#foods of thedas poll

[exhausted-archivist]

Foods of Thedas Poll: Round 2

Okay, so I'm working on Antivan foods first cause of this poll I did a while back. It's going pretty well I have sketches but I want to pull some inspo from some 1800-1960 recipes from Italy and Spain before I start finalizing anything. That said... Poll time #2. Also I can only add ten so every time we knock one out I'll add the other ones on my list.

This time you all get a week because I've got some other things I'm working on along side this.

[pinayelf-archive]

do we have any lore on nevarran food? I don't remember ever coming across any save for when Cole reminded cassandra of the pastries her and anthony would eat

[amusewithaview]

okay real talk. i've been thinking about playing da bc i know it'll let me be a fantasy lesbian (which is The Dream tm) but idk who i can romance or if any of them are actually interesting?????? is it worth it????

I had 2/3 of this written and then TUMBLR ATE IT GODDAMNIT. *deep sigh*

OKAY SO - I am assuming you are playing on console (but if you’re playing on PC, and you should, because mods, tell me) so I will limit this to the wlw who are canonically so and not just the ones you can mod into wlw.

Putting the rest under a read more link because GIFS!

Dragon Age: Origins - Leliana

She’s a rogue, she’s a bard (she sings and it’s AMAZING), she’s a badass.  She’s also deeply religious, which I will admit threw me off during my first playthrough.  The thing to keep in mind is that she’s deeply LIBERAL both by in-game and out-of-game standards and she will absolutely fight to make the world kinder and more open and welcoming.  Leliana is very steel hand in velvet glove.  If you romance her in Origins she is still DEEPLY devoted to you in Inquisition and it’s fucking heartwarming.  There were a shitload of “she keeps me warm” memes going around about Leliana/Warden when Inquisition came out because they’re so good together?  It’s great?  GAH!  FEELINGS!  Anyways, Leliana has hidden depths and also in Origins you can have (depending on character choice) a trispecies bisexual foursome with her (or a bispecies lesbian threesome) and then in Inquisition you can make her fantasy pope so…these are options open to you and I want you to be aware of them.  For reasons.

Dragon Age 2 - Isabela

This is Isabela. She’s a Pirate Captain Queen. She’s gorgeous. She can kick your ass and you’d thank her for the privilege. She is also one of the people who can be involved in the aforementioned sexy hook-up with Leliana. Isabela is basically Lady Han Solo, with everything that entails. Isabela will take a while to go from seeing you as “person I would totally bang��� to “person I am madly in love with” but stick with it and it’ll happen. If there was a picture in the dictionary for “saucy wench” it would be Isabela.

Dragon Age 2 - Merrill

Literal elvhen ball of sunshine?  Puppy?  Kitten?  She’s just.  She’s so cute.  She’s also a blood mage so keep that in mind (actually, I think she’s the only wlw who is not either explicitly or subtextually coded as a rogue which is.  huh.  food for thought.) because you should not underestimate her.  She’s super naive, but less in a “too young and sheltered to understand things” way and more in an “oblivious academic who, yes, was kind of sheltered but mostly just has tunnel vision” way.  She’s Dalish, proudly so, has an AMAZING ACCENT and is just so terribly sweet that it may rot your teeth.

Dragon Age: Inquisition - Josephine

We took a poll and Josephine is probably the most mentally stable Dragon Age character.  She’s a diplomat and the head of a merchant family and she can cut you to pieces with a smile.  She’s brilliant and a wicked card player who loves the opera and culture and talking to people.  She’s a bit of a perfectionist and super relatable and I ADORE HER.  She’s my next romance tbh.  Her romance is, from what I’ve been told, more of the cuddles and snuggles kind which I am DOWN FOR 1,000%.  Josie is very much a Lady and if you don’t treat her as such then Leliana will probably shank you because they’re besties.

