, salt, pepper, garlic, and soy sauce. To bind the filling together, use a small handful of starch, like dried potato mash, bread crumbs, or cooked rice, plus a single chicken egg. Roll up your sleeves and mash it all together well with your hands. Set aside. In the meantime, put two pots on the stove; one with clear vegetable stock (or any other stock you have), put in a handful of seasonings, finely diced ginger, several slices of hot peppers, chives, scallions, or leaks. Cook it all together on simmer for at least 30 minutes. In the second pot, cook two handfuls of finely chopped wild mushrooms in butter and stock or water until it's dark. Taste and adjust the seasoning, then cook until reduced to a dark brown thick liquid. Add chopped garlic, carrots, celery, potatoes, and a handful of thyme, parsley, and sage. If you’re feeling especially adventurous, use juniper berries that go well with game! This stew will need to cook for an hour at least until it's thick and creamy – perfect for dipping your dumplings into.

Now let's talk about the dumpling dough. A modern halfling might not have time to make her own dough so find yourself a good baker who would be willing to roll the wrappers out and cut them in uniform shapes. If you do feel so inclined, the dumpling dough I used here only needs flour, egg, cold water, and starch for rolling. Simple but time-consuming. The next step will be a labor-intensive one. Each of the wrappers will need to be filled with the boar mince you set aside earlier. Remember not to use more than a flange-sized scoop of meat. Place it in the center, then wet all the sides of the wrapper with water, using your fingers if you so desire. Bring the sides up, and press them firmly together to glue the dumpling sealed. There are several shapes you could make, but the presentation is not as important as the taste in such rustic dishes. When you’re finished, divide the dumplings into how you want them prepared. For the dumplings you will be serving in soup – place them in the clear soup you made earlier and cook on low heat until ready. Fifteen minutes should be enough. DO NOT BOIL, or the dumplings will fall apart – these wrappers are very delicate. As the main star of the show – melt some wild boar tallow in a skillet, then lay eight dumplings at a time in hot fat to fry them. Each side takes about 2 minutes to brown. The last step is what gives them a crunchy crust. Take a cup of water and dissolve half a tablespoon of flour in it, then pour it into the skillet. Cook covered for five minutes. Then take off the cover and continue cooking until the flour liquid turns into a crust.

Now it's ready. Flip the pan with a plate covering it, and here you have it. Break the crunchy crust and serve! The fried dumplings can be dipped in the mushroom stew you made earlier. Yum! (However, the Arnise Hold used game meat stew, not vegetable and mushroom). On the side, you have a bowl of dumpling soup with some refreshing heat – perfect for the autumn. And a plate piled high with dumplings. They were usually served with fried smoked fish and fried boar belly or bacon, but that is for another day.

I hope you enjoyed this dish as much as I did, my dear friends.

Until next time, Juniper Churlgo.

Luiren-Style Lamb Meatballs, Chessentan Lamb Meatballs, and Lambtails
And another tenday's gone by, and I am late once again. This time, however, due to a cooking accident that involved a bottle of flammable liquor, hot sauce, and a careless application of a firebolt. But enough about kitchen misfortunes. During my last visit to the City of Coin, Athkatla, I found an eatery that served lamb meatballs, oblong meatballs on a stick, and several types of sauced meatball dishes, all from different parts of the continent. After some snooping around, I found recipes of sweet Luiren-style lamb meatballs, Chessentan baked breakfast meatballs with a spiced tomato sauce, a dollop of sheep's milk yogurt, and a baked egg. Lastly, I found a recipe for the so-called Lambtails they grill in lawless Westgate. Making all three is a lot of work, but the meatball mix is fairly similar for each of the recipes. So let's begin. We will start with two sauces, which need at least an hour of cooking before being used. For the Chessentan tomato sauce, you will need peeled tomatoes, fresh or preserved, one forth head of sweet onion, sea salt, pepper, three roughly chopped cloves of garlic, a heaping spoon of cumin and a heaping spoon of freshly ground coriander (the more, the better). Add your canned peeled tomatoes or three-four sweet fresh tomatoes in a saucepan and squeeze them with your hands to roughly mash them. Imagining a naughty past paramour helps. If your fresh tomatoes are too hard, use a potato masher or squeeze them with a bottom of a tankard. You want the mash to be chunky. I do not know why, but it just creates a batter texture. Add the rest of the ingredients and cook on medium-low flames for at least an hour. About halfway through cooking, stir well and taste. You may want to adjust the spices and salt to taste. I added a dash of hot pepper and a dash of lemon zest to the sauce. Cook covered, but if your sauce is too soupy, evaporate the liquid before serving. For the Luiren sweet and spicy sauce, we traditionally use Harelveauplum sauce, but plums are not in season, so we will return to it later. We are going to make a sweet honey-based sauce loosely inspired by Harelveauplum. We will need a healthy squeeze of honey. For this recipe, I can recommend you the honey from Gullykin as its complexity of flavor compliments the sauce. Add honey into another saucepan along with a single chopped shallot, a spoonful of coriander, a spoon of salt, ground pepper, a drizzle of olive oil, a handful of mustard condiment, and a bit of lemon juice for taste. Cook it all together on low flame until the shallots are soft and translucent. It should take a bit over an hour. Halfway through, add half a mug of hot sweet sauce – Harelveauplum, if you have it. If not – sweet and spicy pepper condiment should do. Mix well and continue simmering covered. While your sauces and bubbling away like an angry tavern cook, prepare your lamb meat. You could ground your own using lamb shoulder or use pre-ground meat from your butcher. Just remember to get fattier mince, or your balls will be tough. We will make two mixed. Number one will be for meatballs, and number two – for Lambtails. First bowl: mix together well a pound of lamb mince, a cup of bread crumbs (I used sweet eggy santrath made by gnomes of Amn), half a spoon of rough salt, the same amount of pepper, and a drizzle of olive oil. When it's well incorporated, roll the meat into balls of the size you prefer, depending on the size of your cookware and plates. You can quickly brown the balls and put them away. You don't need to cook them thoroughly, and you will have more than enough for two dishes. The second meat bowl will be the same as before, but you will also add a single egg and a small spoon of paprika. This batch will be shaped into Lambtails on small wooden skewers and grilled on a red hot pre-heated grill or skillet. Three minutes on each side and grill marks are all you need. And while you're grilling meat, why don't you toss some vegetables to cook alongside? I grilled some small peppers and cherry tomatoes on a stalk. As you grill, assemble the Chessentan dish. Place four meatballs in an over-safe ramekin. Top with your tomato sauce. Shake well so the sauce fills the bowl well, then add a spoonful of sheep's yogurt on one side. Place in a pre-heated oven and cook for 10 minutes to heat up the sauce and cook the meatballs through. Take out, crack an egg onto the side opposite of yogurt, add a grilled pepper, and sprinkle the top with some strong aged cheese. Bake for another ten minutes. While the meatballs are baking, toss a handful of meatballs into your sweet Luiren-style sauce, roll them in it, and cook for about 10 minutes on low heat. Plating time. The Chessentan lamb meatballs are ready to be served. All you need is to decorate it with ribbons of fresh mint leaves. Luiren-style lamb meatballs are to be placed on a small plate, topped with the sweet sauce, and sprinkled with more hard aged cheese. Lastly, Lambtails can be piled on a plate and served with grilled vegetables. I added roasted Maztican green beans with almonds and lemon and a dollop of yogurt. Enough food to feed three hungry adventurers. Serve it with a bottle of nice red wine and freshly baked bread. This was quite an evening, preparing all of these dishes. Of course, you could make most parts of these dishes ahead of time and then simply warm it all up and plate. This halfling needs a tankard of rivengut and a nap. Until next time, amarast, and good night. Juniper Churlgo

Nutbread
It has been a tenday since we last talked about foods. Good tidings, friends, and today we will travel far because the recipe we are covering is common and is eaten in Cormyr, the Dalelands, the Sword Coast, the Vilhon Reach, Turmish, and even in the Outer Planes!

The culprit is nutbread... Bread made with milled nuts if you can imagine such a thing. Bread with no gluten. To be honest, this type of baking is alien to me, and I had to try out several formulae to nail the taste and texture as what I've tried on my travels. I am going to make three dishes for you. First of all, regular nutbread, nothing fanciful or exotic in its flavoring, as what you can buy in Cormyr or the Dales. I am serving it drowned in gravy with some pickles and teeny weeny picked onions. This bread is served like that in Eveningstar and Baldur's Gate. The second type of nutbread will be from the plane of Bytopia and made with warm spices and carrots, mildly sweet to taste. And lastly, as it is customary in Turmish, I'll make a bowl of simple onion and chive soup. My first attempt at making the bread resulted in a hard and coarse nightmare. I used a mix of almond and walnut flour, eggs, and pumpernickel flour. It was a failure. I decided to substitute the rough flour for coconut flour or coconut milk powder. And this was exactly what I needed, and it gave the bread a gentle taste of my beloved Luiren (remind me to fry some Luiren bananas for you one day!) So let's begin!

