Revisiting Rations, Part 4: Half-Elf

Revisiting Rations, Part 4:  Half-Elf

It's that time again!  And yes, that's a crab.  What the heck am I doing this time?  Well, let me begin by discussing how I view Half-Elves.

Your typical Half-Elf is going to be raised by Humans or by Elves, of course, and will likely mirror the culture they were raised in.  In cases of an actual Half-Elven community, the people are largely traders living in warm coastal areas.  As such, I have chosen a mixture of various coastal foods with a decent shelf life (but not as long as some of the others, so be careful here!).

Half-Elves also have a tendency towards lots of little dishes rather than one big thing.  After all, variety is important, as is hospitality.  It's sad that some of the best eating you'll ever do is in the company of Half-Elves.

We have soy-fermented blue crab, kimchi, rice, bolinhos de bacalhau, toasted bread with tomato and onion chutney, ginger beer, and, for dessert, chocolate salami!  Yes, this ration includes chocolate as well.  Aren't Half-Elves lucky?

Soy-Fermented Blue Crab with Kimchi and Rice

Look at this little guy.  Isn't he adorable?  Cleaned blue crabs were marinated in soy sauce with ginger, garlic, and several other spices for about 6 days.  Historically, they could be marinated at months at room temperature.  The meat is then served without any heating.  It is dark, somewhat gelatinous, and nice and spicy, meaning you're going to use a lot of rice with this dish.  The kimchi is a mixture of daikon, cabbage, green and yellow onions, and various spices left to ferment in the fridge for several weeks.  The rice is rice.

Inspiration for this dish came from Maangchi's cooking YouTube channel, which can be found HERE.

Note:  if kept stored in jars, the crab will last quite a while and kimchi is virtually indestructible in my experience.  Rice will go stale in a day or two and could well mold, but if you're going to have a pot and some fire, you can always cook it fresh.

Bolinhos de Bacalhau

One of my good friends lives in Portugal and told me I needed to use this in one of these.  Bacalhau is Portugese for salt cod and I'm assuming bolinho  means "little balls" or something.  Basically, these are a mixture of potatoes, salt cod, onions, and parsley, rolled into ping-pong balls, then breaded and fried.  They are seriously good and pretty darned simple to make as well!

I have to mention that my dogs went crazy over these.  You can't tell, but one of the bolinhos has a bite taken out of it!

Open them up and they're full of fluffy white goodness and yes, my camera was sucking today.  I'm sorry!

Tomato and Onion Chutney

This is one of those things that's perfect for adding a little bit of exotic flavor to your meal without taking a lot of effort.  Heirloom tomatoes were cooked down with vinegar and onions and a lot of spices to make something that tastes rather like a tikka masala sauce.  Spread on a piece of toasted bread, it's surprisingly good.  Also, it appears my Half-Elves like a lot of starch.  Huh.

Ginger Beer

I've been on a brewing kick lately, and ginger beer seemed like a wonderful way to counter all of the spice in most of these little dishes.  I made a ginger bug (see HERE for how!) and then fermented my own ginger beer from it.  The result is pretty strongly ginger and will really clean your palate between bites of crab and chutney.

Chocolate Salami

Wait, what?  Chocolate sausage?  This isn't actually salami, but it is chocolate.  Semisweet chocolate is mixed with chopped walnuts and crushed cookies, then rolled into a log shape and sliced.  It looks like salami, kinda (especially when dusted with powdered sugar, but that's too messy for my taste) and provides a sweet after-meal dessert.

How Long Will it Last?

Well, in this case, we're dealing with quite a bit of seafood so we need to be careful.  The salt cod will keep quite a bit, but the bolinhos are going to be better if they're eaten relatively quickly.  The crab, if kept stored in the marinade, likewise will last, but still it's shellfish and it scares me a little, so I'd try to eat it in a day or two.  If the chocolate is kept cool, it'll last as long as needed (which won't be long--it's chocolate).  Basically, this meal, properly kept, could be expected to be good for tomorrow's dinner, but I wouldn't push it far past that unless you know a lot more about food preservation than I do.

Revisiting Rations, Part 3: Dwarf

Revisiting Rations, Part 3:  Dwarf

Hey, it's time for another one of these.  This time, I've chosen to focus on Dwarven food, or at least what I consider to be Dwarven.

Please note:  all of these rations work wonderfully for Humans because, well, they're all Human food.  But still!