Dragon Age: Inquisition - Sera

Sera is a pretty controversial character in the fandom, for reasons I mostly find stupid.  She’s very much a lesbian who loves dick jokes and potty humor, and you either like that kind of thing or you don’t.  She’s also relatively close minded but you can call her out on it and most of that is because she’s YOUNG and she’s been hurt before.  She’s actually one of the youngest love interests you can have across all three games.  I would put her age at the start of the game as somewhere between 18-20.  She grows out of the vast majority of her close-minded behavior by the time the Trespasser DLC occurs.  YOU CAN MARRY HER once you hit Trespasser and it’s ADORABLE.  Sera is an anarchist, to a certain extent, mostly she dislikes people who abuse their power or forget to look out for “the little people.”  If you want an idea of her character google image search her tarot cards because the one for her romance is delightful.  If you want a hilarious party combo, take her out with Blackwall and The Iron Bull (if you’re playing a mage) or Dorian and The Iron Bull (if you’re playing a rogue or warrior).

SO!  Those are the canonical wlw of Thedas.  If you DO have a PC and want me to tell you about the lovely ladies you can mod into being wlw (Morrigan and Cassandra spring to mind) then please let me know!

[dirthera-blog]

so my Andrastian gutter child won the poll for a new muse. I figure I might as well do a small info dump to advertise her before I get to work on the blog. So under the cut is a small bullet point rundown of my DAII OC Inessa, coming soon to a blog near you.

Inessa Briar, Kirkwall born and raised, currently living in Lowtown.

Mid-twenties to late-twenties in-game, unless certain missions are failed. More on that below.

The daughter of Hightown aristocracy, Inessa saw both of her parents die of illness when she was still a child. She has only vague memories of them, and none of the gilded privilege she was born into. Her parents debts saw the house and much of the wealth stripped out from under Inessa, leaving her to be raised by thee Chantry. For all the teasing and occasional resentment, she has always been more a child of Lowtown than of nobility.

Chantry-raised seems like a pretty sweet deal, and in any other part of Thedas probably would have been. But this is Kirkwall, where things are terrible, and apprenticeships were doled out like candy so older children could start paying their own upkeep. Earning money to take care of yourself freed up Chantry funds to be dispensed elsewhere, after all. It was through this Inessa began to cut her teeth as a team mom, hoarding some of her meager earnings as savings in case other children in the system needed it. It also started to show her that the Chantry was not infallible nor was it a particularly good example of Andraste’s faith.

She was briefly favored as a potential Templar or Sister -- a good, pious little girl, always looking out for  the other orphans, fiercely protective of them. She was just too clever, though, asked too many questions, became critical of the Chantry. Mages became a particular bugbear between she and the sisters who raised her. There were a lot of spankings and a lot of demands to go pray forgiveness for the blasphemy of thinking that Mages must be the children of the Maker, too. Eventually any hopes of her becoming a Chantry tool were forgotten, and some of the old women still think it a particular shame.

Once upon a time befriended a girl who was a mage. Once upon a time got the spanking of her life for slipping her little baubles and considering her a friend. 

Still got kicked out on her ass once she came of age, since she was of no further use to the system that raised her. Thank the Maker for that apothecary apprenticeship. She eventually got a job with her old master and got a small place in the slums, and has been going strong ever since.

Community is everything to her. Lowtown is her town, and she tries to look out for as many of its people as possible. She tries very much to secure the idea ‘you mess with one of us, you mess with all of us.’ It’s a work in progress that she tries to lure people into with her acts of kindness around the city.

A faithful Andrastian often seen haunting the Chantry that raised her and doing charitable deeds. She seeks to emulate the standards set by various religious figures, giving to those less fortunate and being a pillar of moral character. This, of course, makes her a minority both in Kirkwall and the Chantry of the city. For all the problems she has with the Chantry, moreso after the organization turns its back on refugees, it is still the place she feels closest to her Maker. She still loves to be there, even if she tends to steer clear of many of its members, unless it’s someone she grew up with.

Once the refugees from Ferelden are abandoned by basically everyone, Inessa does her part to bring them into the fold as well. Donations, scraps of food, whatever medicines she can make, every little bit helps, though she wishes she could do more. She also wishes the Chantry would do more, but she believes it a losing battle to even hope. She’s very protective of those without a home and is more than willing to share whatever she can. The least she can do is live up to the example set by the Lady herself.