For regular, Cormyrean nutbread, we will use a mug of almond and walnut flour, a mug of powdered coconut milk, a healthy squeeze of honey or, in my case, molasses, a chicken's eggs, a dash of salt, a dash or sugar]], and a generous pinch of soda. Now we need to act fast. Mix all dry ingredients together (leave soda out for now), mix liquid ingredients together and add them into a single bowl. Now put in your soda and add a teaspoon of lemon juice or any other acid. Quickly mix the dough. It will be wet and sticky. We have to bake the mix immediately to ensure the soda is still active and fluffs up an otherwise dense loaf. There is no gluten, so there is absolutely no need to rest your mix. Butter or grease your molds and bake for thirty-eight minutes. For Bytopian carrot nutbread, the recipe will remain largely the same. But we will need to make two well-packed mugs of shredded carrots. Bytopian produce is famous for being the sweetest and the most delicious in the entire multiverse, but if you live in the Savage Frontier, you might have to use local tough and less sweet roots. Shred your carrots, put a handful of brown sugar for taste and a handful of regular sugar into the carrots and mix well to coat evenly. Cover and put away. Sugar will sap out carrot juice, and we will need to use it for flavor. To make the tough, we'll use honey, two eggs, a heaping of sliced almonds, a generous handful of charnushka, and ajwain seeds. Follow the same instructions as before and treat carrots and carrot sugar juice as a liquid ingredient. Mix well to make sure the seeds are equally spread through the dough. Drop some liquid butter on top of the bread and bake. Expect it to take longer, and it will be ready when a tester comes out clean. Now soup – an easy task. Turmishian onion and chive soup is something I call four onions soup. Chop up yellow onions, leeks, red onions, and spring onions and put them with a bit of butter, cooking on low flame until it's all soft and sweet. Now add a tankard of dry white wine, pump up the heat, and reduce until it's down to ten percent of the original liquid. Chop up some herbs; I used just parsley and thyme and a generous amount of chives. Add salt, pepper, garlic if you like the taste and several tankards of stock or water. Cook until the soup is whiteish, and serve. As I had leftover nutbread dough, I decided to add some wheat flour to it and roll it out in thin stripes. Onto the stripes, I spooned some finely chopped and slowly cooked mushrooms and onions, topped with leftover almonds and cheese. Roll them up, sit them in your greased baking mold onto wetted disks of dough and bake for roughly the same amount of time as Cormyrean nutbread. Now we are ready to plate, and this time it's simple and rustic. Bytopian nutbread is served in thick slices and drizzled with molasses. Cormyrean nutbread is broken in two and ladled with thick savory gravy of fowl, cow, or mushroom. I don't need to tell you how to make gravy. On the side, add some cornichons and pickled pearl onions and sprinkle with chopped parsley. Lastly, your soup should be hot. Sprinkle it with fresh herbs for color and add a drizzle of herby oil or sherry.

This research and trial and error method absolutely exhausted me, but the result was good and bears some semblance to the original dishes, so I am satisfied. Let me know if you've ever made something with nutbread, and if you did, what version did you cobble up?

In any event, I've rambled long enough, my friends. For the next dish, we will go further north and do something quick and easy. How does Fireshear sound? Frozenfar can have its gastronomical surprises!

Amarast and until next time, Juniper Churlgo

Ruth-Balls with Turmish Cream Sauce
This tenday, I bring you a story of shame, failure, and perseverance. This hin was under the weather and decided to make something quick and easy, so I settled on ruth-balls I once saw made in Lapaliiya. I once read in a highly reputable publication penned by none other than Volothamp Geddarm that ruth-balls and variations on the recipe are made in Tashalar, Westgate, and lovely Selgaunt, and in Waterdeep they are dipped in a spicy warming spicy concoction they call Turmish cream sauce. My first attempt to shape these balls was a mushy disaster of chickpea and oil soup. My second attempt produced uniformed morsels that held well together, but the mix ended up being too finely ground. But any disaster is a learning experience, and I can tell you exactly what I did wrong and what to look out for. So, my friends, let us begin. We will make a handful of fried ruth-balls, with the Turmish cream sauce on the side, served with red lentil flatbreads and grilled cabbage salad. For ruth-balls, you will need a tankardfull of chickpeas, two cloves of garlic, one onion, a large handful of mint, and another one of parsley, a bit of lemon juice, a spoon of tahini sauce, and generous amounts of crushed red chili peppers, cumin, coriander, salt, and black pepper. Now heed my wisdom. Use dried chickpeas, not preserved ones. Soak them in cold water overnight and thoroughly drain before cooking. Roughly chop your herbs and onion, and add all of them together to be finely minced or processed using a cantrip or two. Be careful not to turn it into a paste. We are looking into the consistency of very coarse sand. Taste, adjust seasoning, add two heaping spoons of flour, and mix well. We need some flour to keep the balls together, but too much, and you're making buns instead. Traditionally, ruth-ball are just that, balls pressed together and fried in hot fat. If you are low on oil, press your balls into a patty and pan-fry them until brown. You could also bake them, but that won't give you a crispy, crunchy shell. Now let's prepare the sauce. Finely chop half an onion and a handful of mushrooms and cook them in butter until they are brown and golden. Soft vegetables will release flavor and will be easy to mill. Add minced or pureed garlic, and two cloves are enough, a squeeze of tomato paste, dried herbs (thyme, parsley, and sage), a generous amount of paprika, and a spoon of hot red pepper or mashed and preserved pepper paste. Season with salt and pepper and cook, stirring for a couple of minutes. Reduce heat to the lowest and add a quarter tankard of milk and a quarter tankard of cream. Whisk it all together and cook to marry the flavors. Make sure to keep the heat the same, or your cream will break. After five minutes of simmering the sauce, take it off the heat and push it through a fine sieve. Your vegetables will need to be pushed through, becoming the sauce's thickener. Keep warm and serve on the side. If you notice it has become too thick, water it down just a touch with stock. Another side will be chickpea mash if you have any extra legumes. Simply mash chickpeas, a large spoonful of tahini, olive oil, garlic, and some lemon juice together. Season with salt and pepper and mix in a few tablespoons of water until it's a smooth paste. You can flavor it more with paprika and cumin. Serve with a drizzle of olive oil and some chopped herbs. The last part is easy too. Soak one tankard of dried red lentils in two cups of cold water for several hours or overnight. Mash them together with the water until they form a gloopy paste. Add salt and pepper and mix well. Now pan fry the batter with just a bit of butter for color. Take a small ladle and pour a portion of the batter into the pan and quickly distribute it to be a thin crepe. When you see bubbles forming on the top, flip the flatbreads and cook until it stiffens, it usually takes just a couple of minutes. Roll them up and serve on the side for dipping. Lastly, grilled cabbage salad. Preheat your grill or griddle. Slice your cabbage into wedges or thick steaks. Lightly brush the surface with olive oil and sprinkle salt and pepper. Drop onto the grill and press down. When you see cabbage leaves gaining a lighter yellow tint, flip and press again. Plate with picked greenneedles, cherry tomatoes, and some salty crumbly cheese. You will not need dressing for the cabbage, but if you would like – use a simple mix of olive oil and lemon juice. The biggest challenge of the recipe is to get the ruth-ball mixture right. Yours truly failed twice before succeeding, so learn from my failings. These foods together can be found in the cosmopolitan cauldron that is Waterdeep. You can put a single ball on the flatbread, top it with the sauce and enjoy!

I promise you; the next recipe will be in better shape and won't be a failure. We are going just next door to the Sword Mountains. That would be all for today, my dear friends. Amarast and until the next tenday. Yours truly, Juniper Churlgo

Smoked Fish Tarts
And another tenday flew by, and I am in great need of some comfort food from west Faerûn. Some of the most common food there is fish, preserved for storage or transportation. Smoking is one of these methods of preservation. The nation of Amn is one of the major exporters of smoked fish, and everywhere that smoked fish goes, folk learned to make a variety of tarts with it. Some recipes called for soaking smoked and dried fish to make it more palatable, while others mashed it, mixed it with tubers, and baked it in a nest shape. And today, we'll make one of such tarts. I used smoked trout fillets this time (I recommend trout from Loudwater as the town knows its fish). You will also need three large starchy potatoes (you can use waxy, but they are just not as fluffy), butter, fatty sour cream (or creme fraiche), and milk. For the tart shell dough, you will need wheat flour, some raising powder, salt, sugar, a dollop of melted butter, and a generous amount of heavy cream. I recommend you make the dough a day ahead. Simply mix all the ingredients together. It is a crumbly fatty dough, so it will look like it is not coming together as you kneed it, but eventually, it will be nice and smooth. Wrap it up al let it rest overnight in a cold place. The filling for the tarts is simple. Boil your potatoes until soft; 45 minutes is usually enough. Drain and let them sit in the colander to cool and dry. After that, peel the potatoes and push them through a fine sieve; add melted or softened butter, milk, and sour cream. Season generously with salt and white pepper, and add chopped dill (not necessary). A single smoked trout is all you need. Shred two smoked fillets with two forks and make sure to remove any stray bones. Add the shed to your mashed potatoes and mix well.