So, for this ration, I have chosen to go with a Cornish-style pasty, dilled cheddar cheese, leather britches, and beer (of course!).  Dwarves are miners, and Cornish pasties were typically consumed by miners, so that makes sense.  Plus, my Dwarves love cheese, and so it features heavily here.  Leather britches are dried, lightly smoked green beans (and seriously good).  But let's get into it.

"Cornish" Pasty

Here it is all opened up.  Rather than the traditional ingredients, I went with ham, mushrooms, sauerkraut, cheese, and mustard.  This provides a bit of a Germanic feel, which I find appropriate for Dwarves, and the ingredients will definitely last.  Plus, it's extremely energy-dense and portable, which is important for a "ration."

Dilled Cheddar Cheese

This was really surprisingly good.  I made a farmhouse cheddar and added a ton of dill, basically.  Salted and shelved, this cheese is almost non-perishable if kept dry.  And it's really stupidly yummy, but I love dill.  Plus, I like that I'm using some Scandinavian flavors in the mustard in the pasty and the dill here.

Leather Britches

These are surprisingly easy to make and seriously delicious.  Cut your green beans and string them up with needle and thread. Let them get some smoke and then hang them to dehydrate for, well, many, many weeks.  They take a seriously long time to cook, but even then they'll last several days, and the liquid you cook them in wounds up tasting like roast beef.  Cooked, this is the perishable part of the ration--everything else I would expect to keep for weeks.

Beer

I don't normally brew beer because I don't have an appropriately-sized vessle to use as a mash tun, so this is just a pint of Guinness in a two-pint mug.  I brew mead, wine, cider, and kvas on the regular, but I just don't want to do a syrup-based beer.  It doesn't feel right to me.  But Guinness is at least appropriately Dwarven, and you can substitute any high-gravity or dark beer here.  I didn't fill the mug all the way up because it was seriously early when I took these pics and I wasn't in the mood for several beers.  Deal with it.

How Long Will it Last?

Kept properly, I would expect this ration to be virtually bombproof.  I mean, eventually the crust on the pasty will mold, but if this is kept dry and the beans are uncooked, I would definitely expect this ration to last for a week.  The cooked beans don't have as much of a shelf life, but a day or two should be fine if they are kept cool and covered.

And one more shot, because I feel like it!

Revisiting Rations Part 2: High Elf

Revisiting Rations Part 2:  High Elf

Continuing down this series, I decided to work on a "High Elf" ration.  Now, everyone is going to have their own ideas here, so please don't crucify me too much for food choices.

Before we start with that, though, I'd like to give a bit of insight as to my thought process regarding these rations. My goal is to keep things distinctly "fitting" both within a culture and the overall world in my head.  I'm not going to worry about keeping food strictly pre-Columbian Exchange, but there shouldn't be anything blatantly modern included.

Now, to me, High Elves are a society who predominantly live on an island off somewhere isolated from the rest of the world.  The climate is temperate and they predominantly eat fish and wild game for protein, with a variety of subtly-flavored vegetables to accompany them.  As such, this would be a fairly typical "High Elf" meal that one could get to go at a tavern:  pickled fish and onions, dilled green beans, a very fancy hunk of bread (I can't cut bread, deal with it), a yellow dragonfruit, and pyment.

Pickled Fish (and Dilled Green Beans)

One thing you're going to notice is that pickling is going to come up a LOT on these rations.  It's a darn good way to keep food going and has been used for ages.  Here, Tilapia and onions have been first brined with salt, and then with sugar over the course of about two weeks.  It's actually a very good dish.

The green beans are simpler, but take more time, as they tend to remain raw in the brine for far longer.  Still, both of these make a wonderfully sweet-and-sour dish to snack on while on the trail and can last in a sealed container for days if not weeks.

Bread

I'm not the best baker in the world, but I wanted to make something to go along with the sweet-and-sour fish and beans that would be different, but familiar.  In this case, the bread is made of equal parts wheat and almond flour.  Honey, ginger, sesame seed and oil, and lemon zest were added for flavor.  It's definitely good (and my dogs kept trying to get it), but it's very different.  It'll last several days if kept dry, so bonus.

Yellow Dragonfruit

I figured High Elves would like some sort of exotic fruit, and the grocery store had these. Well, why not open it up and see what it looks like!

Woah.  That's pretty neat, huh?  Dragonfruit doesn't really taste like much, but it sure adds a little bit of exotic to a race that's all about the conspicuous consumption.  Plus the texture is really neat.