Gives out ‘missions’ to help refugees and the poor. Watches Hawke’s rise to fame with great interest, especially if Hawke is more chaotic good and/or pro-mage. Her speaking out against the Chantry and history of ‘aiding’ mages gets a target painted on her back over time, however. There’s a good chance she could be ‘rooted out’ for her alleged heresies.

Despite her ties to the city, she dreams of other places, of sailing out on a ship and making her own name and adventures. It seems silly to mention, however -- it’s a rare day someone of her standing gets out of Kirkwall like that. So she’ll do what she can with what’s realistic, but still sometimes stares out over the water, and dreams of shorelines and brighter cities.

[exhausted-archivist]

Foods of Thedas: Round Three

Just so I don't have to take as long of breaks between regions since I'm really enjoying you all sort of steering my focus, really it helps keep me making progress with all these fun options. We're going onto round 3.

For this I've specified Par Vollen as the Qun, but I will be doing regional recipes of the Qun when I do Anderfels, Rivain, and Seheron since they have outposts/settlements there. Which, I've also added Seheron since I have the space now. After the next one I will add Kal-Sharok. I only got 10 slots, and since there is less lore on them, I'm prioritizing the ones with a bit more first.

[exhausted-archivist]

Foods of Thedas: Round 4 - Glitchless edition?

So reposting this because I can't edit, delete, or fix the broken post.

That aside I want to take the chance to elaborate that Ferelden, Avvar, and Chasind are one option because they all come from the same culinary source: the Alamarri.

I also want to note that the reason I'll be doing a secondary poll for the Free Marches is because while similar, I feel like they'd have some pretty unique regional cuisine based on their resources, trade agreements, and level of landlocked. Additionally, if you all do choose Free Marches I will be polling only the city states till we figure out the order I knock them out. Makes the most sense to me than continuously recycling Free Marches in the main poll.

But thank you all who've been voting this far, you've made my NanoWriMo camp pretty focused and I've been making more progress than I was expecting.

[exhausted-archivist]

Foods of Thedas: Round 4

I want to take the chance to elaborate that Ferelden, Avvar, and Chasind are one option because they all come from the same culinary source: the Alamarri. But thank you all who've been voting this far, you've made my NanoWriMo camp pretty focused and I've been making more progress than I was expecting.

[exhausted-archivist]

So I'm working on drawing food for the headnotes of the recipes I've concepted out and haven't tested or fully worked out the kinks. I want to post something to celebrate The Veilguard drop, especially something I can queue up because I will be avoiding you all and the spoilers for at least a week haha.

The poll is below and the recipe headnotes are below the cut if you want an idea of what I'm working with.

Boiled Eggs and Pine Nuts Sauce (Appetizer) A simple and delightful dish one would not particularly expect from a nation of opulence such as Tevinter. A sweet dish with the perfect touch of zing, nutty, and savory notes, while holding a compelling contrast of being both crunchy and soft.

Deepstalker Stew (Soup/Stew) An uncommon meal, one that most won’t serve outside the appeal for an ‘exotic’ dish or in times of desperation. This stew is more often one to be consumed should you be stuck in the Deep Roads or an isolated cave. Not, at a tavern when one has been on the road for several days. It should be noted that depending on where you’re capturing these cave-dwelling creatures will dictate the taste. Many of the accounts I have heard from the Legionnaires describe the taste and texture akin to chicken. Whereas if you catch them near water sources they garner a fishy taste with the texture of chicken. But, this stew is simple in and of itself. Usually with very little substance aside from the meat and whatever edible additions you can forage for. In this recipe we have tried to enhance it with herbs, potatoes, and salt.

Braised Nug with Elfroot (Savory) This salty, aromatic dish melts in your mouth with its tenderness. Nug is a common and popular dish for Orzammar dwarves. One that lingers in some surface communities with a twist of new herbs and spices. Though humble is the nug and elfroot, this meal is filling and delightful in its own right.

Exquisite Misery (Dessert) The Orlesians are nothing if not indulgent and extravagant. From wyverns to phoenixes, Orlesians have a tendency to play chance with their lives for whatever element of decadence is in the trends. While deep mushrooms are perhaps the least lethal thing one can consume, I do advise avoiding eating too many of these little cakes. That said, should one partake and find that they are able to get past the musky, earthy flavor; these can be quite a treat. Fluffy, soft, and a touch sweet, it is a dessert I find best to consume after a rather savory or spicy meal.

