Garudas Cuisine Menu Planning for Entertaining Humani as Guests.

Garudas Cuisine Menu Planning for Entertaining Humani as Guests.

(Humani as dinner was discussed previously)

The names herein have been translated to the nearest Humani language equivalent, as the Humani lack a syrinx to be able to properly pronounce words like 'ᔦᕔᕅᓳᔐᕒᔐᕔ', so we use 'Kaniswsa' which is the closest equivalent.

Unless artificially reinforced, even the heartiest and most robust Humani are fairly delicate, and special accommodations must be made when introducing them to Garudas Cuisine.

The heavy metal content of most plants and animals native to Garudas will easily overwhelm Humani single liver and relatively ineffectual kidneys. Experimenting with serving chelating agents between courses has not been shown to be sufficiently effective. Fortunately there are several Garudas foods which have moderate quantities of tin, manganese, zinc, iron, copper, silver, aluminium and nickel that will not be immediately toxic to Humani and have the added virtue that it will not induce nausea.

Important point to remember, Humani are delicate and cannot swallow anything large without choking. They also can die from bone constipation, and internal bleeding from even small bone slivers. The list of substances which are toxic to Humani’s delicate systems is far too long to list. They also seem to need meat to be cooked over 60 or 70 Centigrade, some even brag about broiling perfectly edible cuts of meat over temperatures of hundreds of degrees. It is very much like having to cook for infants, the elderly, or the infirmed.

The Garudas word for breakfast translates loosely to hunting reptiles. Many primitive reptile species are easier to hunt in the early morning, so they make a good breakfast treat.

My mother used to say that the early bird gets the varanus-komodoensis. Varanus-komodoensis is more of a stew pot slow-cooked meal, not really meant for breakfast. They are however, easier to hunt in the pre-dawn hours of the early morning.

Smaller lizards make for good appetizers and are more suitable for breakfast.

While lizards, snakes and other reptiles are our distant cousins, they are as distant as the all terrain platypus is to baseline Humani.

A popular breakfast treat is a nice crop filling gecko, that can keep you going for a busy day.

It is considered proper to eat the gecko whole. Swallow a few stones to help grind them up in your crop so you get a nice continuous full feeling thru the day. Healthy and hearty for the busy on-the-go Garudas. In general, several smaller meals thru the day that you can digest in one sitting is preferable. When you have a busy schedule, something that stones can grind up in your crop will keep you from being distracted from missed meals.

Humani do not have crops and cannot utilize crop stones to grind down the bones of animals they swallow whole. Humani are also susceptible to bone splinters from eating whole and cracked bones and can actually get acute constipation from trying. It is best to just allow them to cut the meat away from the bone and chew it in their mouths. Fortunately, it is not impolite to turn away and not watch them chewing.

Since the Garudas arrival the Mutter Spiral Galaxy, we have gained an appreciation for some Humani fare, root beer, sassafras, butter, garlic, ginger, and a few others. Most culinary experts agree, gecko’s are best eaten live with a bit of butter and garlic. However, remember, Humani are not equipped to digest the bones of animals, but also human’s have a delicate digestive system and mostly require their food to be pre-digested in the form of heating it.

Live gecko pairs well with honey in certain dishes. Tellurian honey bees are quaint and their honey is a somewhat weak, compared to what we are used to. Tellurian honey stores well though, shelf life is estimated to be tens of thousands of years in a cool dark place.

Garudas have never allowed Garudas honey to sit long enough to discover its true shelf life, it is far too dangerous to collect to waste

Humani are masters of food processing, and pre-packaged foods for long shelf like. That Tellurian delicacy similar to Styrofoam. Twinkies, have a shelf life measured in thousands of years. Some dehydrated pasta has a shelf-life measured in ice ages. The Humani delicacy of chocolate preserves well.

