Aigym Hlervu's Guide to Redguard Cuisine. Food, Drinks & Cooking Secrets.

Aigym_Hlervu

A GUIDE TO REDGUARD CUISINE. FOOD, DRINKS & COOKING SECRETS

by Aigym Hlervu

INTRODUCTION

Under these sun and skies I greet you warmly, muthsera!
I've written this guide after publishing the previous one devoted to the Dunmeri cuisine (I've edited it recently to add Clockwork Recycled Water, Nutriment Paste and Ashlander Bread and Cheese furnishing dishes - though I personally do not consider those Clockwork City nutriments to be food, those Clockwork City citizens eat it anyway..). Hammerfell's ardent heat makes me think this land was the exact location Magnus started his departure back to Aetherius. "What kind of cuisine those Redguards might have in this harsh climate?" - I asked myself while squinting in the light of the last visible trace of an ancient god. Nords will have a great endless feast in Sovngarde, but Redguards believe they won't feel neither hunger nor thirst in Far Shores. This might have some influence on their dishes. I've already seen a stout Dunmer, but I've never seen a stodgy Redguard. Though I do not think food is the reason to it - it is only an explanation. So, let's start.

FOOD

Just like the previous Guide, this one is not intended to give you a description of any nutrition facts due to the same reasons. Our Dunmeri cuisine is based on 27 purely Dunmeri dishes. The Redguard one seems to consist of only 20 dishes at most. Why so? The local lore says, Zeht, a Yokudan god of farms, once renounced his father after the world was created, which is why Ruptga, the chief deity of the Yokudan pantheon, makes it so hard to grow food there. This might be the answer. Anyway, those 20 dishes should give us a quite clear picture of a typical Redguard cuisine and will show us its best sides. Redguards use 20 types of ingredients: greens, garlic, potato, cheese, beets, radish, seasoning, corn, game and small game, tomato, flour, red meat (though in furnishing dishes only) pumpkin, poultry, saltrice, carrots, millet, Jazbay Grapes, Frost Mirriam, and melon. It is interesting to figure it out they seemingly do not eat fruit dishes, though they use some fruits in other ones. But they don't use white meat at all.

Humph.. Redguards inexplicably do not eat white meat? Whatever could it mean? Even that Grilled Camel's meat is listed as a game ingredient. Well, I have a theory to explain this strange fact. White meat is produced from usually passive animals, such as monkeys, pigs or sheep, though goat meat is a game type of ingredient. Only 2 races out of major 10 do not eat white meat within their cooking traditions no matter be those dishes either of edible or of a furnishing type - these races are Khajiit and.. Redguards! Someone might remind me of those daggerbacks. Hammerfell daggerbacks are boar-like creatures with quills found along their backs - why don't they cook them? It is said in the books daggerback's white meat tastes strong and is best in stew. But Redguards do not use it to cook any of their national dishes especially a stew. They prefer to make it of skavenger's meat only to avoid eating a good white meat of a wild boar!.. Thus no pork and no ham and none of my favourites - cold ham rolls laced with cheese and garlic! Well, this ham rolls part is actually from another world beyond Tamriel, sorry. Anyway, there is a single edible international recipe to cook a wild boar - Wild-Boar-And-Beets, but in spite of the fact this dish can be cooked by any nation, I suppose it can't be cooked in Hammerfell widely due to another fact: the daggerback boars found in Hammerfell's Lower Craglorn region have purple quills due to Spellscar's magic influence. Redguards are known to avoid magic. Thus it makes me think white meat is somehow considered to be unclean and thus banned in Hammerfell or at least it is not used in the local cuisine due to similar reasons. Anyway, I've found no answers in the books. It is only game mechanics that show us this situation in the Redguard cuisine.

On to the dishes list. Among all the types of the dishes, only fruit dishes and delicacy dishes are absent here. Well, at least no apple - no discord. Overall Redguard dishes consist of six main types:
six vegetable dishes:
Gilane Garlicky Greens,
Port Hunding Cheese Fries,
Alik'r Beets With Goat Cheese,
Rihad Beet and Garlic Salad,
Dragonstar Radish Kebabs,
Taneth Chili Cheese Corn;
three savoury dishes:
Redguard Venison Pie,
Gazelle Cutlet With Minced Pumpkin,
Pumpkin Stuffed Fellrunner;
three ragout dishes:
Craglorn Skavenger Stew,
Grilled Camel On Cornbread,
Hammerfell Antelope Stew;
three gourmet dishes:
Caramelized Goat Nibbles,
Parrot-and-Pumpkin Salad,
Goatherd's Pie;
two meat dishes:
Stros M'Kai Grilled Seagull,
Elinhir Roast Antelope;
one entremet dish:
Drunken Goat Cheese With Radishes.
and two furnishing dishes:
Redguard Kabobs, Wax,
Redguard Slices, Wax.