Pyment

Not the best picture, but deal with it.  Pyment is a sort of mead made with grapes, or wine made with honey.  Or something like that.  This is another batch I started a long time ago and brought out just for this occasion.  It's pretty good, I fully admit, although there's a bit of a taste of cough syrup as some friends have brought up.  That's pretty standard with sweet reds, and this one is very sweet.

How long with it last?

So, assuming you don't cut open the fruit to see just how weird it looks, you can easily get through a weekend with this ration.  The fish and beans will last so long as they're in a sealed, cool container, the bread likewise will last, and the fruit might start to soften in heat, so keep it out of the sun!  The pyment is likewise something that, properly stored, should last through your excursion.

Let's have one more shot of everything.  Just because!

Revisiting Rations Part 1: Human/Generic

Revisiting Rations Part 1:  Human (Generic)

User wats6831 on Reddit came up with an ingenious idea.  They created a bunch of different rations for various RPG races, cooked them up, and then posted them on Reddit.  This was genuinely a stroke of genius and something that I had been looking to do for a while.

They stated that the goal was to do something like a meal on the go that would last for a few days.  This was an admirable attempt, but many of the ingredients used were things that I wouldn't trust even a little bit to keep fresh on a trail without refrigeration.  Therefore, I decided that I might as well dust off my much-neglected blog and try my own hand.  Besides, I've been working on a lot of historical/fantasy period cooking and just haven't gotten around to posting it.  Sorry.  I'll try to keep up.

What you see here is what I would consider very typical "Human" cuisine as taken on-the-go.  It's a pork pie, some pickles, farmhouse cheese, and hard-boiled eggs alongside a mug of cider.  This is inspired from a plowman's lunch, although it has quite a few differences.  But, let's break it down.

Pork Pie

Doesn't that look good?  Never mind that I suck at crimping.  This was my first attempt at a standing crust pie, and I think it turned out pretty well.  It is filled with homemade salt pork and bacon alongside a chicken stock-based jelly and various spices (really, too many to list--I seasoned it with my mushroom salt and some mushroom ketchup, plus extra nutmeg).

(Please note:  anyone who can help me rotate images, thank you!)

Once you open the top of the pie, you have a LOT of meat (yes, it's not terribly pretty).  The crust wasn't always eaten, but if you're hiking down a trail looking for random monsters to fight, you're probably not throwing this out.  The whole thing is pretty tasty, although even after repeated soakings, the salt pork was rather salty.  I used a pork shoulder to make the salt pork and, of course, belly for the bacon.

Cheese

This is a farmhouse cheese I made a little more than two months old.  There is about six ounces in this ration.  Between it, the pie, and everything else, there's easily two meals in this ration.  Hooray.

It was made, much like the pork pie, based on Jas. A. Townsends and Son, Inc.'s YouTube videos.  Watch them HERE.  It's cultured whole milk, rennet, salt, and a lot of time on a salted cutting board being turned.  The cheese tastes a bit like a mild, but salty Parmesan and is definitely hard and will last quite a while.  It does make you thirsty, though.

I'm not going to talk about the eggs.  They're hard-boiled eggs.  You know what those are.

Pickles

This is a quick refrigerator pickle of mostly cucumbers with some onion, dill, pickling spice, and of course, salt and vinegar.  They have a nice crunch and provide some much-needed flavor to the dish.  Super-easy to make and they're relatively quick.

Cider

And yeah, it's an amazing picture of cider in a mug.  This is just a kvass-style quick cider that I had laying around.  It's some unfiltered apple juice, a little brown sugar, cinnamon, and allspice, and of course yeast.  It ferments up quickly, although by this time it's gone a bit sour.  Still, the perfect thing to give to an adventurer ready to hit up the road.  After all, it's not likely that they're coming back any time soon, if at all!

The mug comes from Tri Canis Nox at the Kansas City Renaissance Festival.  I've had it for nearly two decades now and love it.  Hey, they have a Blogspot HERE.

How Long Will it Last?

Let's be honest here:  a pork pie in a standing crust can easily last several weeks.  The cheese, if kept relatively cool, will also be fine that long.  If the pickles are stored in some sort of container, they can last weeks if not months.  Wrapped in fabric, expect them to last a day or two.  The eggs, likewise, should be good over the weekend.  Assuming a wineskin or similar, the cider likewise will last well through the weekend.

So, here we go with this one.  Tell me what you think!

I will be updating this blog with more rations (and probably a how-to on cheesemaking) as I get things ready.  Some of these recipes take a lot of time.

Edit:  credit to yikes-- on Reddit for fixing the rotation!  You're a lifesaver!