Take out your dough and roll it out one-third of an inch thick or so. Find a round bowl roughly the size you want your tars to be and use it to cut the dough into circles. Place a dollop of potato and fish mix in the center, flatten it, and bring it to a uniform shape, then lift the dough sides up, shaping it like a nest. Pinch the sides to keep it in shape, and gently press inwards as you do. Place the tarts onto a greased pan and scoop some smoked bacon drippings on top for additional flavor. Bake for 25 minutes on very high heat. When almost done, take out and brush with eggwash for additional color and place back for a couple of minutes. When the dough is golden and the filling starts getting brown crust – it's time to pull the tarts out. When serving, I like topping them with a dollop of red caviar; black caviar could work too, and it's easier to find. A couple of sprigs of dill, and you're all set! I served them with nuggets of washed and cooked white fish. Condiments: horseradish and mustard, like my momma used to eat it.

There are many variants of smoked fish tarts. Some are infamous for their foulness, while others evoke a feeling of home and comfort. Amusingly enough, both could be found in Amn! I once had one of these tarts topped with red wine gravy and a fried egg. I did not complain. That is all for now. Next time we meet, we will be rolling lamb mince into balls! Salivating like a hungry gnoll already! Amarast, and until we are hungry together again. Your friend, Juniper Churlgo.

Waterdhavian Cashew Soup
Good tidings, my dears. I am pleased to announce that this tenday I am on time! Today's dish is going to be a quick and easy taste of home. And the said home is in the grand City of Splendors, Waterdeep, at the feet of the God Catcher. If you have a handful of cashews and some stock – you can whip up a bowl of Waterdhavian Cashew Soup. Let us begin with preparing the nuts. Spread your cashews on a sheet pan and roast them for twenty-five minutes until the nuts are golden, bringing up their natural sweetness and flavor. As the cashews are roasting, finely chop one onion and toss it in a pot with some oil, preferably something of lighter flavor. Add two cloves of garlic, smashed with the back of your knife, a thumb-sized dollop of tomato paste, a dash of pepper, and a dash of tumeric for both warming flavor and color. Cook them all together until onions are soft, regularly mixing. Now we have a bit of time to take care of additional flavor and something to have with your soup. First, if you have fresh cilantro, mash it together with neutral-tasting oil to extract the color and juices. Mash it well until your oil is green. Then strain the herbs and set them aside to drizzle in your soul as you serve the dish. You could dup bite-sized skewers of chicken meat into the soup, and it tastes great, but I am more in the mood for some flatbread. You can make simple dough of one cup of yogurt, one cup flour, a dollop of melted butter, and some salt and pepper. Add some soda and acid and quickly mix the dough until it's uniform and smooth. Pinch and roll out the dough as thin as you can; I like it to be very delicate and pan-fry up in some oil for color or just a heated pan for speed. Rip them by hand and toss some leftover chopped cilantro atop. Your cashews are probably already done, so take them out, and grind them to a nice powder and, add them to the onions, top with three cups of your favorite stock. Use two cups if you like your soup thick. Now mash the contents all together as it all warms up. Once you have made the onions and garlic into a smooth thick liquid, leave it alone and cook for six more minutes. Now you are ready to serve. Ladle the hot thick homey cashew soup, toss some cashew or cilantro atop, and drizzle with cilantro oil. That is it. Simple, warming, sweet, and savory. Get a handwheel of herb and bacon-stuffed cheese, drizzle some oil on it and its all here. Simple dish this time, and I will continue with another simple dish next time. How do you like smoked fish pastries from Amn? I highly recommend you try this. My halfling soul is gitty from thinking about all the leftovers I will have! Until the next time, amarast my friends. Yours truly, Juniper Churlgo

Asa Wat
Good tidings, my friends. Have you ever sailed to the Chultan Peninsula? If you haven't, the grand city of Mezro shoud be your destination if you are, like me, searching for new foods. If, for some odd reason, Mezro is unavailable, Port Nyanzaru should be your next choice. Port Nyanzaru exports a fair amount of spices grown and harvested in the jungles of Chult, and the city itself is a marvel of colors and huge scaly beasts they call dinosaurs. Despite some fine attempts to colonize the peninsula and erase local gods and culture, there are still some Tabaxi foods and traditions to spotlight.

Asa wat is a thick dark spice stew of tuna, lentils, red onions, and generous amounts of local berbere seasoning. For this stew, you will need four tuna steaks, a cup of red lentils, one red onion, several generous spoonfuls of spiced butter, garlic, oil, water, or vegetable stock, and a collection of spices. For tuna, traditionally, Tabaxi use thick cuts of the fish through the spine, but you can also use boneless flank steaks. I used yellowfin tuna from the Shining Sea. Let us begin with butter. It can be done ahead of time, and butter – saved to be used later. Take clarified butter and melt it in a saucepan. Add tumeric, cardamom, garlic, chppped white onion, chopped ginger, black pepper, chopped sweet peppers, fenugrek, cumin, cinnamon, and clove. Keep simmering the butter mixture on low flames for at least an hour. Be ready for an assault of beautiful fragrance to permeate the entire home as you infuse it. When done, strain the butter and set aside to set and chill.

Drizzle a skillet with oil and heat it up while patting tuna dry on all sides. It might take several goes with a towel. Salt the steaks on all sides and sear them for about two minutes on each side. Set aside. Put a soup pot on medium-low flames and let it heat up. Finely chop, or even better – grate the red onion and add it to the hot pan, along with the juice. No, I did not forget about oil. The onion goes in dry. Keep an eye on the onion and move it around as it fries. This part produces a smell as heinous as a green hag's pantaloons, so do not get scared. It is supposed to stink. When some of the onion gets caked on the bottom, the onion changes color to brown in about 4 minutes' time. Now add in a drizzle of olive oil, minced garlic, salt, and a handful of berbere. Cook, stirring for six more minutes. Now add two tankard-fulls of vegetable stock or water and about six heaping large spoons of spiced butter. And a special spice mix of cardamom, black pepper, and cinnamon. cumin, cloves, and nutmeg. Mix and stew for eight to ten more minutes. While the stewing is happening, we can quickly make batter for kita bread. It's simply a mix of sour milk and wheat flour. We want the consistency of very sticky, almost-holding-together dough made with a dash of salt and pepper. It will be fried in a pan with no oil on both sides.

Now it's time to add dried red lentils to the stew. Mix, and cook for ten minutes covered as you are frying kita. Place your fish stakes into the stew, making sure they are submerged. If your liquid level goes down, add a bit more stock. Cover, and cook for ten more minutes on low flames. And it's serving time. Fill up your bowl with the stew, lentils, and a fish steak. Add some coarsely chopped cilantro and marjoram on top. I served it with kita cut into bite-sized pieces with cow's yogurt and honey to dup leftover bread into for dessert. As I am a northerner, they served me a platter of pickled vegetables with juniper (haha) berries, something that I emulated here.

This dish is fairly easy to make it has a beautifully warming spiced taste with thick complexity. If you find the stew a tad too bitter from red onions, I can recommend you add a bit of honey to it – it does wonders for the taste.

I hope you try this dish for yourself and appreciate the taste of Chult. A good glass of sweet red wine goes well with the spices, but I like having some berry tea; I hope it does not offend anyone's purist sensibilities.

That would be all for today. Next time – Targos and the Ten-Towns!

Amarast, my lovelies, Yours truly, Juniper Churlgo.

Black Adder Stew
Well met, my friends. In today's strange culinary journey, we will visit the infamous City of Serpents, Hlondeth. The city's significant yuan-ti population and influences make it a truly strange place for those not used to that particular scailykind culture. Even simple servings of ale there is often served with a raw egg floating in a tankard, so request your bartender to leave out the egg when you visit.

But today, we will talk about a special and somewhat gruesome dish called black adder stew. Snakes eating snakes! Preposterous! But let's be adventurous and try the dish highly recommended by Adamar Session himself after his visit to the Slithering Serpent Inn. If you can't get your hands on fresh adder meat, feel free to use any other snake, and of course, if you failed to do that, like yours truly, use snake sausage meat! I got my hands on some rattlesnake sausage, and this is what the stew will be made with, and I won't hear any criticism about authenticity! The recipe comes in two parts. The broth and the stew. For the broth, you will need beef marrow bones, onions, carrots, and celery. The original recipe called for a mix of chicken, beef, and snake bones for the broth, but you can use what you have handy. For spices, use cardamom, black peppercorns, parsley, garlic, bay leaf, star anise, and thyme. I added some roasted ginger to the roast pan. Place all of your vegetables and bones onto a sheet pan and roast them on medium-high for at least forty minutes, but all you need is to keep your eye on them and remove them from the oven after everything browns. Transfer your browned items into a pan. Place your herbs and spices into a cloth bundle, tie it up, and add to the pot. Use stock or water to deglaze the sheet pan, and add it to the pot and enough water to cover the pot's contents. Bring to a boil and simmer on low for at least two hours to extract all the flavor. You can either let bone marrow melt into the stock or take it out and set it aside for later. Strain your stock and discard solids. If you are chilling it overnight, you can remove congealed fat off the top after the stock is cold; otherwise, carefully skim the fat from the top and set it aside for later. Now to the stew. You will need snake meat, onion, celery, garlic, carrots, potatoes, lemon juice, soy sauce, spring onions, and moth mushrooms (black fungus is a good substitution on some worlds). You will also need flour or starch, salt, pepper, and a pinch of sugar. Add a drizzle of oil into your cast iron pot and sweat bits of ham, chopped onions, and garlic. When golden, add chopped snake sausage, celery, and green onions and cook more, regularly stirring. In the next step, add diced potatoes and moth mushrooms, and fill up with the stock you made beforehand. If you need more liquid, feel free to add water. If you use dried mushrooms, soak them in warm water until soft, and make sure to rinse them in water to get rid of any sand. Add salt and pepper, soy sauce, and a pinch of sugar. Now, let's return to skimmed fat and bone marrow. Make a marrow slurry with flour and softened marrow, and add some of the skimmed fat, mix it all together into a paste, and add to your stew to thicken it. I used arrowroot starch. Bring the stew to a boil. Cover and place in an oven at 300F for two hours. After two hours, move back to the stovetop and cook covered on low for an hour more. Taste, adjust seasoning, and serve with bread croutons, topped with cheese. Like any other stew, it holds great and tastes better the next day. I Recommend serving some rice as additional starch on the side.