COOKING SECRETS

Some of the dishes are considered to be of Redguard origin due to a certain product only. For example those Grilled Camel on Cornbread, Caramelized Goat Nibbles and Pumpkin Stuffed Fellrunner - most of these animals are found in Hammerfell, thus we may suppose some, say, goat meat and milk based dishes are invented here. Though I must say it is possible the same dishes to be national to multiple folks lucky enough to have those animals live within their country borders. For example, Kagouti also inhabit Elsweyr, thus some Kagouti based dishes might be considered national both to the Dunmeri and to the Khajiiti cuisines. The variety of Hammerfell animals allows us to see what ingredients do Redguards use to cook while books and various descriptions help us to see how do they do that.

Cheese dishes are most common to this land. According to the Master Chef Gilbard Larocque's Cheeses of Tamriel, Redguards craft cheese with an unusual quirk. They keep the secrets of its culturing process close to heart, but love to surprise foreign guests by serving it. It is known as Shrieking Cheese. When it is melted to a certain point, it actually lets loose a jarring scream. In a common dish, small blocks of the cheese are added atop spicy meat as it cooks in an open pot. When it shrieks, it's ready!
Another cheese is said to be made in the Caverns of Wry, just north of the city of Skaven. The Skav bat-herds breed their own giant dairy bats, fermenting from their milk a delectable cheese that is moist, crumbly, and piquant. Quite delightful, and it is said to pair well with pomegranate wine.

Giant Scorpions are large predatory arthropods commonly found in the arid regions of Tamriel like Hammerfell. Their meat is the main ingredient in seared venomsteaks.

The Cobalt Sep Adder is a pet Pacrooti sells us in his Wild Hunt Crown Crates as a Legendary-level reward. But Sep Adders are not pets only, they are edible and are described as being easy to "skin and cook", akin to a chicken. The blue-scaled Cobalt Sep Adder is the rarest of the wild varieties, and almost never seen in captivity. They are particularly prized by the royalty of Hammerfell's contentious city-states, as they're said to be able to detect poison in drinks and food.

Fellrunner meat is described as being good for making jerky, but is tricky to cook without getting them dry. Keep bacon grease for basting. As The Gourmand's Guide to Craglorn states it, the meat of the fell runner compares more to a steak than to poultry. It is dark red and marbled with thin, delectable streaks of fat. Just one fell runner can provide a hearty feast for a group of travelers, but the meat must be cooked correctly to avoid a tough, stringy mess. Firstly, cut the meat into thick chunks of at least two fingers' height, and take great caution to avoid over-cooking. For the best results, the interior should still be red and just warm. Though a light dusting of salt will do in a hurry, the Guide recommends roasting it alongside onion and a sampling of the sweet peppers native to the region.

ON TO THE DRINKS!

The variety of drinks provided by the Dunmeri cuisine (about 15 types of only mazte!) made me think the Redguard cuisine will give us much more of them due to a constant necessity to fight thirst. But what a mistake it was - they have only 16 drinks overall here:
two tincture drinks:
Kaveh Stout,
Elinhir Qishr;
six tonic drinks:
Black Coffee,
Kelp Kaveh,
Taneth Coffee,
Rihad Qishr,
Nocturnal's Everblack Coffee,
Old Hegathe Lemon Kaveh;
four cordial drinks:
Bitter Kaveh,
Cornerclub Kaveh,
Meantmead Kaveh,
Centurion's Friend Kaveh;
three liqueur drinks:
Yokudan Sorrow Bourbon,
Port Hunding Pinot Noir,
Dragontail Blended Whisky;
and one delicacy drink:
Bergama Warning Fire.

Not so many drinks there. But! This list shows us that 13 drinks out of those 16 are made of coffee. Qishr, kaveh, coffee - these words mean almost the same drink with only one note: each type among those three is brewed a bit differently. Redguards brew all the three of them. Qishr doesn't need Kaveh (coffee) beans to be roasted unlike a more traditional coffee drink needs them to be, though the ingredient is the same. Take that Rihad Qishr, add some yeast following a certain recipe and you'll have a hot aromatic qishr made by the best coffee houses of Elinhir ready for a try! There is only one coffee drink undoubtly originated outside of Hammerfell - that Elven Clarified Coffee brewed in the city of Cloudrest. Every other coffee brand product seems to be of Hammerfell origin.

That makes me suppose Hammerfell could be the birthplace of all Tamrielic Kaveh beans (coffee beans actually. Kaveh beans ingredient was removed in Update 6 but, thanks to the devs, we still have those Kaveh drinks) and coffee based drinks. Some southern regions of this arid land like Khefrem could be it's place of origin, anyway, it's just my speculation. "Coffea hammerfellica" as Imperials might call it - that sounds good. What is not a speculation, is my advice: if you want to drink the best mazte - go to Morrowind. But if you wish to taste the best coffee - leave Morrowind and visit Hammerfell. So, this is what I can say in conclusion: our Dunmeri cuisine is richer but the Redguard one is more balanced. My morning at my Tel Galen Tower in the Azura's Coast starts with a Kwama Egg Omelet and a cup of hot aromatic Taneth Coffee. How does yours?

That's all for now. Thanks to everyone who has read it all. Bon appetite to you!