Underworld Cookbook
Author's Note: Enjoy the story and R&R.
Disclaimer: I do not own anything related to or of Magic: The Gathering.
Summary:
Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar is busy in Hell's kitchen.
Asmoranomardicadaistinaculdacar. Try pronouncing that in one mouthful.
Challenge accepted, you proclaim? It's your funeral, buddy.
No, truly. Get in the cauldron.
Seven years and more is a hell of a long time to be cooking for someone under penalty of being eaten yourself, but she'd made due with the ingredients life and her kitchen imps gave her. Considering she hadn't been plopped rudely onto the menu just yet, she must've been doing something right. Or, at least, strained the juices creatively enough there were always items superior to her gamy human skin to eat.
Vincent, the Lord of the Pit to whom her service was bound, had discerning tastes. He didn't put up with bland meals, and charged his personal chef/slave Asmor with the job of surprising him – feeding him fresh dishes he never savoured prior.
Yesterday was ooze aspic and jellied anurid eyes, green-orange frog glop her assistants spooned out on stone platters.
The day before were grey ogre toes drizzled in a hearty pressed Hurloon minotaur heart vinaigrette.
Beeble sauté (only the pinkest, most succulent beebles!) browned in Uthden troll fat over a fire bundled with brushwagg thistle goes great with a roc's egg. Dingus egg can be substituted if you're short a roc egg, in a pinch.
Breast of granite gargoyle is delicious, although obtaining gargoyle meat requires the appropriate carving tools. An ordinary cleaver will do for the meat, but for its perous hide, you'll need, say, a lightning axe. Marble gargoyle hide is even tougher, though the flesh is exquisite with thallids or simmered in a broth of manticore venom.
Palates unprepared for such delicacies may find them disgusting, inedible, or fatal. The great dark lord Vincent, however, could stomach a six-alarm burn.
The Underworld Cookbook, a gastronomicon Asmor published, was full of these and other recipes she'd served Vincent. Craw of craw wurm. Barbequed throat wolf ribs. Feast of the unicorn. Baloth stew. Atog pâté on honey-soaked ironroot bark. Homarid tails seared in aurochs butter. Skullmead. Mesa pegasi with a side of pixie purée.
Everyone loves a dash of crushed pixie…except the pixie. Any of the overworlders she broiled, fried, baked, or fricasseed, the denizens of the Pit who died from eating her food, or illiterates who didn't buy her damned book!
Everybody's a critic!
She'd table her disappointment for later. She had a demon to feed! The stuffed kusite roast on fruit was ready!
Her imps marched the toothed concoctions by for inspection, and Asmor delivered a chef's kiss.
"Cooked to perfection, of course. Just add garnish."
Plate by plate, she dropped a live Dakmor scorpion into each set of teeth. The fanged spinal ridges closed around the scorpions' tails, providing each helping the perfect stinger.