Fortunately, not all dishes are consumed whole. The yin-yang fish is challenging to prepare, but it is important to know what sensibilities your anticipated guests might have regarding cooking live food. You can imagine how difficult it is to batter-fry a fish while keeping it alive; and it is a tragedy to hate it spoiled by people's poor attitude.

The lesson of the yin-yang fish is that one must consider both sides of such a meal and find balance.

If your Humani guests are not too squeamish, they might like to try Nakji, but to be honest, I do not know if Humani have the apparatus to eat it. Nakji is a live octopus you eat whole and you crush it in your crop with some stones that you swallow. I am not sure how well that would work well with the Humani digestive system, although the Desertborn have a delicacy of drinking sand squid ink from a live sand squid, so perhaps.

I am guessing that most Humani can't eat even a small octopus whole, so you might want to can hire a competent Sannakji chef. Sannakji chefs know how to sever the tentacles of the octopus so that they stay alive longer. Each tentacle of the octopus has its own brainstem, so it can stay alive on its own for some time. If you really have concerns about your guests ability to resist chocking, Baby sannakji may be served cut into bite-sized, still-wriggling pieces, suction cups and all, or slurped squirming, whole. That way, the Humani don't need to swallow crop stones, and can experience the special thrill of the tentacle fighting its way down their oesophagus.

Note, the suckers on the octopus are known to stick to the tongue and mouth presenting a choking hazard. It is amazing how many simple and trivial things pose a danger to Humani.

Ikizikuri requires a specialized chef at the table who knows how to filet the still live fish. It is a lot like the Humani sushi concept. Usually you have the guest of honour pick out the animal they would like to eat from a tank. The chef then fillets it before their eyes, without killing it. It is then served on a plate with its sliced flesh on top for decoration and its heart still beating. If the chef is very skilled, you can have the filleted fish returned to the aquarium where it will swim around until the guests are ready for seconds.

Balut, which means “wrapped”, is a fertilized bird embryo incubated or allowed to grow invitro for a certain length of time, usually a few weeks, boiled alive in a savoury broth. Smaller bird species will probably not be a choking hazard for Humani. It is an easy to make and popular appetizer. Peel back the shell and along with a typical soft-boiled eggy interior is also the small inert body of a fetal bird —small bones, feathers, vestigial beak and all, some more developed than others. Most accounts suggest slurping it right from the shell with a pinch of salt, but unlike other Garudas foods, this one is considered acceptable to eat with a spoon or a fork.

Boil water gently in a pot, and put the balut in it for a few minutes. Untwist the salt and put it in a dipping dish. Hold the balut upright and, with the underside of a spoon, make a crack at the top of the egg. Chip away pieces of eggshell with your talons until you have a hole about the diameter of a finger. Sometimes you’ll see some kind of gauzy membrane, pierce it. You can peek inside the balut now and see the thick and flavourful amniotic fluid. You can still smell the faint, slightly gamey, deliciously menstrual aroma. Tip the egg to your mouth and suck out the amniotic fluid. Continue removing the eggshell. Depending on how you cracked it open, you may then see an undifferentiated mass of stuff that feels like slightly runny, soft-boiled egg in texture. Dip it in the salt and eat it. You may encounter a hard, spherical section that looks like a seed. It is not considered impolite to throw that away, but it’s all calcium and good for you. If you have an intact whole foetus, pick it up by the head , at which point the body unrolls from its fetal position and its little legs dangle — dip it into the salt, and pop it into your mouth. You can feel the feathers on your tongue. The bird’s eyes are closed, stories of it looking at you accusingly are apocryphal.

I am sure Humani can eat Drunken Shrimp. A popular appetizer when I was growing up. The shrimp are soaked in a strong liquor for 48 hours then eaten live, albeit unconscious. When prepared properly, they revive as you swallow them.