I hope you enjoyed Black Adder Stew or at least me telling you how to cook snake into a delicious savory treat. Maybe next time we can make some grilled snake kebabs? I wonder if jit snake is edible. Pair the stew with sweet red wine, something from Woren Vineyards, as it is not far from Hlondeth and is famous for its quality.

As always, amarast my friends, and until the next time.

Yours truly,

Juniper Churlgo.

Bustards
Good tidings, dear friends. I have such a treat to share with you!

Today we are continuing our tour across the limited yet curious menu from the Maid of the Moors of Mornbryn's Shield. Even though the cook continued to shoo me away from the kitchens, I saw enough to put my findings to parchment for you, friends. This so-called “Bustards” platter is made using a specific breed of quail that inhabited the swamps of Evermoors immediately to the northeast of the village. Furthermore, all vegetables and herbs used in this recipe are swamp-growing species of plants found only there. But fear not my adventurous readers, I will attempt to find the best substitution and adapt the concoction so even a “vegetarian” ogre could make it. Let’s start with the bird. A single quail would be enough for a person, and two will make a good meal for a loving couple. I saw the cooks chopping quail heads and feet off but skipping plucking the feathers; instead, the birds were smothered and plastered in the swamp clay of notably grey color. These clay-covered birds were then tossed in a blazing oven until the crust hardened. Then, an impressive culinary feat took place when a large woman, possibly with some troll blood in her veins, cracked the clay shell with a single punch. This was my queue not to get caught trespassing again, but I digress… The clay method is a way to pluck the bird in one go. If you are like me, you have access to birds that have already been prepared to be cooked. Be sure to tip your butcher well, as my mother always used to say. Words to live by. From here, my version of the recipe deviates from the Maid's. I implore you to remember to pepper the outside and inside of the bird. In the cavity, put a handful of swamp herbs to flavor the beast - parsley, peppercorns, ginger, celery, thyme, rosemary, bay, or even fennel could work. Take the twine and tie up the bird’s wings close to the body and legs crossed to seal its filled cavity. Pat the animal dry. Turn a greased pan or skillet to high heat and quickly brown the quail all around until a gently appetizing golden color appears. Now you need to make a mixture of salt and eggwhite with the consistency of wet sand. Save the yolk for later! Plaster the fried bird with the mix as tight as you can and place it on a cooking dish, and roast it in a very hot oven for 20-25 minutes (it usually is much quicker, but the salt crust needs time to harden and seal all the juices). While the birds are being cooked, trim your greenneedles (asparagus) and cabbage. If you are not in the Savage Frontier, you can source your swamp shoots from elven communities as they adore herb-steamed greenneedles. You can also find them in Cormyr or brought from the village of Anga Vled in the Western Heartlands. Throw greenneedle trimmings and cabbage core into a pot of water or stock you’ve prepared ahead of time or “borrowed” from an inn. Be generous with the stock-making. Feel free to add garlic, ginger, other vegetables, browncap stems, or leftover trimmings you have. Cook it all together on medium flame. Make sure it is not in a rolling boil, or you’ll end up with a murky stock. Thirty minutes later, strain the stock and toss the cooking vegetables. Now it’s a good time to take out your birds and let the crust cook before handling. Boil the strained stock, reducing it to focus its flavor. In a separate pan, brown greenneedle stalks and shredded cabbage. You can use beef tallow, but I prefer sticking to poultry flavors, unlike what cooks at the Maid do. Now pat and drain fat from the cooked vegetables with paper or cloth. Use the same skillet (you might want to add a bit more fat and melt it), season with salt and pepper, add flour to make a sand-like thickener, and cook the taste of flour out until it turns golden. Now you need to be careful; control the heat of the saucepan by taking off and returning it to head as you slowly ladle in some of the stock and mix it well with the thickener. Do not forget to taste! TASTE! TASTE! Slowly start beating the egg yolks you had from earlier into the concoction. Mix vigorously, and make sure you don’t make scrambled eggs instead of sauce. Continue adding the stock in until the sauce is a pale color and silky smooth.

Now that the bird is cool, take out your best mace, a mallet, or a goliath friend, and crack the salt shell open. Dust the bird off leftover salt and put it in the quail into the stock. Add greenneedle and whatever else you are serving and heat the dish through, keep the bird in the liquid in a low-heat oven if you need to keep it warm for later serving. Now, as to how to serve the dish. Take the quail out of the pot and place it into a tall but flat-bottomed serving dish. Pour the stock about halfway up the dish. Surround the soup with cooked swamp greenneedles and cabbage, and pour the silky gravy atop the dead beast. And sprinkle chopped herbs on it. And there it is, my version of “Bustards” from Mornbryn's Shield.

Alternatively, you can slowly cook the bird in the soup or make a sauce first and cook the meat in its silky goodness. However, that dish would be a bit lacking in presentation but still delicious. And as always, taste everything every step of the way and balance the flavor with salt, pepper, and a drizzle of lemon juice.

And here we are, friends. I will need to dig through my notes and see what other dishes of note there were in the village of Mornbryn's Shield. But we might take a trip to the hot and humid Vilhon Reach for a popular sweet dish.

As always, amarast, and until we meet again. Yours truly, Juniper Churlgo

Bowl of Hares
Tethyr. There is no other nation on the Sword Coast that's seen so strife and change in its recent history. The land as lush as it is warm. If you are like me and ever hitched a ride at some point along the Trade Way, openly or while pretending to be a sack of tubers, you are likely familiar with Mosstone. A humid and shaded walled oasis of civilization along the endless greenery of the Wealdath. Today's dish comes from a famous eatery there – the Oak-Father's Boon. The combination of chopped hares, leeks, cloves, and cinnamon attracted my curiosity and, along with you, my dear reader, we will try and reproduce the bowl of hares. Prepare your hares caught at the Forest of Tethir. Skin and gut them. Now the cooks of Mosstone butchered the animals into bite-sized chunks, but I am nowhere as proficient with game butchery, so we will remove hares' legs and paws and break the carcass in two. We will leave the meat to marinate overnight to soften it. For the marinade, you will need Thayan lemon peel, lemon juice, a sprig of rosemary, a sprig of thyme, crushed garlic, crushed ginger from Kara-Tur, brown sugar, salt, pepper, oil, a cup of honey from Amn and your best sweet and acidic red wine, I used Blood Wine from Aglarond. Mix the marinade well and submerge your hare bits overnight. The next day, strain your marinade and set aside the liquid in a pan, cooking on medium heat to reduce the liquid and concentrate the flavor. Pat your nare meat dry and quickly brown on all sides in a bit of oil. About two minutes per side should suffice. Set aside and in the same pot, put in some butter and finely (or not so finely) chopped leaks. Cook on low flame until leaks are sweet. Now transfer the meat back, pour in the now-reduced marinade, and add enough stock, wine, and water to cover. Add generous heapings of powdered cloves and cinnamon to the stew, and bring to a boil. Taste to adjust the flavor. Cover and cook on a slow simmer for three hours. I added coconut powder and sweet apples to thicken and make it sweeter. If you want your hare stew to look more presentable, use whole cinnamon and cloves tied in a little satchel to keep the liquid smoother. But be generous with the amounts of spices – they are the spotlight in the dish. Traditionally, a bowl of hares is served with spiced of eggbread, which is easy to whip up. You will need to beat eggs and a dash of cream and soak your day-old stale bread in it and then pan-fry it.

Voila, let us hope you like the result as much as Volothamp Geddarm liked his serving. At the Oak-Father's Boon, each bowl was filled with chunks of leeks and meat and packed with eggbread for dipping. But I think the dish is filling, so smaller bowls can satisfy a single person.