Roasted Fiddleheads and Leeks with Goat Cheese (Vegetable) A dish available during only a few short weeks in the spring, fiddleheads have a delightful crunch from the roasting as well as their natural snap. They have a sweet, but not quite grassy taste to them almost akin to beans and asparagus. When paired with the sweet, caramelized flavour of the leeks and the creamy, tartness of your favourite goat cheese. It pairs well with a protein or on a bed of grains.

Seasoned Mussels (Seafood) The exact origins of this dish are unknown, given that Antiva, Rivain, and Tevinter hold strong ties to their coastal waters and each have several versions of how to make this dish. Most scholars declare it was Tevinter in origin due to the age of the Imperium, but the question then lies what area of the Imperium and when? The version I have crafted is a blend of Antivan and Rivaini flavours, as I prefer the shellfish off their coastlines to those of Tevinter. A rich dish that can be eaten with a fine pasta or spread over a bed of rice.

[exhausted-archivist]

I'm making some menus for different canon holidays. These are the ones I have so far:

First Day (Andrastian)

Wintersend (Andrastian)

Summerday (Andrastian)

All Soul’s Day (Andrastian)

Satinalia/Feast Day (Andrastian)

Allsmeet (Rivain)

Andraste’s Day (Andrastian)

Arlathvhen (Dalish)

Barnack Festival (Orzammar)

Coronation of the Divine (Andrastian)

Harvest Festival (Universal)

Hivernal Feast (Orlesian)

Hunt Ball (Nevarran)

Naming Day (Universal)

Solstice Celebration (Universal)

Summer Festival (Orlesian)

Winter Fest (Unknown/Tevinter)

List of all Thedosian Holidays if you need it. Feels weird asking you all to reblog if you vote, but I'd like to get a bigger sample size.

[exhausted-archivist]

Foods of Thedas Poll

So I've been cycling through a couple projects since they're all tangentially related and I have a process. But not the point. I'm going to start working on art for some of the food dishes so wanted to just see if anyone had any thoughts, hopes, dreams of what they'd like to see from my new fixation at this moment.

(I'm only leaving this up for a day because a week is too long.)

[exhausted-archivist]

Foods of Thedas: Round 6

Nevarra won the last poll and I got a little side tracked and forgot to queue this. Whoops lol

I'm hoping to be able to show some recipe progress, been getting a bit too deep in the research as I make my way through the list. Trying not to get too far ahead of myself. I'm about 2-3 regions behind the polls but I'm excited to get to Nevarra. That is one that is a little more ambiguous given it's seemingly temperate zone where it gets so cold in the winter that the river freezes over. I have several ideas for seasonal dishes.

[exhausted-archivist]

Foods of Thedas: Round 5

Next round on the docket, reblog to spread this around and all that. But also tell me where do you draw food inspiration from? Do you have a certain dish your OCs love? Do they have a special holiday dish?

Speaking of holidays, due to the results of this poll I'll be adding the following menus to the Foods of Thedas project:

The Grand Tourney (Free Marches/Nevarra/Orlais) Harvest Ball (Orlais) Drinking Festival (Universal/Antivan?) Feast of Urthemial (Ancient Tevinter)

I decided to go with the top four to bring the total menus to twenty, I really like round numbers what can I say. I also feel like they allow me to cover a lot of ground and might add a few special items specifically for these holidays/festivals, especially The Grand Tourney.

[exhausted-archivist]

WIP Wednesday: Foods of Thedas Project

Genuinely wasn't expecting Ferelden to be the winner for the last poll based off how all the previous polls went. I'll be posting the next poll next week on Wednesday, and I've gotten to a point with the recipes I think I'll start sharing some blurbs. I really appreciate all the participation.

I want to take the moment to just explain the scale of what this project has become, because boy oh boy did I fixate a little too hard on this with the recent limitations I've been having with my art.

So I've been pulling from historical recipes and have been knocking my way through each country. My goal was to just have fun with the recipes and not be too concerned with the amount. I was expecting to end at around 80 or so recipes in total.