Another wonderful appetizer course before a meal would be Kanikwsa

It is difficult to find quality Tuluskuwa, although I am sure the Desert Dwellers could find us a nice Tuluskuwa substitute. Tuluskuwa is a crucial ingredient in a proper Kanikwsa, its meat is mixed with the rice and seasonings which become the stuffing insider the Kanikwsa. Tuluskuwa is a kind of snapping beetle, has the similar copper based haemoid-lymphatic fluid as Garudas. A kind of comfort food. The haemolymph is full of vitamins and nutrients, not to mention flavour. When little ones are feeling puny, you make them a nice Kanikwsa and they are cheered and strong in no time.

You slice a Kanikwsa from neck to tail and stuff it quickly, its blood mixes with the rice and creates the pasty filling. The Tuluskuwa adds a satisfying crunch, as well as a spiciness against the saltiness of the blood. Canned Tulukuwa does not have the same tang to it. When Tulukuwa is too long deshelled, it loses its tang quickly. I always find it best to always use live to start.

Kanikwsa is one of the few varieties of proto-mammals on Garudas, and many substitutes are easily found on other planets.

Usually, Humani preferred meat to be cooked to at least 60 centigrade and others say at least 70. It seems wasteful to me, what is the point of flavouring the air? It is a bit easier on the delicate Humani digestive system and palate, think like how to cook for infants or the very elderly and informed. Although they seem to prefer all their meat overcooked until the flavour is gone, but remember that these are your guests, and their digestive needs should be taken into account. If you have enough Kanikwsa, you can make one just for the Humani guests.

Many Humani guests would be too squeamish for Ortolan, but It is well within what seems to be the range of what Humani can swallow whole. Humani would likely not want to eat the Ortolan head or feet and some of the larger bones, but they is relatively soft and they can likely digest the rest. Ortolan is the Garudas dish that has the most favourable reviews by Humani that have actually tried it. It requires some advanced preparation, but perhaps worth the effort.

It is easy to set up snares to net a couple of Ortolan during their migration season, or even woodcock depending on the season, then force-feed them in a covered cage. The trick is to figure out how to season them from the inside by what you feed them.

An Ortolan is songbird that's small enough to fit into the palm of your hand, the average Ortolan weighs less than an ounce. Ortolan are neither especially pretty nor particularly musical, but they are delicious. They eat insects in summer, and grains and seeds from the ground at other times. You cannot shoot a tiny songbird out of the sky without destroying it and making it inedible, so we set traps during their migratory season.

The Ortolan are then kept in covered cages, encouraging them to gorge on grain in order to double their size. The fattened little birds are drowned in a vat of fine cognac, which snuff out their life and marinate them at the same time. Two birds with one drink.

When feeding to Humani, traditionally diners cover their head in a large napkin, then pop the entire bird into their mouth and eat everything save the feet, crunching the bones as they go. The napkin is partly to keep in all the aromas of the dish, partly to disguise the diner having to spit out some of the bigger bones.

Ortolan have a rarefied hazelnut flavour, mixed with the rich gamey hit you get from consuming the liver, heart and internal organs of the bird. With every bite, as the thin bones and layers of fat, meat, skin, and organs compact in on themselves, there are sublime dribbles of varied and wondrous ancient flavours: figs, cognac, dark flesh slightly infused with the salty taste of your own blood as you mouth is pricked by the sharp bones. As you swallow, draw in the head and beak, which, until now, have been hanging from your lips, then blithely crush the skull.

A Humani friendly main entre might be Komodoensis haggis, and most of the metals can be pre-chelated out with sufficient advanced notice and proper marinades. Another festival or big feasting meal, it is more of a community meal more than a family meal. I was pleased to note that there is a similar Desertborn recipe for it, except it excludes the necessity of the pre-chelated marinade. The native Garudas Komodoensis is probably too risky to serve to humani, no matter how much of the metals were chelated out and the toxins removed. Even if you could, it would be near flavourless and rubbery and tough by then, practically inedible, only good to make jerky with. Jerked Komodoensis however is quite safe to serve to even humani children. I keep some with me most of the time as a convenient snack on busy days.