This exercise in Tethyrean cuisine was riveting. Next time I want to try and make the dish even better. If you try to iterate on the recipe, please do not hesitate to share your results. Next time we will travel to the southeast from Tethyr to the mysterious Blade Kingdoms for another bean dish.

Until next time, my friends. Amarast and stay culinarily curious! Yours truly, Juniper Churlgo.

Fireshearan Steamed Salmon
Good tidings, my friends. It has been almost a tenday since our last attempt at cooking, hasn't it? I've missed you dearly, and it took me almost a tenday to clean a pileup of dishes, utensils, containers, and other dangerous cooking implements in the kitchen, and it's time to make another mountain of dishes to conquer. Today, as I've promised you, we are going to a quaint freezing town of Fireshear in the Frozenfar. A simple mining town with simple food and today's meal will take time to make but minimal effort. The local specialty dish is freshly caught in frigid water salmon, steamed with a sauce of cream and shallots. If you visit one of the several Fireshearan inns, you can often see a huge vat of steaming liquid puffing and huffing over a large half-carcass of salmon, sometimes bigger than yours truly! Even in its great size, salmon cooks quickly, and guests are free to come over to the pot to receive a handful of steamed fish dolloped with cream and shallot sauce. We will replicate the recipe on a smaller scale of just two portions of a smaller farm-raised salmon from the hatcheries in Hiltail. I heard that their fish is spawned by a deepspawn. Poppycock, if you ask me... Let's begin! I will serve the fish atop a bed of roasted potatoes, mushrooms, and carrots. Carrots take a long while to roast, and we would want them to be soft, so we are going to marinate them overnight. For the marinade, we will mix vinegar, olive oil, brown sugar, ginger, hot smoky peppers, paprika, ground cinnamon, cumin, fennel, coriander, salt, and black pepper. Mix it all together, cut carrots into smaller pieces and submerge overnight. Making potatoes is quick. I picked small-sized tubers and boiled them in a vat of water until they were soft enough to be pierced with a knife. Drain and let air dry. When dry, place them on a baking sheet, well-greased, and crush each with a fork. Add your mushrooms and carrots to the crushed potatoes and generously drizzle them with a mix of melted butter and oil. Season with salt and pepper and toss some chopped dill. Roast on medium-high fire until the potatoes are crispy and the carrots are soft. For the sauce, cube a shallot and cook it in a bit of butter or oil until soft; add a tankard of white wine and cook until reduced to ten percent of the original volume. I used a refreshing white wine from Lapaliiya, but as long as it's white and acidic, it will turn out well. Season with salt and pepper. Take it off the heat and add the cream just enough to change the color, and put it back on the low heat. Do not overheat the sauce, or it will break! Add several pinches of flour as a thickener and cook regularly, stirring until it thickens. Finish it was a small dollop of butter, and stir it into the sauce before serving. Steaming with be lightning swift if you youse a small portion of salmon, so be mindful, and the fish will continue to cook after you take it off steam. Make steaming liquid using remnants of your wine and add chopped shallots, crushed garlic cloves, bay leaves, and dill stems that you should have leftover from earlier. Place your salmon with skin on, skin side down on parchment, and generously salt it with sea salt and pepper to taste and toss lemon on top. Bring the steaming liquid to a rolling boil and place the fish to steam. Seven minutes should be all you need, and it will continue cooking as you're plating. Place your roasted vegetables on the bottom of the serving dish, top them with salmon and pour your sauce over them. I added some simply cooked arugula to make sure I got some greenery in my meal. Serve with sprinkled or placed sprigs of dill. And there it is. Cuisine from that far north is known for its simplicity and blandness, but the taste of perfectly cooked salmon is silky smooth as is, and it doesnt really need anything else to make it palatable. It's almost as good as salmon pie from the Frozenfar, but that is for another day. The next dish we will tackle is a soup from the City of Splendors itself, made with roasted nuts and served with cheese and toasted bread. As a certain old mage once said, "Life has no meaning but what we give it. I wish a few more of ye would give it a little." the meaning I give mine – is you, my dear friends. Until the next adventure. Yours truly, Juniper Churlgo

Leek Bread and Potato Leek Soup
This tenday I have a special treat for you. Straight from our bearded sout friends in the Great Rift. Leek is a popular food among dwarves and communities close to the dwarven settlements. Leek bread and potato and leek soup are one of dwarven staples found virtually everywhere dwarves are. Most commonly, leek breads is often served in hand-sized rolls as a side accompaniment to soups or rothé back steak, and we will get to rothé cooking sometime soon. I was made this exact meal we will cook tonight when I visited Delzimmer several winders back. A lovely dwarvish eatery there served me a big bun filled with leeks and cheese and a huge bowl of soup that I couldn't even finish. The type of ale they served, thick and acidic, was a nice addition. Now let's talk about making this hearty meal. As before, you can make the dough ahead. Take a single tankard of warm milk (goat milk for authenticity and that slightly herbal acidic taste) and add a single spoonful of yeast and a spoon of sugar. Mix and let the yeast do its stinky magic. When the milk is frothy with yeast foam, beat a single egg and mix it in. This recipe will need about three tankards of flour. Start adding it in through a sieve one tankard at a time. (If you want to follow my personal favorite recipe, add three heaping spoons of dried and ground ginger) Mix well, adding salt and pepper to taste. A pinch of each should suffice. Knead the dough until it's not lumpy anymore, about five minutes. Cover and let it rest in a warm place for at least an hour until the dough is doubled in size. If you are refrigerating it overnight, take the dough out and allow it to rise a bit more – two hours or so before baking. Now leeks. Clean your leaks well; the vegetable is always filled with soil and sand. Cut the green part off and toss it into a large pot. I recommend you use five small leeks of large ones. The white part - slice them into either ribbons or small cubes. Set aside. Use the greens to make vegetable stock, which we've talked about several times before. Cook it with carrots, onions, celery, parsley, garlic, and peppercorns. Let it boil for at least 30 minutes and strain. Taste and season with spices and salt and continue simmering down and reducing the liquid to concentrate the flavor. When reduced, add cubed potatoes and a white part of the leeks. I used four small leeks and three potatoes for this part. Add two cloves of chopped garlic, a bay leaf, a handful of thyme, and salt and pepper to taste. You will need to cook all these things together on simmer until the potatoes are soft. It will take about 45 minutes but do not be afraid to overcook it. Do not cover the soup; you will need to evaporate the liquid so your soup is thick. Mash and blend the soup together with half a tankard of cream (add more if needed), but not before you remove the bay leaf and thyme sprigs out. Transfer back into the pot. Now let us make bread stuffing. Chop up a pale portion of 3 leeks and toss them onto a skillet with butter, three sprigs of chives of spring onions, and two finely minced cloves of garlic, salt, and pepper. Cook in butter on low heat until the leeks are soft and sweet. This might take an hour or more. When cooked, set 1/3 aside. We will add it to the soup before serving. Transfer cooked leeks into a mixing bowl. Add four fresh mashed cloves of garlic, half a tankard of hard crumbly cheese, grated, and half a tankard of soft, sharp cheese (if mozzarella, go for dry, but feel free to add more!). Break a single egg in and a generous amount of dried or finely chopped fresh sage, and add a small sprinkle of breadcrumbs soaked in milk. Sprinkle with salt and fresh pepper and mix until well distributed. Now to shape the dough. Separate the dough into balls the size of a human fist and start rolling it out. Smaller buns - use hin fist as a measurement. Remember, the dough will puff up as you bake it. Preheat the oven to 350F. Scoop a generous amount of stuffing and place it at the center of the rolled dough. Pull the sides up to cover the stuffing and pinch it together to seal. Gently roll the bun around to hide the seams and make it look more even, and place it seam-side down on a baking sheet, greased beforehand. Repeat it until you use up all your stuffing. Use scissors or a sharp knife to make a V-shaped cut on the top to let the steam and liquids out as the bread bakes. Brush them with oil or butter and sprinkle with large salt crystals. Bake for 20 minutes, take out and rotate, and bake for 20 more. Once the buns are golden in color and have a hard crust - they are ready to come out and rest. Ladle the soup into serving bowls, and two large spoons of cooked leeks you set aside earlier, sprinkle with hard, sharp cheese, parsley, and a light drizzle of acidic sherry. A single bown and a single handbun per serving. Trust me; you will love this meal. Break the fresh bread apart and dunk it into the thick soup. Bliss. I think this is what Cyrrollalee's blessing tastes like. The slight fresh spiciness of ginger goes great with the creamy soup.

If you have dwarves from Mithral Hall for dinner or some friends from Voonlar – this is your go-to meal. Pair it with some fresh light wine or some Luiren stout, and you will have some hushed whispers praising your skills the next day! That would be all this tenday, my friend. The next recipe will be from Tethyr, and I might have to re-do it once I conquer a dungeon or two to raise funds. Maybe I should ask Volo for a donation, of who am I kidding, that scoundrel would demand a credit...