Except I didn't. Now I'm sitting at 540 recipes that I'm going to need to organize a bit and probably make a few more so each nation can have the same amount. (Because I want them to be even.) This also doesn't account for the 180 drinks I have roughly written out. None of the dishes or drinks are fully workable yet though. I do hope to start making some of them workable and testing them out soon. My aim is to try and also test across dietary restriction, however I have a lot myself so I will be subjecting willing participants to testing things that I myself cannot eat.

Truly, I am risking being Icarus.

The goal was originally 80 recipes/food blurbs and I just stick it in one pdf/document. But now, I'm going to run this in a zine like format and just put out one nation at a time. At the moment I'm looking to put 20 per nation. Hopefully, by the time DA4 comes out I'll be ready to update/adapt things for Tevinter (maybe the Anderfels, Nevarra, and Rivain as well).

Oh also, complete sidenote. When the Official Cookbook for Dragon Age comes out I'll be putting out the updated master food and drink posts.

Wanna support this project or blog? You can check out my ko-fi.

[exhausted-archivist]

Early Thoughts and Feelings...

So, we got a look at the table of contents, the introduction, and a total of 13 recipes from the upcoming cookbook. I'm going to delve into my thoughts and preliminary feelings. I'm super excited but I have noticed a few things and I am excited to see how the book in its entirety pans out. This is going to be long so I will shove most of this under a cut cause it's long and yeah.

So lets start with the cover, easy, entirely picky of me and opinion based. The left is the final and the right was the early concept. We see that the red soup in a wooden bowl along with the gold font is really the only thing that stayed with the two covers.

Personally, and I know this is picky, but I like how the early concept reads better: "The Official Dragon Age Cookbook", versus the new one "Dragon Age The Official Cookbook Tastes of Thedas". The listing on Amazon has changed and the final wording is very clunky "Dragon Age: The Official Cookbook: Taste of Thedas".

It really comes down to how they arranged the words on the final cover, and there is probably some logistics to it and maybe some polling. But I think "The Official Dragon Age Cookbook: Tastes of Thedas" reads better and the arrangement would have looked nicer if they kept with the old formatting and added Tastes of Thedas below it. It's how my brain keeps trying to read it anyways.

Other than the title, I'm not a fan of the whole 4 blocks showing the individual dishes - images that are likely the same as their recipe page. It's definitely an improvement from the mock up which has a Lord of the Rings prop in the top left image. But I would have liked something more unique and interesting, whether that was a full table spread of all the dishes or something similar to the Critical Role cookbook where it's an illustration of a feast. But Insight Editions publishing does have a certain look with their cookbooks, and this is one of my more preferred ones out of their previous works.

General Page Layout and Structure

I do like the page layout over all, it's easy to read and fun. Little iffy on some of the font choices because they aren't too accessible. But overall, it's not too busy and is styled enough that it fits the theme and focus I think.

They also did this fun thing similar to what they did for the God of War cookbook, though less of the fun sketch style but still nice none the less. We see an outline of the map created for the Tevinter Nights anthology on the pages for the Starters and Refreshment contents list.

The images for the food are also charming in their own way. Some are very clear photoshop - the crab cakes with the photoshopped flames and smoke, the "lyrium" rock on the cave beetles spread. But I think it adds to this books charm and sort of whimsy.

Other than that, I noticed something within a couple of the recipe entries. The recipe blurb, essentially the section between the title and the recipe instructions, is rooted in lore. The recipes however are not. Best examples of this are the Eggs à la Val Foret and Fluffy Mackerel Pudding.

Here are their respective blurbs, emphasis text added by me:

Eggs à la Val Foret

Ah, yes. Tons of cream! Exactly what I've come to expect from Orlesian cuisine. Do I have any tips for creating the perfect poached egg? Well, ever since I heard that Solas's bald head was once likened to an egg, I simply try to make my eggs just as round and shiny! So far, it's worked wonderfully and never ceases to put a smile on my face.

