Now, if you've never been to the city of Ooiooaa on the rogue planet of Aaa, what can I tell you? How can I convey the taste of the food there?
I can't. It's far too long a trip for native foods--the worms, the ever-popular peas (not peas at all but some sort of creature that colonizes the sea floor)...the very flavor of the water there is indescribably different, how can I convey that, let alone the taste of every Ooiooiaan's comfort food, peas and pucks?
And if I spend too much time thinking of it, I develop an irresistible craving for a nice warm bowl of peas and a soft, dense puck or two. What to do then? If I set out now it would still be months, if not years, before I set foot in that holy city.
There's nothing for it but to throw something together that at least approaches the food I'm missing. So!
My Recipe for Ooiooiaan Peas & Pucks
Well, already we're in for an argument. "Everyone" knows that peas and pucks is served with skel and a garnish of pickled onions. Except everyone doesn't know that--I met people in Ooiooiaa who were convinced that no real Ooiooiaan puts skel--the basic food of the much-hated Radchaai--on a good Ooiooiaan food like peas and pucks. And even the onions--I can't even describe to you how prevalent onions are in that city, how they are on the table at every meal, and nine times out of ten are in your drink. (I never did get used to hot onion water, but it's absolutely everywhere. Sit down in a restaurant and you'll be served a pot of hot onion water whether you want it or not.) But I was told several times that peas and pucks was never served with onions "in the old days."
I am not here to make any sort of declarations about the authenticity of one recipe or another. I am only trying to make a version of what I got from the food carts outside the Temporal Location of the Radiant Star. So, there will be skel--or "skel" --and onions.
1 cup of water
1 teaspoon dashi powder
1 teaspoon miso
As many fish balls as you're hungry for/fit in the pan
1 to 2 teaspoons cornstarch
1 tsp wakame
pickled onions
1 package refrigerator biscuits
First, put the wakame in a bowl of water to reconstitute. Bake the biscuits according to package directions.
Combine water and dashi powder, bring to a boil. Add the fish balls. Boil for about five minutes (or longer if they're still frozen). Add the teaspoon of miso and stir till it's dissolved.
Add just enough water to the cornstarch to make a slurry. Pour this into the simmering broth and stir constantly until thickened. Use more or less cornstarch depending on how thick you like it.
Drain the excess water from the wakame, add as much as you like to the pan, stir, and remove from heat. Serve over a biscuit, garnish with pickled onions.
Does it taste exactly like the peas and pucks of Ooiooiaa? It does not. But it's as close as we're going to get, from here.
