Don't Try This At Home!

[allaganeyes]

Greetings! I am G'raha Tia. In the interest of sharing something from home with you all, I'd like to offer my own recipe for Archon Bread!

The recipe takes some getting used to, certainly, but I grew up eating a great deal of this and have grown accustomed to its taste. I don't recommend this to those with issues chewing... as you'll do it for a while. Good for training your jaw muscles, perhaps?

-One handful of peas, broccoli, cauliflower, and carrots OR parsnips depending on how sweet you want it. But process them into a paste for texture purposes!

-1 1/2 tablespoons of dry yeast

-1 cup warm water, up to 1 1/2 cups if needed

-2 tablespoons of vegetable oil

-1/4 teaspoon of salt

-1/4 cup of sugar

-1-pound fish filet, patted dry and ground into a paste

-4 cups of rye flour


Place yeast in water, let activate for ten minutes. Combine flour, oil, sugar, salt, vegetable paste and activated yeast, knead for ten minutes.

Let dough rest for 45 minutes to an hour. Dough should double in size!

GENTLY knead in fish paste. Don't bust up those bubbles, but each bite should have the nutritious vegetables and fish, you see.

Preheat oven to 350F. In the meantime, let final dough rest in its final pan, a 9x5 loaf shaped.

Bake for 35-45 minutes. Finished bread should be 200F inside using a thermometer. Let cool completely before slicing. Best eaten with rolanberry jam, but strawberries seem close enough. Butter can work atop as well. Mind the way your kitchen smells. That's normal.

And there you have it! If you try it, please inform me. I'd like to perhaps taste it, if I'm not too forward in asking.

Comments

[chimermaid]

G'raha,

In my home city of Ravnica, I am a celebrated doctor in an organization dedicated to bleeding-edge experiments of an unconventional nature, and most of which involve the application of marine life in ways that your average member of the populace would consider bizarre, unethical, or outright abominable, blasphemous to laws of man and nature alike.

And even I think you've gone too far with this recipe.

[allaganeyes]

You know, I hear things in that neighborhood a lot. But perhaps you ought try it before making such judgments, perhaps?

[chimermaid]

I've had to endure the smell every time you bake it.

[allaganeyes]

Pardon me, but aren't you a shark...?

[chimermaid]

I am.

And I have an exquisitely delicate sense of smell.

And much as I am sure you would find appetizing the taste of a fresh glass of lemonade or vanilla ice cream fresh from the slug, you would not well stomach a combination of the two in the same glass.

[allaganeyes]

I'm sorry... slug?

You get ice cream from gastropods?

[chimermaid]

Ah.

Pardon me, G'raha. I sometimes forget that the ice cream slug is a creature known only among select groups within the Simic.

But it does little to diminish my point.

[allaganeyes]

You understand, then, that my next question is 'why', followed by 'how'. Because this implies someone looked at a slug and thought, "Yes, of course, I want dessert poured from its orifices."

[chimermaid]

Not to belabor the tangent but I'll humor you.

Why: to skip the labor- and time-intensive methods of traditional ice cream manufacture and also because it was an interesting novelty we could bring to parties.

How: The addition of lactating exocrine glands with increased fat and sugar content combined with a dramatically lowered body temperature alongside a specialized agitating crop within the sea slug's upper digestive tract.

And furthermore, a sea slug is simply a convenient model organism for that sort of modification. But if it would aid your understanding if I said it was an ice cream cow then envision that instead.

[allaganeyes]

That's fascinating, actually, if a bit of an unsavory mental image. I would say 'I would like food not to be falling out of animal ends', but I eat plenty of eggs and would simply be a hypocrite.

Considering the size of our snails and slugs from my home world, there would be no shortage of ice cream indeed... they tend to weigh about a half-ton at full size, so hearing you speak of a great number of snails in your recipe left quite the image!

[chimermaid]

You have snails of that size and you're eating fish-paste bread?

[allaganeyes]

Sharlayan is quite far from where the snails roam. We make do... unless we've the coin to pay an adventurer to hunt one down for us.

That's also if we remember to eat, thus Selphie's frequent reminders and use of alarms.

[paladin_and_loving_it]

You know, I thought you were going somewhere else with this recipe. We used to make something similar back home, but we cooked it differently. Instead of turning the veggies and fish into a flour replacement, we turned the fish and veggies into a savory filling that we wrapped the bread dough around.

[paladin_and_loving_it]

How do you forget to eat? Does your stomach not remind you it's time for second breakfast?

[boomchucka]

Haven't you subjected enough people to that godawful excuse for bread?

[allaganeyes]

I'm afraid not, friend. The hours speed by and I suddenly realize the headaches, the fatigue that comes with hunger.

We just get so engrossed in our work, you see.

[allaganeyes]

A filling sounds wonderful, a savory pastry! Alas, something like that takes more time and the filling can spill onto your lap upon taking a bite. Cleaning your shirt eats into time spent in study.

[allaganeyes]

Never. Why, I'll invent Archon Cookies next! Crispy, full of crab, cream cheese and plenty of greens.

[boomchucka]

No. Anything with the word archon attached to it is a very bad idea.

[paladin_and_loving_it]

In that case I think we can fix both your shirt stains and your tendency to forget to eat at the same time! You see, we had two versions of this recipe. You're thinking of the first, which was baked like normal bread and made for a wonderful dinner-time food. But the second way was to thicken the filling with a bit of flour and bake the bread three or four times. We called these ones "nibblers". Sure, it's a bit crunchy, but they keep for weeks! Wrap 'em in burlap and you can carry your lunch with you in your pocket. Best of all, the filling turns into a thick tar so it doesn't ever come out onto your lap.

Oh wait... How sturdy are your teeth?

[chimermaid]

Don't tell me this entire recipe is somehow intended to make up for that habit.

[allaganeyes]

In short, yes and no. To get all your nutrients in a single meal prevents us from collapsing from starvation as we work to gather the realm's knowledge.

[allaganeyes]

Not as sturdy as yours, I'd wager. Are you serious about the 'tar' comparison?

[allaganeyes]

But... I'm an archon.

[boomchucka]

[Whoops!]

My bad?

I meant the food? Eh...

I'm sorry.