“The reason rare delicacies are… well… rare, doesn’t always have to do with how there’s not much of it to go around. Sometimes they are rare because everything around them would all too happily munch of them if they found one, which happens more often than you’d think.

Some of them are just that irresistible” - Baghawad Gede Nuri, master chef from Ptolodecca, circa 492 FP.

“Ooh, I see you have some Mekantrava, been ages since I’ve had some,” said Aideen approvingly as she spied a dish made with a pile of circular, fleshy leaves each around the size of a silver coin. The leaves looked a bit like that of some cactus plants, albeit without thorns, their exterior a silky smooth sheath instead. They appear to have been cooked lightly, probably just stir-fried briefly with some spices.

She picked up a couple of the leaves with the dough pocket in her hand and ate them together. The leaves almost burst with a pleasant grassy sweetness when she bit into them. They provided a crunchy, refreshing flavor that mixed well with the spices it had been cooked with and the savory dough. It was a pleasant, comforting taste that made one wish for more.

From how the pile was quickly depleting, clearly the others in her group agreed with that assessment after having a bite, even if many of them favored meat over vegetables.

“Some of our foragers happened to run into a bunch just yesterday. It was fortunate timing since we received news of your arrival today, so we could have it prepared for the feast,” said Miro with a clearly happy grin. The Mekantrava leaves couldn’t be preserved for long, and would only keep its taste for at most a couple of days after it was picked, so the timing had been fortuitous indeed.

It was considered a delicacy amongst the orcs, and many other creatures that inhabit the northern plains with them. Delicacies like those were one of the primary reasons why orcish foraging parties exclusively favor carnivorous mounts, as it prevented issues of having to fight off their own mounts when they ran into a patch of delicacies both the rider and the mount desired.

In contrast, a carnivorous mount would not only aid them in catching more game, but also tended to favor parts of an animal that were harder to cook or process properly, like the internal organs. When on the hunt, it was not uncommon to feed the mounts with the offal and other organs that needed to be prepared while fresh, unless they were close to their encampment.

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Since offal and the like also often needed a longer preparation time, the orcish clans typically only prepared them when they were settling down for some time, like near water sources or in their seasonal hunting grounds. It would have been impractical to keep a kettle cooking while the clan was on the move, after all.

Aideen and her group happened to catch clan Bloodfang while they were on the move towards their summer hunting ground, just a week or two before the clan would have arrived, in fact.

The other dishes on the platter were similarly delightful to taste, even if they contained no rare delicacies. Some local greens were cooked together with eggs that were practically scrambled and copious amounts of wild garlic and ginger, lending the whole dish a strong taste where the eggs and the greens were what kept things in moderation.

Another had some local wild tubers with a taste and consistency not unlike yam cut into thin sticks and cooked together with chopped mushrooms and slices of cured animal fat, creating a blend of slick, crunchy textures full of earthy and rich flavors. Like most other orcish stews, there was barely any broth, as they were cooked until most of it had been absorbed by the ingredients.

Shredded meat from some wild poultry – or large lizard, it could easily be either since the meat had been shredded and the main difference between the two was the texture – was simmered with herbs and spices and some starchy tubers as well, after which they were mashed together to a nearly paste-like consistency. It made for a delightful “filling” to the savory dough used to scoop it up.

The meal had gone underway and most of the stews presented had been eaten when the orcish cooks finally took out the spades and dug out a portion of the ground at the center of the seated diners. From there, six of them worked together to carefully bring out a massive package the size of an orc, wrapped tightly with large leaves that were charred all over on the surface.

Once the package was lowered to the ground, two of the orcish cooks took sharp knives and carefully opened the wrapping, to reveal a still-steaming eland – a sort of large antelope that roamed the prairie – that had been roasting whole in the underground until just a moment ago.

It was a typical underground oven setup, where an earthen pit was lined with hot stones on all sides, and then the well-wrapped food was lowered into it to cook for a long period of time at a relatively constant heat. Aideen guessed that the eland must have been cooking since they received news of her coming earlier in the day, so for roughly six to seven hours in the underground pit.

With how the orcish cooks easily portioned the cooked meat, it was clear that the cooking process had turned the meat to an extremely tended consistency that they literally fell right off the bones once prodded. The cooks used more large leaves that had been cleaned as plates and piled on some choice cuts as well as the head of the eland, before one of them brought it to Aideen’s group.

Much like how she remembered it, the head of the beast as well as the choicest cuts were the share of the guests of honor, and that evening, her group was the guests of honor after all.