Amarast and until next time, Stay mindful, stay plump,

Yours as always, Juniper Churlgo

Lomatran Baked Beans
Ah, the tiny patchwork of a nation, the Blade Kingdoms. A collection of feuding city-states that claimed some of the most fertile land southeasts of the Vilhon Reach. When the region is at peace, it’s a glorious place to visit. Rolling green hills dotted with vineyards and ancient aqueducts. Mountain valleys. Fresh bread and flavorful olive oils pressed in the Valley of Umbricci.

There is not better sight than seeing the first rays of the late summer sun hitting the lush mountain valleys of the Kingdoms or seeing the evening sun glistening off the Akanamere. Today’s dish is from a less prosperous city of Lomatra, a coastal humble settlement of fishers and farmers that grew greatly following the infamous Blade Wars. These tiny pots of Lomartan beans stuffed with herbs, white wine, fresh vegetables, and local spicy sausages are baked en mass on the High Street and delivered across town. Some of the pots are lidded with clay tops, while others are wrapped in the simple, tough dough to keep the steam and gorges aroma inside. This is a simple recipe, and dare I say, some of the best bean dishes I’ve tried so far. There are three parts for us to tackle. Firstly, we need to make simple dough with wheat flour, some salt, a dash of water, and hard clear alcohol. Simply mix it all together and set it aside for when you are ready to bake. Let’s now prepare aromatic vegetables – a very common part of Blade Kingdomer cuisine. Finely cube sweet onions, carrots, tomatoes, and peppers (I used red, but green is what is traditionally used). Add minced garlic, salt, pepper, and a bay leaf, and slowly cook it all on a pan in a drizzle of olive oil. Use low heat to bring out the flavors and keep your oil fresh-tasting, regularly steering the vegetables. When softened, pour in a good white wine, like Saerloonian Topaz. Stir and cook to evaporate the alcohol and reduce. Now the sausages. You can keep them in the casing, but I prefer to get my hands dirty. Local Blade Kingdomer sausages are made with pork, very fatty, and well-spiced with paprika, so you don’t need to add much more to it. Add all the sausages taken out of their casings to a bowl, and add a dash of salt and pepper. I added some dried scallions and Herbes de Provence and/or savory leaves, dried as well. Mix the meat well and form it into small balls. Toss the meatballs into a hot skillet to brown on all sides. There is no need to add oil as sausage fat will quickly melt and make sure nothing gets stuck. When they are ready, toss them together with your vegetables, preserved or fresh beans (soaked overnight), and more savory as well as rosemary, dried or finely chopped. I used white beans. I am unsure what they use in Lomatra, but I went with butterbeans and pinto. Take your clay pots and fill them with the mix you just prepared, topping it with a bay leaf and a single dried pequin pepper to give it light heat and a smoky taste. Add a drizzle of white wine and olive oil to each pot. Roll out your dough and seal the jars. Brush the crust with oil or melted butter if you want a bit more flavor in the crust. Place the jars into a hot oven for 45-50 minutes and have a glass of Saerloonian Topaz while you wait. And that’s all there is, friends. I paired a pot with an iced glass of soldier's champagne (which is half table wine and half slivovitz, by the way) and a salad of greens and yellow peppers coated in red wine vinegar, oil, and capers dressing.

I hope you try this dish for yourself and share its splendid simplicity with the fishers and commoners of Lomatra.

Amarast, and until next time we meet. Possibly in Cormyr or the plane pf Bytopia. Yours truly, Juniper Churlgo

Maztican Bean Stew and Mayzcakes
For those of you who like to singe your mouth and burn your guts with hot peppers, may I introduce you to a simple dish from the distant continent of Maztica? Mayz, beans, tomatoes, and peppers are the staples of the cuisine, at least in the New Amn territory of Payit. I traveled there on an expedition once after finding stuffed Red wolf of Payit in a store in Westgate. Long story short – a chubby friendly Payitlan woman invited me over to her home and, of course, cooked for me. She eagerly stirred her big clay pot of beans, peppers, and tomatoes and shaped mayz mash into hand-sized cakes. Unfortunately, the language barrier meant I had to improvise and try making something that tasted as close to the stew from Maztica as possible. So, let us begin. First thing first, if you're using dried beans, and you probably are, soak them in cold water overnight. I used black and white (pinto), but I am unsure what the names of local Maztican species of legumes are, but I implore you to experiment. Prepare the spices: we will need a heap of paprika, a heap of ground white pepper, ground garlic, salt, crushed hot pepper flakes, crushed dried cilantro, parsley, oregano, sage, and cumin. Additionally, I used a herb known as epazote. Now for the vegetables. You will need a handful of tomatoes and sweet peppers. I like roasting them first with a drizzle of oil to bring out the flavor. Roughly cut onions, celery, hot peppers, and sweet peppers and all of them to a clay pot, along with roasted vegetables, spices, and drained soaked beans. I usually add a cup or so of bean water, along with stock (as always "borrowed" from the closest inn) and water. Cook uncovered on medium flame, regularly stirring. Add water when it evaporates. Taste and adjust seasoning with salt and lemon juice if needed. Yes, it IS supposed to be hot. When I tried it for the first time, my face turned into a red, sweaty mess and the Maztican matron had a good laugh at my expanse. I have to admit I could not pinpoint the recipe's taste, so take this as a work in progress. Maztican mayzcakes are simply fried or baked flops the size of a hin's hand. They are made with ground mayz meal, hot peppers, fresh mayz, and that is all. My attempts to use just mayz resulted in hard and not particularly flavorful cakes, so I suggest making a mix of mayzmeal and regular flour, salt, sugar, crushed hot red peppers, chopped hot fresh green peppers, roughly chopped cilantro, fresh corn, two eggs, baking powder. Mix all the ingredients with water until the consistency of the wet and sticky dough is reached and let it rest in a chilled place. Mayzcakes are a versatile food in Maztica. They travel well and are used as travel rations. Their mouth-singeing heat makes you sweat like a hog, which in turn, cools you – Mystra-sent in Maztican heat. These cakes were wrapped in leaves to travel, which kept them soft. When eaten with Maztican bean stew, I like to dip them or crumble them into the dish. Another interesting use of mayzcakes – is morningfeast. Old cakes can be soaked in eggs and fried in a puddle of eggs. Then the egg was folded around the cake akin to an envelope and served for morningfeast.

When you are ready to serve the stew, roast or fry cakes in a drizzle of oil and pile them on a plate. Caution, both dishes are VERY HOT! So unless you're a valorous eater (or a halfling) use caution and common sense.

And another dish it recorded by yours truly. Next, we are going to the green Tethyr to hunt for some hares.

Until next tenday, Amarast, my friends.

Baldurian Sugar Cinnamon Cookies
You've asked for it, and I delivered. A sweet snack from the famous city of Baldur's Gate. Today I'll tell you about the most common cookie recipe of just a few common ingredients. I was told that this recipe dates all the way back to when the Gate was called Loklee and was nothing but a simple village. If you see a child on the streets of Baldur's Gate, she would likely have a pocketful of these sugar and cinnamon cookies. Let us not waste any more time and begin. For this recipe, we will need three-fourths of a tankard of unsalted butter, three-fourths of a tankard of sifted confectioner's sugar, a single chicken's egg, half a small spoon of vanilla puree or extract, half a small spoon of almond extract, two generous spoonfuls of cinnamon, a small spoon of pulverized sesame seeds (tahini), a pinch of salt, and two and a half tankards of flour. Start by warming up your butter and creaming it together with powdered sugar until smooth. Next, add almond, vanilla, egg, salt, and tahini. Mix well until fully incorporated, then add cinnamon, turning the mixture brown. Mix it well, and do not be stingy with cinnamon. Now start gradually adding the flour in, mixing it in thoroughly until the entire mix becomes an oily, soft, and malleable dough. We want to feel like sticky wet sand or working clay. Set it aside in a cool place for about an hour to make it easier to work with. Preheat your oven to 375F. While it is warming up, roll the dough until it's one inch thick. However, being precise here is not as important. Use a cookie cutter to shape the dough into crescents. If you do not have a cutter on hand, take a tallglass and use its rim as a cutter. ROund cookies are alright with me, and street urchins won't complain.

Place the cookies on a sheet pan and bake for seven to ten minutes until they have no bounce and are hard and crumbly. Let them cook before giving them out to kids. Dust them with powdered sugar, and that is it. Baldurian cookies are ready.

These cookies are fatty and dry, so as long as you keep them in a dry airtight container, they will last you for over a week. A simple recipe for simple folk. Next time we are going back to baking and will work on bread! Aurora would be jealous! I know, this tenday we had a short recipe, but more is coming, that I can promise you, my friends.

Amarast, until the next time.

Yours as always,

Juniper Churlgo.