Fluffy Mackerel Pudding

Can it really be Feast Day without fluffy mackerel pudding? No! In fact, there's no dish I associate more strongly with the holiday than this unique combination of mackerel, onion, celery, and eggs. Granted, I've heard stories that, several decades ago, someone once attempted a diet consisting entirely of fluffy mackerel pudding. Now, that I certainly wouldn't recommend. It stops being Feast Day Fish if you eat it every day, no?

When compared to the recipe given just below the ingredients don't match up. Eggs à la Val Foret is a play on eggs Benedict - which I will note there is also discrepancies between the image and the recipe; the image of this dish has bacon/ham, eggs, and hollandaise sauce on top of a pancake where as the recipe calls for an english muffin. Kinda funny honestly, but on top of that, this dish isn't one I would describe as having a lot of cream. So why would it be described as such? Well because of the note in Trespasser:

Yes, for Our Lady's sake, there was an official menu for the first day of a visit from the Inquisitor during an Exalted Council, but the paper was so old it fell apart in my hands! Our so-famous sous-chef needs to come out of her sulk, because we ARE doing Eggs à la Val Foret, and we WILL need enough cream sauce for tonight's course! The Council of Heralds and the Fereldans are in a pretty fit after the Inquisitor abandoned the talks. Dinner must be tremendous, or we'll hear about it.

Hollandaise sauce is described as a "creamy" sauce but it doesn't actually use cream, butter yes but not cream. It's mainly egg yolk, lemon juice, and melted butter with salt, white pepper, or cayenne pepper. There is a derivative called Sauce Bavaroise that does use actual cream as well as horseradish and thyme. There are also a few other derivatives that use cream and are considered a cream sauce.

Then with the Fluffy Mackerel Pudding, the recipe in the cookbook doesn't actually have onion or celery. It has egg and mackerel, but it also has potatoes in it. Something the original recipe, derived from the weight watcher recipe, didn't have. The original ingredient list we see in Origins is: celery, pepper, mackerel, diced onion, mustard, salt, Antivan pepper, ground mace, cardamom seed, eggs.

Now, it's obvious why they didn't keep the exact same recipe, but it is a little funny they didn't mention it to be a derivative of a classic recipe or the like, as they did with the Crab Cakes from Kirkwall - which are just fried shoft-shelled crab instead of your typical crab cake.

I'm not complaining about the differences though, I'm grateful and pleased to see the recipe blurbs being used as something to share more lore and create an atmosphere with and then have the recipes be a little more grounded in the realm of not only realistic, but also convenient for time, abilities, and skill. Eggs à la Val Foret even directs you to use store bought hollandaise sauce and the Snail and Watercress Salad calls for canned snails, I appreciate that it is going for something more realistic for the instructions and not being overly thematic and such. After all this should be a functional cookbook before its a lore book.

The way everything is organized and the recipes we see are really well varied to me, they're also not something one would consider "typical" western cookbook food - nettle soup, lamprey cake, blood soup (though I think this is likely the red, beet looking soup on the cover). These three have my big interest so I'm eager to see them. But they're also seemingly well varied in catering to not only different skill levels - beginner to more advance (One recipe is grilled chicken and another is a rather elaborate cake called blancmange.)

My initial impression is that this book is a step away from what this publisher has usually put out and I hope that remains true when we have access to the full release.

I think the only other thing I wrote down when reading the sample was that: I will continue to "not my canon" travel times provided, even though Devon was using a carriage, traversing all of Thedas in a year? Sus.

The other thing is in the Stuffed Deep Mushroom recipe where Devon is citing an example of why to be wary of lyrium being consumed by people without resistance, they cite Fenris. Who... I understand why they might have made that connection but also, that was a choice of ingesting lyrium and I just feel like using the templars would have been better? Especially Cullen, or if tying to Devon's hero worship and adventurer streak, King Alistair would have been a good example as the BioWare default has him as king and also taking lyrium again.

Fenris just felt like an odd choice on the whole "example about why ingesting things too close to lyrium is a bad idea" angle. Not wrong, just not the first one that comes to mind for me personally.

[exhausted-archivist]

Ah! This unintentionally landed in my draft, but looks like I'll be sharing street food when datv hits! I've got a lot of ideas already prepped for that category so this is exciting. Not to mention, it is such a wide umbrella I can probably touch on other.

