Tag, you're it, lol. Happy wbw too, but since you talked about food and made me hungry...
What's a cool food you incorporated in your world that comes from another culture? How you define that is up to you. And with that, is it a type of social meal that could be shared with a group? Any special associations to it in your writing?
I've posted before about Narul's favorite food, Kipsha. I could talk about that but that seems like cheating, so I'll talk about Ninma's favorite food instead.
Ninma's favorite food is nubut tuntiwanash literally "ovened fish" or more simply "Baked fish".
Well fish is pretty common across Kishetal (its enjoyed often fried or raw in the city of Chibal) and the Green Sea in general, nubut tuntiwanash is unique to the shores of Lake Shebali.
The dish is incredibly varied, not only from city to city but from class to class. What you would find at the docks in Naloch is entirely different from what you would be served at the palace in Labisa.
In general it consists of a lake fish of some sort, wrapped with various herbs and fruits, placed within the coals of an oven.
The wrapping varies from various leaves, to cloth, to strips of meat, to even the skin of another larger fish.
For most people its reserved for special occasions, like festivals and weddings.
Ninma, as a princess is used to a quite extravagent version of the dish.
Shebalian Trout is cleaned and stuffed with regalu (Sun fruit: a citrus which tastes somewhat like a mixture of lemon and orange), various herbs, lisiki (a seed with similiar effects to sichuan peppercorn), and sheep fat.
The fish is then wrapped in the skin and fat of a horned rabbit or jarurnba along with more olives. (several domestic varieties horned rabbits exist in Kobani. The variety preferred in Labisa is unusually fatty, far fattier than non-horned rabbit species)
The dish is then placed in the coals to cook, typically alongside the bread which it is served with.
After it finishes cooking it is unwrapped and sprinkled with olive oil, vinegar, and salt.
The dish is most typically served with wine
In the story when Ninma is stuck in the wilderness with Narul, gnawing on dried fish and stale bread, this is one of the dishes she thinks about.
Ninma ignored him and continued her search; stale flatbread, dried fruits, dried fish, and a skin of water, full to bursting. With a huff she extracted a length of fish and set about gnawing on the stringy salty flesh, occasionally stopping to pick the saline fibers from her teeth. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine the pink-fleshed lake fish that had often graced the royal table, baked in sheep's fat and covered in Sinrian spices and chopped red olives, all dripping with brine and grease.
