Chapter 601: Chapter 585 – At the Dining Table

“People always mention water, food, and shelter as things necessary for life, but all too often they forget about the little details, like how other things like salt are just as necessary for living. It is not something you just use to make your food taste better. It is something you will die without.” - Agav Maruf Sabedi, trader and merchant from Caracan, circa 201 VA.

“My, you really shouldn’t have gone out of your way for our sake, Patriarch,” said Aideen as she looked at the feast spread on the large dining table – the similar style of low table used in the region – before her. 

 

The house’s dining room was a large one, easily able to accommodate up to thirty people or so seated around the table. At the moment there were only around fifteen of them around said table. Aideen’s group of three, accompanied by Rhys and Áine by their side, sat on one side, while the patriarch of the house sat at the head of the table with his family – mostly his wife and children, as well as Farouq and his family – sat across the table from Aideen’s group.

 

“Nonsense, Milady. If not now, then when should I set up this sort of feast?” replied the patriarch with a wide grin on his face. His people had slaughtered a sheep – another common livestock to the region – and prepared it for the feast. Most of the dishes were still being cooked, but some which needed less cooking were already presented on the table. 

 

One was a dish of raw minced meat mixed with some local grains and spices, molded by hand into leaf-like shapes, served up with thin flatbreads and a pungent sauce of oil and garlic. They ate it by tearing a sizable chunk of the bread, placing one of the minced meat portions on top of it, then dipping it into the sauce.

 

The sheep meat had a rich gaminess to it, somewhat moderated by the grains and the bread, then complemented in turn by the oily, pungent garlic taste of the sauce. It made for a pleasant mixture of flavors when eaten together like that, with the bread also providing texture to the finely minced meat inside.

 

As for the other dish, it was one that would be a bit more challenging to those not local to the area, as it was composed of chopped pieces of raw sheep liver and fat. The sort of sheep commonly bred and raised in the north had large fat deposits on their posterior region, which was particularly prized as an ingredient by the northerners.

 

Like the previous dish, it was eaten by wrapping a couple pieces of the liver and fat chunks on a piece of flatbread and then drizzling some of the garlicky oil sauce on it. Unlike the previous dish, where the meat had a uniform flavor, the irony taste of the liver was brought out in full force, cut with the richness from the fat. All the sauce did was to further intensify the flavors involved, and while it might be an acquired taste to foreigners, the whole package caused quite a riot of flavor and textures in their mouths.

 

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Aideen found that she quite liked the strong flavors, and the rest of her group had no issues with them either. For Áine, Rhys, and Eilonwy, their mostly elven heritage meant that they were able to eat most things, even some that other races found inedible or toxic. Ptolodecca itself had a culture that favored strong flavors in their cuisine, so that helped as well.

 

As for Kino, she seemed to like the food quite a bit, which was no surprise. People with heritage from a carnivorous therian breed – even those with only a faint bloodline left like Kino – tended to enjoy raw meat. Perhaps it was bits of leftover instincts that were ingrained into their blood, but the behavior was a well-known one.

 

Shortly after, servants came in with the main feast, which included a good half of the freshly butchered sheep roasted whole and served on a large platter that needed two servants to carry it. Despite how the meat was only seasoned with salt, whoever did the cooking demonstrated a true mastery over flames and smoke as the juicy flesh of the sheep – cooked just right – had a pleasant smokiness that permeated them thoroughly and the flavors of the meat itself was brought to the fore with great intensity.

 

Other dishes that demanded less exacting skill from the chef were cooked as well. Most of the sheep’s organs and some cuts from the other half’s leg were cooked together with spices into a thick, hearty stew that was enjoyed by scooping them with chunks of flatbread, the liquids in the stew soaking into the bread used to pick it up and flavoring it as well.

 

The sheep’s head was steamed whole, and made for a rather grisly sight for people unused to such presentations. Cooking and eating the head of an animal was the norm in the Lichdom, though, so nobody from Aideen’s side even flinched. Aideen was given first pick from the cooked head as the guest of honor and happily served herself some of the sheep’s tongue, cheek meat, and one of its eyeballs.

 

An extremely rich soup – made with the fat of the sheep’s tail and its bone marrow – was served as well, to be sipped in small quantities as the diners ate chunks of the roasted sheep. Despite the copious amounts of fat and oil in the soup, somehow it didn’t taste greasy or heavy, but had a light, refreshing richness instead.

 

The locals paired it with a murky liquor that tastes strongly of milk, which in some ways reminded Aideen of a similar drink she had when she was living with the orcish clans in Northern Alcidea around a century ago. The strong liquor was a good complement to the rich and heavy feast, and they feasted through the night before they eventually retired to their respective rooms.

 

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