Food, continued

 

This post dedicated to the lovely Zmia Garinia. 

A continuation from this post, this time focused solely on the Barony itself. Baronials farm in sustainable and out-of-focus ways, because I don't know much about farming. The Barony is fairly sparsely populated compared to its neighbours, and its food requirements are not centrally organised. The Baroness takes a great interest in the possibilities of modernising this system, and imposing better state information-gathering and direct taxation and control. 

The Traveller's Meal

Nearly always fried grain porridge with salted meat mixed through it, flavoured with wild berries, nuts, whatever spices or greens can be foraged, or candied fruit for the wealthy. Oil, porridge grains, salt-meat, and ground coffee are the traveller's necessaries, and all provisioners and merchants will keep a supply in stock due to the insatiable demand. Where does the coffee come from? Probably the mountains. 

The Poor Meal

Superficially similar to the Traveller's meal, but served at the table, and served with smokable stimulants. With a kitchen available the porridge grains can instead be served as bread, and coarse, unleavened bread baked with salt-meat is the archetypal street and poor staple in the cities. It is considered polite to augment the meal as best you can, but forage is less available in the cities, and no one will take offence to a plain meal of fried bread, meat (or seafood), coffee, and water. Drugs are typically smoked together after the meal, to aid in digestion and social bonding; these are usually stimulants, but could also easily be narcotics or sedatives if that suits the mood or time of day better. Baronials typically like smoking their own pipes, but some professional groups, gangs, and fixers (and soldiers) develop a taste for instead smoking from communal hookahs. The kitchen is the most usual place for smoking to happen, and for this reason usually has openable windows to air the room in the aftermath. 

The Polite Meal

A Baronial of middling means will provide fresh meat, produce, and fresh bread for a main meal, and a second course of fruit, fried day-old bread, and sugar, if they can afford it. Seafood is particularly loved, and cheap due to proximity to the coast, and fish, shellfish, and octopus are a sort of mobile addition to any course - they are typically rubbed in salt and served in their own small bowls, which are passed around as and when. 

The fruit that you serve is a status symbol: everyone loves blackberries, but they are common as dirt. Imported fruit from the mountains, and even further north, signal that extra care and expense have gone into a meal: appropriate for employers, elder family members, celebrations, etc. 

Heated white spirits are usually served alongside cold water and coffee, and even sparkling water if the money is there. Fruit liqueurs are available but generally considered an affectation for the wealthy. Smoking happens afterwards, and can include more expensive/culturally middle-class hallucinogens, especially if the family is connected in some way to the academies or the production of art.  

The Rich Meal

A third course is added to the basic meal structure for the wealthy: the desert, which consists of baked pastries, imported sugar candies, flavoured ices, syrups, and sweet liqueurs. Traditionally the desert is the same 'course' the smoking, and the two typically blend together in wealthy households. Chefs and chemists in wealthy houses are renowned for curating this third course into pleasant trips of various kinds, and if it goes wrong they can be reprimanded. 

For truly special or ceremonial events, the wealthy of the capital enjoy composing meals into 'scenes', loaded with legible decision points that will only be picked up on by others who have too much spare time on their hands. Rare imported animals, fruits and vegetables, and strange sauces and glazes (which are largely alien to Baronial cooking) are common in this practice. The point is to bring the guest into your thought process behind the meal, and discussing the 'story' or symbolism that the guests are picking up on at the table is encouraged - something like a formal parlour game.  

The Sacred Meal

Fried human blood, taken from a victim of the lists, or from a member of the clergy, or from a rich patron of the church: all three sources are given equal honour. Simple oat cakes fried in the blood, then sugared. These flat cakes are then garnished with simple forage and white alcohol.

All priests can prepare this meal, and the church will typically provide it for those who cannot otherwise provide for themselves. Supplies of blood are kept on hand, and the proportion of blood to oil when preparing the cakes is a measure of the solemnity of the occasion. 

In more ancient times the clergy were said to eat the viscera and flesh of the victims of the list, but this is no longer acceptable in common society. 

The Spa Meal

Spas, bath-houses, and saunas are an imported luxury in the Barony, but an absolutely beloved one. The sauna originates on the steppe, and bath-house in the mountains, and the Baronials love both of them and spend as much leisure time as they can partaking. 

There is a special type of food that is provided and appropriate for the bath house or spa - no fried meats or other fatty food, but instead a variety of cheap, salty or sugared oat cake that comes singly skewered on steel toothpicks, or in large glass containers when bought in bulk, and hot and cold fresh water to rehydrate. Many are the tales of rival bravos in the spa houses trying to kill one another with broken bottles and steel toothpicks. 

Also popular are single-use salt and hard-sugar 'lick' jewellery, typically set in cheap tin fixings and worn at the throat. One member of a party will wear the 'lick', and their companions will make use of it over the course of the session - for the service, their friends will pick up their tab.

Fruit is also common in the richer bath-houses, where individuals can also typically pay for service of coffee and alcohol as they relax.