Endevver Buns
Endevver Buns, sometimes called cinnamon rolls, or more colorfully – Endevver's Reveltongue. Despite these sweet buns being invented in Cormyr, I am bringing you a recipe I encountered in Targos of the Ten-Towns of all places. A young girl recommended this little bakery in the cold frontier town. Its name is illuding me, but the young lady was named Kira, and she proudly claimed that the Endevver Buns were the best long the Sword Coast. I doubt Kira's advertisement was true to life, but these cinnamon rolls were indeed sweet and fluffy. Unlike rolls from Interior Faerûn, both cinnamon and sugar are more expensive that far up north. So instead of sugar, they use preserves. To make the dough, you will need 1/4 ounce of dry yeast, a single tankard of milk, half-a-tankard of sugar, one-third of a tankards of butter, two large eggs, a generous pinch of salt and between four and four and a half tankards of wheat flour. For the stuffing, you will need a generous amount of cinnamon, one-fourth of a tankard of melted butter, and one 14 or 15-ounce jar of sweet cloudberry preserves. For the glaze – one container of condensed milk (ask your local wizard to help you with that), a vanilla bean, a drizzle of almond extract, and a small spoonful of arrowroot starch or confectioner's sugar. As per tradition, make the dough the night before and cool it, or one hour before you are ready to roll it but left in a warm place to let the yeast do its magic. Sift flour and add salt; mix well. Stir together warm milk, sugar, and yeast and let it come alive. Once your liquid has a thick cover of yeast foam, beat eggs into the liquid along with softened butter until evenly incorporated, then start adding flour gradually, in small batches incorporating well. As you notice your dough is coming together, continue kneading for not more than eight minutes. Your dough will become smooth. Brush it with a bit of oil or melted butter, cover it, and let it rise for one hour in a warm place. While the dough is rising, warm your sweetened condensed milk in a saucepan, add the rest of the ingredients, bring the temperature up, and mix well to avoid lumps. Remember to cut open and scrape out seeds from the vanilla pod and add the husk and the scooped flesh in.

Taste and make sure you like the flavor. Transfer to a squeeze bottle or a sauce boat and let it cool. The cooler the glaze is the thicker and silkier it be. It will be runny if you try pouring it over hot buns or if the sauce is still hot. When the dough noticeably rises, separate it in two and roll both of them out into flat sheets. Warning: this dough will puff up dramatically, worthy of the Crown Aflame stage. So roll the dough quickly and thinly. Before you start applying jam, generously grease your baking container. Now comes the hard part. You can either apply your stuffings to the half of the sheet then fold over the other side, incasing jam. Then cut the folded sheets into long strips and roll them. Another option is to cut your sheets into strips as wide as your finger is long, smearing jam on its half, then fold and roll. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First thing first, brush the entire sheet with melted butter. Here, if you want to add extra sugar - you sprinkle it all over the sheet. Now empty half of the cloudberry jam jar on the dough and smear it around, so half of the dough is covered. Dust the jam with a generous amount of cinnamon. Carefully fold the second half of the sheet over and straighten. Take a very sharp knife and slice the folded dough into long ribbons. We will roll out buns, so they vaguely resemble a harp, because Kira's dad was supposed to be a Harper. Each ribbon is to be rolled from both sides inward so it forms something resembling a "B." Now place a small ring mold, or a candied cherry in my case, on the opposite side of the rolled dough and pull the sides around the mold or cherry, forming a harp's bend. Carefully transfer all your buns to the baking dish. Hint: after you fold your dough in two, chill it to solidify the jam and the dough to make rolling easier and less messy. Bake your Endevver Bun for twenty minutes in a preheated oven at 350F. When they are browned, let them cool before glazing. They are served with fresh blueberries drizzled with the same glaze for sweetness and served with warm blueberry tea, steeped with milk, whisky, vanilla, and spices.

The result will please you, I am sure. These fluffy rolls are called Endevver's Reveltongue for a reason – they taste like a revel in your mouth. Have I had them for the eveningfeast and the second eveningfeast and the pre-slumber snack? Yes. Is Targos worth a visit just for the buns? Yes, but you should stop by the Weeping Widow Inn for its lovely drinks and roasts. Maybe we will talk about them at some point later.

Well, it was a lovely dish ti share with you, my friends. Amarast and until the next tenday.

Yours as always,

Juniper Churlgo.

Sword Mountains Spice Cakes
Just a few winters ago, I hitched a ride across the Sword Mountains on Master Istel's caravan. I was a welcomed passenger, regardless of what some might oh so dishonorably insinuate. The caravan stopped at a tiny foothills hamlet of humans and gnomes, and one of the things that the caravan picked up was a sack full of something they simply called spice cakes – little bundt-shaped glazed sweetbreads. After doing some questioning and peeking at the hamlet's kitchens, I can proudly tell you how to bake these little spiced treats. There are no secrets, and if you have access to several dried spices and honey, you can quickly whip up a batch. For this recipe we will need a half-tankard of honey, two big spoonfuls of butter, a single large egg, two tankards of wheat flour, a quarter of a small spoon of baking powder, a squeeze of fresh lemon juice, one heaping spoon of cardamom, dried powdered ginger, mace, cinnamon each, and two large heaping spoons of crushed and ground almonds. You can safely double the amount of spices if you want a flavor that is as potent as a donkey kick in the face. Regarding the shape – this recipe calls for small metallic bundt-shape molds, but if you don't have them, you can shape dough with your wet or oiled hands into small couple of inches long loaves. We begin by warming up the butter until it is very soft. Then, add the butter to the honey and cream them together with a flat spatula or spoon until the liquid is of cloudy amber color and is smoothly and thoroughly incorporated. In a separate bowl, beat the egg until the liquid is the same color, and add it to the honey. Mix well until incorporated, then add a pinch of salt and baking powder. Now add all of your spices and crushed nuts into the mix and mix yet again.

The next step will be slowly adding and mixing in flour. I used a sieve to fist it through as I was adding it in. When both tankards of flour are added, you will end up with brown sticky dough consistency of wet sand. Continue kneading it for about four minutes, and cover and refrigerate it to relax the gluten that we developed with kneading. Preheat your oven to 350F degrees and fill greased bundt molds with the dough, but only halfway as it rises. Presh it down to make sure there are no air pockets. If a spoon you're using is sticky, wet your fingers and smooth the surface as you press the dough in. Now bake for about ten minutes. Then reduce the heat to 125F and rotate the sheet pan or molds and bake for another eight to ten minutes. At eight minutes, take out and test with a thin cake tester to determine if you need some extra cooking time. Now let's talk glaze. Of course, you do not need the glaze to enjoy the cakes, but both variants ive seen come with a dried crumbly glaze that gives it that nice crunch. The version number of the glaze is simply made with powdered sugar, a dash of vanilla, a spoonful of jam, and a dash of liquid. All mixed together until thick enough to cover the top of your cakes and to not drip off of them. The second, better option, in my eyes, is made with powdered sugar and eggs. You will need to use eggwhites of 3 eggs per four tankards of confectioner's sugar, but of course, you will need much less in this case. Vigorously beat the eggwhites until frothy with a whisk, then add a quarter of a tankard and slowly beat it into the mix. Continue gradually adding it in as you beat the icing. You know that the icing is ready when you take out the whisk and the peak that, if formed with the drip, remains stiff when flipped upside down. Make sure your cakes are thoroughly cool before applying the icing. I colored mine with a dash of turmeric to make it golden. The easiest way to apply the icing is by dipping it and then letting it dry. I dusted mine with some cinnamon just for the fun of it.

A batch of Sword Mountains spice cake is considered ready to eat when the icing is dry and hardened; it forms a sort of protective crunchy coating for your treats. Easy to transport or toss several in your bag to munch on as you keep watch at camp through long cold nights. Perfect for dipping in milk.

I highly recommend everyone try these cakes out. They are absolutely delightful, and a little birdie told me they are about to be sold in the city of Neverwinter!

Another recipe is recorded for your amusement by yours truly. Next time – we will make a dwarven meal.

That is all I have for you today, my dear friends. Amarast, and until the next time,

Juniper Churlgo

Turmishite Apple and Bloodberry Pie
It is time for another recipe. I've been craving something sweet, so I decided to replicate a curious type of pie served by Madame Garah, who ran a boarding house in Adventurers' Quarter of the City of Splendors. The pie's recipe was from my beloved Vilhon Reach and the nation of Turmish. Only some can appreciate the dish as it is not for someone who likes northern sugary sweet treats. Turmishite apple and bloodberry pie is made using bloodberries, a fruit of a poisonous bush that has a tart and acidic taste (please see a capable ranger or a druid to help you not poison yourself!) For those who live too far from any bloodberry regions, I will tell you of a good substitute. Like with most dough, you will need to make it ahead of time and let it rest before rolling and cutting it, or you will have the same issue I did – it will shrink and will be much harder to roll thinly. But if you a halfling with a busy schedule and cant make it ahead of time, giving your dough an hour of rest shoud be enough, but you will need to double the recipe to have enough for two pies. For the dough, you will need two and a half tankards of wheat flour, two scant handfuls of sugar, two sticks of butter, three spoonfuls of ice-cold water, the same amount of cold co'wii or any other high-proof clear, tasteless alcohol. Cut your very chilled butter into rough cubes the size of a phalange and add it to the flour and sugar. With your hands, squish and crumble the butter, rubbing it into the flour until you are left with a sand-like mix of both. Now start working the mix adding ice cold water and co'wii one spoonful at a time. You might need two or three extra spoonfuls to help the dough come together. When your mix becomes smooth and even in consistency, wrap it up and put it away to rest in a cold cellar.

