Solo Sunberth Cooking IV

[Moritz Craven]

Continued 15 Winter 522

Inspecting the last main ingredient of his stew, Moritz looked over the seaweed. Picking up a piece, Moritz eyed it first, checking its quality. At the touch it was somewhat wet and slimy, but otherwise looked normal enough for seaweed. Next he gave it a sniff, getting a strong scent of the sea and saltiness.

Eyeing it closely, it did appear someone had cleaned the seaweed before bringing it in, perhaps in the sea, since he did not see any little bits of other things. No dirt, chunks of sand, bugs, or any other little things in it. Considering it was Sunberth he was a bit surprised by this, and inspecting the rest in the container he it seemed most if not all was clean.

Seeing as the material was clean, Moritz picked up a piece and decided to take the next step of testing a new ingredient, tasting it. As far as he knew seaweed was not poisonous, even raw, so it seemed likely to him it would be fine. And it was after all a food ingredient, and a plant one which in his experience was more likely to be okay raw than animal products like meat.

Moving it over to his mouth carefully Moritz took a small bite, carefully chewing it up. And then he chewed. And chewed some more. And kept chewing. Planty, seemed the best way to describe it in the moment, or so the Kelvic felt. Planty and salty. With that in mind, he assumed he would need to add less salt than normal to the stew, since much would get mixed in with the seaweed. If he however added the normal amount of salt, he was certain the dish would end up overly salty. Something he would need to bear in mind. Further reviewing the ingredient Moritz realized the size of the seaweed would be a problem, and so he would need to cut it up before adding it to the stew. Strips perhaps?

Nodding to his own reasoning, he figured strips would work better than small chunks since onions worked differently. A spoon full of stew and a piece of onion would stay there, but a thin little flap of seaweed? That seems likely to fall off. So strips seemed to make more sense, or at least to work as a good middle ground between a whole sheet of the stuff and someone just chomping onto it, versus a smaller bit sized piece.

Thinking further, he personally did not mind eating it raw, but he did not doubt his patrons would want the material cooked thoroughly before it was eaten. With that in mind he settled further on the task at hand, and began to sort through the pieces of sea weed. The concept of cooking things was not a foreign one to the Kelvic, he had worked as a cook before. Still he seemed to be fine with rough food, which was something he could only assume was a habit brought over from his Kelvic side.

WC: 505

[Moritz Craven]

Before he began his cutting work, Moritz checked on the pot of water once more. Seeing it had become heated and appeared to be near a boil he shifted it a bit to stop it from getting too hot, and then began adding in the onions. He supposed an onion soup was possible, but it was not the only ingredient he was going to add. Still he hoped to have its food essence seeping into the water, and in the end into the flavor of the broth and other food ingredients.

With that in mind, and making sure it had plenty of time to stew in the making of the stew, Moritz began adding in the heaps of chopped onions. Taking the container of them he had he carefully dumped it in, making sure he did not spill any nor splash the hot water back onto himself. This was tricky, but in the end he more or less managed it. Then he went and got another container of the chopped onions, and poured that bit into the stew pot in the same fashion. Once all of the chopped onions were inside he let out a sigh and turned back to the seaweed.

Dealing with a new ingredient, he had a vague idea of how to use it seeing as he had tasted it and such, but he had not really cut or altered it before, and so would need to work it out. Grabbing a piece of the seaweed he set it on the cutting board, and using a clean knife he prepared himself. And then using said knife he made his first cutting motion. As he did the seaweed seemed to cut somewhat, but not quite as much as he had expected. It was after all, he reasoned, still wet and floppy to a degree as it was fresh from the sea. Perhaps if it was dried out it would be easier to flake or break apart like a dried leaf, but wet as it was it was tricky...

Thinking on this again though he realized another quality of the seaweed he could use, its thinness. If cutting one piece was not efficient, then why not several at once? Stacking three sheets of seaweed atop one another he moved to cut again, slicing through all three slowly but surely in the end. Three seemed enough for him to manage things, and he was able to cut it cleanly. He then continued his work in cutting the seaweed, recalling again that his goal was to make long strips of the material not to dice it into little bits that would float right off the spoon.

With that in mind he did half of his dicing work from earlier, cutting it one after another along the length of the seaweed, but not then turning it and cutting it the other way. With this in mind he managed to turn the entire pile of seaweed into long strips, which he could then use in his dish. A satisfying first step he felt looking down at the cut material.

WC: 516

[Moritz Craven]

Having turned one small pile of seaweed into nice strips, Moritz set these aside and moved on to the next one. Before he had tried three stacked atop each other, but this time he tried five. It was a careful game of adjusting things, since he wanted to save time by doing more at once but also did not want to add so many that he could not cut through it.

Looking it over another thing occurred to Moritz, spending time counting up stacks might also be a waste of time as much as doing too short of a pile at once. So with that he tried five stacked, and began slicing through them. Holding them carefully on the cutting board and moving his hand while cutting, Moritz guided the blade along the edge of his hand with a repeated cutting motion. slicing into the seaweed bit by bit and leaving it with multiple long strips.

