Orcish Chevon

My father never worked on Loredas, and it was the one day of the week we got to be together for more than a few short hours. My father was King Kurog’s personal smith, and spent the better half of his days removing dents from his older armor, and forging his lordship newer pieces. However, when home, his greatest vocation and hobby was cooking. Maybe it was the familiar heat of the fire under his pot, or maybe it was the simple satisfaction of completing a project; either way his face always lit up when he’d finished preparing a meal. It was never anything incredibly complex, or garish looking, but it was always delicious— I often couldn’t get enough! Well, I’d wished anyway; my father’s cooking was always so filling I could never have more than a single portion. Anyway, this one Loredas, he told me he was going to teach me to cook his famous (read: famous to me) Chevon Arn-or. The mesh of Cyrodiilic and Orsimeris never left my mouth quite right, but I figured it’d be best not to spoil the mood. He began by laying out all the proper ingredients:

3 cloves of garlic
a large vial of corn oil
2 large tomatoes (diced)
1 large leek (chopped)
5 cups of watercress
2 cups of corn flour
3 large goose eggs

And the most important ingredient, to quote my father directly: “1 young goat’s fat ass.” The skinned back legs of the goat he’d killed an hour earlier landed on the butcher’s block with a loud thud, and ungracefully jiggled in place for a moment or two. I’d often wonder if maybe that was why he liked cooking so much...eugh. Anyway, he had me light the fires under the stove and prepare the cookware. Two large iron pans sat on top of the oven now: a deep flat pan, for the goat, and an even deeper, rounder pan*, for the vegetables and broth. My father took to chopping the meat of the goat from its bones (a job I was supposed to have been given, but so graciously “sacrificed” instead) and had me plop the tomatoes, leek, garlic and watercress into the deeper pan, with a splash of corn oil. I threw another log on the cooking fire, and the high heat had the broth boiling fairly quickly. The whole of downstairs began to smell of tomato and garlic; the mixture had turned a deep red-yellow from the tomatoes and oil, and the green watercress reducing in it made it look like some sort of painting. Next to me, my father had emptied the rest of the corn oil into the flatter pan and had started to rest the goat choppings into it. The corn flour and eggs were gone, so I’d guessed they were already used for the batter. Oil was already splashing and boiling out of the pan, and I imagined the deeper of the two would’ve been a safer bet, but he seemed to know what he was doing.

“Nice of Nargash to lend us the corn flour and oil eh?” he’d nudged. I just nodded and continued stirring the tomatoes. I loved my father but his conversation was always painfully boring. We both stirred and prodded in near-silence for another 5 minutes or so before the goat fried to a golden brown. I almost lost my focus on the broth, the goat just looked so good. My father could tell and let out a deep laugh before closing the flue on the stove and removing the goat from the oil. Straight from the frying pan and into the broth! I stirred the two for a couple of minutes before my father asked me to close the secondary flue as well, and remove the finished product from the heat. He set the table as I struggled to lug the heavy pot over to the table and served the both of us. He mumbled something in an older Orcish dialect under his breath (a prayer, I guessed) before nearly swallowing the whole thing whole. It wasn’t as good as when he made it alone (I burnt the tomatoes quite a bit), and it certainly wasn’t traditional Orcish cooking, but I think it was worth it. I always loved cooking with dad.

*^(think of a wok)