For the filling, you will need three pounds of sweet apples from Turmish and one tankard of bloodberries. If you are in Waterdeep or any other faraway place, your 1.5 pounds of tart green apples and 1.5 sweet red apples, and a tankard of tart red cherries. Additionally, you will need juice and zest of one lemon, four spoons of butter, one spoon of flour to be used as a thickener, a drizzle of a Malatran vanilla extract, a glass of whiskey and a generous amount of spices (ginger, cinnamon, tumeric, and a dash of nutmerg.) Peel and core your apples and add all of these ingredients to a big boiling pot. Turn the heat to a medium-low, cover, and let cook, regularly stirring the mix. It will take an hour and a half, but you need to remember to take the cover off once you notice the apples are beginning to fall apart. We want a chunky filling, not goo. If you want to add stability to your mix, add a pinch of gelatin to it and mix thoroughly. Taste and adjust spices and sugar to taste but keep it on the tart side. When the filling is done – put it away to chill. Roll out your dough slightly bigger than your pie tins and matching pie toppers. In Turmish, these pies are decorated with the nation's favorite designs and symbols, but I cut out the glyph of a certain old mage I met once in Shadowdale. This is a crumbly and gentle dough with high-fat content, so be careful transferring it to the tins; use your rolling pin to help you move the circles. Place the first thin dough circle at the bottom of a greased pie tin and center it. Use a little bit of dough to press it into the tin gently, removing all air bubbles, especially on the sides of the mold. We will not need to blind bake, so roll it thin, about 1/8 of an inch. Fill both pies with the chilled apple-cherry mix, leaving enough space for the filling to bubble and for you to cover it with another sheet of dough. Gently transfer pie covers onto the filled tins and press around the edges to seal the filling in. Brush the top with melted butter and drizzle some sugar on it. And we just assembled the pies. Now it's time to bake.

Preheat your cast iron stove's oven to 400 degrees, place your pies in and reduce the heat to 350 and bake for about an hour and a half. Keep an eye on your pies, and drizzle with some lard or melted butter twice before the baking is done. You want your crust to be golden and brown. I recommend you let the pies rest for two hours before serving, so the filling doesn't become a puddle on a plate. When serving the whole pie, be showy! Turn down the lights in the room and drizzle highly alcoholic drink into the design; I used smokey-tasting whiskey. Light the symbol and let the flame burn through all the alcohol. In this case, this "silver" flame was meant to pay my respects to the Mother of All Magic, Holy Mystra.

No secrets, just an unusually tart pie with some complexity of flavor. If you ever visit Turmish or even Madame Garah's establishment – do no hesitate to order yourself a slice of authentic Vilhon taste. Next time, we are going to the exotic sweltering Port Nyanzaru for a spiced stew found nowhere else in the Realms! And I can not wait to share that gem of a dish with you, dear leaders.

We will meet again in a tenday, friends. Until then, amarast.

Yours as always,

Juniper Churlgo

Vilhonese Klarvel
As I promised, today we will talk about klarvels or ring-loaves. These loaves of bread are quite common and can be found in a lot of southern lands, such as the Land of the Lions. But I've come across klarvels in neighboring lands to the north. I truly believe that their popularity will spread along with merchants and traders. But we are here to talk about a version of the bread from the Vilhon Reach. Unlike in other lands where these ring-loaves are savory foods made with dark rye, Vilhonese folk liked to sweeten the dough and serve it as a type of crude buy delicious cake. You will need fresh berries, mangoes, oranges (or orange preserves), and sweet liquor (like orange flavored or spiced rum). To make the cake softer, use a copious amount of softened butter. In a bowl, add sugar to taste. One cut would result in a sweet cake, but if you're sensitive or do not have a sweet tooth, half a cup should suffice. Cream sugar and butter together and set aside. In a separate bowl, combine three warmed-up chicken eggs with an almost full tankard of yogurt and a drizzle of vanilla extract for flavor. Set aside and prepare a bowl of dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, baking soda, and a pinch of salt. When you are ready, start incorporating all dry and wet bowls into the sugar and butter mix. To thoroughly mix, go in small batches and mix well. When all three batches are mixed, they will form a sticky type of dough that will not be handled with your bare hands. Set aside and chill it to relax gluten within. Now prepare to bake. Take your favorite ring-loaf tin and rub its insides generously with butter. Make sure to get it into all nooks of the form to make sure the bread leaves the mold with ease. If you DO have a sweet tooth like us hin do, dust the insides of the buttered mold with sugar. Lastly, preheat your oven. When ready, transfer the dough into the buttered tin. Smash the tin several times against the table to remove any air pockets, and smooth the top with a greased spatula. Now it's time to bake. Forty-five minutes should be enough. Perfect time to read a good book, sip some cold ale by a fireplace. When the bread is done, take it out and see if it is cooked with a tester. If the wooden utensil comes out smooth after piercing the bread - it is done. Put it into a chill place to cull the desert quicker. Meanwhile, mix orange zest and preserves with your rum to soak the bread in later. In another bowl, whisk together thick cream, seeds of a vanilla pod, and some dusting of confectioner's sugar. If you want to add some gentle pink color to the whipped cream, mash a handful of berries in a little bit of water and cook to extract the red juices. Strain and cook to reduce. Cool and beat into your cream mix. When the cake is chilled, take it out of the mold, pour your orange mix on the bottom, and put the cake back in so it soaks it all in. Now once all liquid is done, place a plate on the top and flip the mold. Fold your berries, chopped mangoes, and orange zest into the whipped cream and dollop it into the center hole. Decorate the loaf as you see fit; I never had the patience for such things.

And here you go. A beautiful ring-loaf. When it's time to serve, let your guests slice into the bread and unleash the avalanche of cream and fruit from its center.

My first dessert dish turned out very well, and I highly recommend you try it and taste the flavors of the Vilhon Reach.

Until next time and the next dish, my friends.

Juniper Churlgo

Blackbread
Hail and well met, dear reader. Be it the first time you laid your eyes on this compendium or a returning lover of all things edible, welcome. If you've ever visited Aurora's Emporium or perused Aurora's Whole Realms Catalogue, you probably came across blackbread. Dark, crusty, and flavorful loaves common in Northwest Faerûn and the Lands of Intrigue. Bread so good, a while loaf is priced at three whole silvers. But you can save coin by baking it at home and saving several loaves for later. Let us begin.

You will need a tankard and a half of finely ground wheat flour, the same amount of dark coarse rye flour, plus a bit more wheat flour for dusting and consistency adjustment. You will also need one and one-fourth tankards of dark kaeth (preferably one of those fanciful drinks from Durpar), three big spoonfuls of Amnian molasses, two spoonfuls of melted butter, two spoonfuls of apple cider vinegar, three heaping spoonfuls of caraway seeds, one spoon of fennel seeds or ground fennel, a pinch of salt, and a pinch of sugar. As always, first thing first, you need to wake up the yeast. Mix one-fourth of a tankard of warm water with a package of yeast and a generous pinch of sugar, mix, and set aside in a warm place; when you see that the yeast has produced foam, time to make the dough. Simply mix all of the ingredients listed above with yeast water. Start with adding flours in and mixing; when the mixture slightly thickens, add vinegar and seeds. Continue working the dough for ten minutes or so. It will be wet, sticky, and hard to handle. If the dough doesn't hold its shape, add wheat flour in a bit at a time until you can shape the dough into a ball. Cover and put away in a chilled place for an hour at least an hour. The dough will need to begin to rise but expect some of the liquid to appear at the bottom of the dough. When chilled, preheat your oven to 425F. While it's heating up, take out your dough and knead it for three more minutes, incorporating the liquid at the bottom of the bowl back in. While the dough is still cold, it's easier to work with. Shape it into a desired form – a round loaf or oblong shape. Dust the bottom of your baking dish with flour and the top of your bread. Transfer the loaf to the baking dish and make cuts on top. These cuts are not just decorative; they also ensure your bread will not rise out of shape when baked. Round loaves receive a cross-cut, while oblong loaves get slanted short cuts at the center going along the length or one long cut lengthwise at the center. Bake for twenty minutes, reduce the heat to 350F, and bake for thirty more minutes. You will know that bread is ready when its outside has a nice hard crust. You can test the bread like you test cake. The biggest challenge is ensuring the insides are not wet and are thoroughly cooked.

Take the loaf out and let it cool before cutting in. Of course, I don't need to tell you how to eat your bread, but some of the ways I've seen it served at inns and taverns include being smothered in butter, topped with cream and honey, topped with butter and honey, various cheeses, hard crumbly cheese with herbs and olive oil, and lastly, with garlic, slowly cooked in butter for several hours until it is soft and sweet, mashed with salt and pepper, when served on blackbread – sprinkled with coarse sea salt crystals.

And there we have it. Another simple recipe that might have to go into the "miscellaneous" section of my compendium for now. I do hope to find more bread recipes for you, dear readers.

This blackbread recipe is another I recommend for its taste and simplicity.

Until next tenday, my friends.

Yours as always,

Juniper Churlgo