Satisfied with that he pushed that pile of strips aside, and decided to continue at his work with piles roughly that size. With that decided Moritz continued churning his way through piles of seaweed, grabbing up a stack and slicing it before then setting it aside in a pile with the other cut up strips. Once he had a decent sized pile Moritz returned to the pot of hot water, holding a handful of the seaweed strips. Dropping it into the pot Moritz got out a large stirring spoon, watching the strips move about and seeing the bits of onions moving around inside. Pushing things down and mixing it Moritz grabbed some more seaweed, and kept at his work of mixing it in. So far he had only added in his onions and a bit of seaweed, and so tried to even things out by mixing in more and more seaweed. This like before took some arm strength, pushing the spoon against the water, as he mixed the contents of the stew pot up.

Keeping at this for awhile, in the end Moritz managed to get all of the seaweed into the pot and mixed it some more for good measure. Eyeing the pot now he saw it was full of bits, though he was unsure how well it would all cook and mix having not used the ingredient of seaweed before. Rather he would just need to test it out, and check for flavor over time.

With that done Moritz headed back to the fish fillets he had cut earlier, and set them out. As with the other items he wanted nice bite sized pieces, excepting the strings of seaweed he had made. Like the onions he wanted the fish to also be in nice chunks of pieces for eating, and so planned to likewise dice up the fillets he had cut earlier. If needed he could always add in more fish later and prepare them as he had the others, but for now he was going to work with what he had and try his best.

WC: 504

[Moritz Craven]

Having added in onions and seaweed Moritz returned to his fish, cutting up the fillets while letting the stew cook. Having already cut the fish up and down to the fillets, all that needed to be done was to cut those long fillets into smaller pieces. As with his other work of cutting things up he came at it from more or less the same way, though changing up things by a bit to account for the difference in the size of the material along with its density and consistency which changed up how he cut it up.

While the onions were firm but fibrous, the seaweed was slippery and hard to pin down while also being much thinner. Fish on the other hand was more dense than some things, being meat, but of the various meats he had cut up it was not too hard to cut. Since he wanted decent sized pieces of the meat he first quartered the food, cutting long ways three times or by halving the fillet and then halving each of those halves. Holding it all together he then passed with the blade cutting again at an angle, turning those long strips into smaller pieces. As with his other work he guided his cutting with his hand, holding the blade up against the edge of his hand and moving his hand along to cut with a repeated motion.

Moving from one piece of fish to another as with the others Moritz worked his way through all of the materials, once more finishing with a nicely cut up pile of food materials. Finally done with all of the prep work Moritz began to dump all of the fish pieces into the pot, working his way through that pile until the entire thing was in the water. With that done Moritz turned back and checked his other ingredients, making sure everything he intended was in the pot, including all of the onions and seaweed along with the fish. Going through each of the now empty bowls and container and cutting boards, Moritz placed all of the emptied but dirty things into a sink to be cleaned later, before returning to the stew pot. And then, he mixed and waited. Not having much else to do Moritz checked his tools and puttered around the kitchen for a few chimes until he could finally do something.

After that wait Moritz finally decided to take a taste of his food, taking a small sip of the stew. Not big on meat he still had to check to see how his food was going, and so tried things out. At the taste he found it seemed to be progressing well, but was not quite seasoned enough and certainly not done cooking.

With that in mind Moritz added a bit more salt into the stew, being careful not to add to much with how much salt was already in it from the seaweed. Then he stirred again and wait, watching the stew slowly progress.

WC: 503

[Moritz Craven]

Now that the stew was nearing its completion and he did not have much more to do other than stirring it and checking up on it, Moritz turned back to the bread he had prepared earlier.

Going into the container he had stored it in Moritz grabbed another clean pan, and quickly took out several of the dough balls. Placing a few there and spreading them out, Moritz checked to make sure the material was still good, before flattening it out and placing it into the oven. Once more he was down to the tasks that did not take too much work actively, seeing as he had already done all of the prep stuff earlier. That just left the waiting, maintaining, and checking up on things.

For the stew he mainly just mixed, checking every five chimes or so for a small sip to get a feel for the taste and such of the stew. He did not want to do things half way, but he also knew if he was going to keep an eye on it he would need to taste it.

For the bread side of things he mainly was left opening the oven and checking its done-ness. Here he did not taste the works in progress, instead prodding it to see if it still had a doughy consistency or if it had begun to firm up as the heat cooked it. Color was also a factor, and a decent measure of how done something was, though not entirely since it was possible that something would appear done on the outside but would be uncooked or not fully cooked on the inside. With that in mind he made sure to check each piece in turn for these things, rather than just one, and to ensure he checked various parts of each piece.

While he had been finishing up one of the servants at the place had come in and informed him they needed some food, and so he moved at that point to finish up and begin plating the food. Checking one last time he tasted the stew, mixing it first and after, finding it seemed done enough for what limited things he had to cook with. Along with that he checked the flat breads one last time, having to wait a few more chimes before finding them ready to serve.

While they were not perfect and were perhaps a bit extra crispy, it was not burnt and was serviceable enough for food. Taking out a few bowls and placing them on a tray to bring out the food on Moritz carefully scooped out a full bowlful into each bowl. He also took out the tray of flat breads out of the oven, and placed one of the completed breads next to each of the bowls. Shortly after he was done as such the servant returned, taking the pair of meals out to the patrons and likely coming back soon with more orders.

With the first meals of the day served things would only get more busy from there, and the kitchen more frantic.

WC: 517