I'm planning on doing 1-2 posts a week, mostly because I don't think I can draw that fast during October prior to the game haha. Going to be without my tablet for two weeks but we'll see!

So I'm working on drawing food for the headnotes of the recipes I've concepted out and haven't tested or fully worked out the kinks. I want to post something to celebrate The Veilguard drop, especially something I can queue up because I will be avoiding you all and the spoilers for at least a week haha.

The poll is below and the recipe headnotes are below the cut if you want an idea of what I'm working with.

Boiled Eggs and Pine Nuts Sauce (Appetizer) A simple and delightful dish one would not particularly expect from a nation of opulence such as Tevinter. A sweet dish with the perfect touch of zing, nutty, and savory notes, while holding a compelling contrast of being both crunchy and soft.

Deepstalker Stew (Soup/Stew) An uncommon meal, one that most won’t serve outside the appeal for an ‘exotic’ dish or in times of desperation. This stew is more often one to be consumed should you be stuck in the Deep Roads or an isolated cave. Not, at a tavern when one has been on the road for several days. It should be noted that depending on where you’re capturing these cave-dwelling creatures will dictate the taste. Many of the accounts I have heard from the Legionnaires describe the taste and texture akin to chicken. Whereas if you catch them near water sources they garner a fishy taste with the texture of chicken. But, this stew is simple in and of itself. Usually with very little substance aside from the meat and whatever edible additions you can forage for. In this recipe we have tried to enhance it with herbs, potatoes, and salt.

Braised Nug with Elfroot (Savory) This salty, aromatic dish melts in your mouth with its tenderness. Nug is a common and popular dish for Orzammar dwarves. One that lingers in some surface communities with a twist of new herbs and spices. Though humble is the nug and elfroot, this meal is filling and delightful in its own right.

Exquisite Misery (Dessert) The Orlesians are nothing if not indulgent and extravagant. From wyverns to phoenixes, Orlesians have a tendency to play chance with their lives for whatever element of decadence is in the trends. While deep mushrooms are perhaps the least lethal thing one can consume, I do advise avoiding eating too many of these little cakes. That said, should one partake and find that they are able to get past the musky, earthy flavor; these can be quite a treat. Fluffy, soft, and a touch sweet, it is a dessert I find best to consume after a rather savory or spicy meal.

Roasted Fiddleheads and Leeks with Goat Cheese (Vegetable) A dish available during only a few short weeks in the spring, fiddleheads have a delightful crunch from the roasting as well as their natural snap. They have a sweet, but not quite grassy taste to them almost akin to beans and asparagus. When paired with the sweet, caramelized flavour of the leeks and the creamy, tartness of your favourite goat cheese. It pairs well with a protein or on a bed of grains.

Seasoned Mussels (Seafood) The exact origins of this dish are unknown, given that Antiva, Rivain, and Tevinter hold strong ties to their coastal waters and each have several versions of how to make this dish. Most scholars declare it was Tevinter in origin due to the age of the Imperium, but the question then lies what area of the Imperium and when? The version I have crafted is a blend of Antivan and Rivaini flavours, as I prefer the shellfish off their coastlines to those of Tevinter. A rich dish that can be eaten with a fine pasta or spread over a bed of rice.

[exhausted-archivist]

Final results! Looks like Dalish are next up. These recipes I work on next will be sort of culturally universal foods but will not regional difference. I always planned on creating their food to be regional and not monolithic because they would vary depending on the country they were in. So going forward when we select which I focus on, I’mma work on the Dalish in that region as well.

I was also looking at the few canon recipes we have and they focus on Dalish in Orlais; though they do cite that the dish concept is universal, the provided recipe is specific to clans in Orlais.

Foods of Thedas Poll: Round 2

Okay, so I'm working on Antivan foods first cause of this poll I did a while back. It's going pretty well I have sketches but I want to pull some inspo from some 1800-1960 recipes from Italy and Spain before I start finalizing anything. That said... Poll time #2. Also I can only add ten so every time we knock one out I'll add the other ones on my list.

This time you all get a week because I've got some other things I'm working on along side this.