LE Nordic Cuisine - An idea I had in my mind

[EnigManic]

This sounds like a fun idea. I'd be willing to help come up with some recipes.

[Omeletter]

@EnigManic

 

Thanks. I'm not looking for recipes at the moment, but you can greatly help me by taking pictures of raw meat. I'm going to need a wide range of high-res textures of animal meat, fat, organs, etc. such as this one for example (Ok, maybe not that high res, but it would be nice if it was), as I will need to texture lots and lots of animal cuts.

[Omeletter]

Ok, another wall of text here.

 

I've been thinking about few things. First of all being the name of the mod. "Nordic Cuisine" doesn't exactly suit this mod. While yes, that is what partly the mod will offer, it isn't the only thing it will offer. The cuisine in Skyrim is varied from region by region, and has been shaped by foreign influences and trade over the period of Skyrim's history. You will be able to experience fruit and berries harvested from the forests of Falkreath and Riften, Breton dishes, expensive seasonings, and many imports in the markets of Solitude, and the freshest game from the tundra of Whiterun on sale in the Plains District. Thus, in my opinion, a more suitable name would be "Cuisine of Skyrim".

 

I haven't mentioned sugar, but it is probably easy to guess judging by the recipes I've talked about in the previous posts that it will be added by this mod. Pies, tarts, and sweetrolls all require sugar, and this mod will provide sugar. There is moon sugar, which is "an addictive drug found in sugar canes native to the Tenmar Forest of southern Elsweyr.", so there is no harm in assuming that there is sugar cane which yields your common everyday sugar that is grown elsewhere in Elsweyr and exported to various provinces of Tamriel.

 

While we're on the topic of baked stuff, I've also been thinking about their designs and styles. Sweet, fruit or berry pies will look like this, similar to the vanilla apple pie. This is for the purpose of decoration - a good looking thing on the dinner table, its looks matched by its taste. Pies containing poultry, meat, fish, vegetables, etc. will look like this, for the purpose of sealing the juices inside, and also for ease of transportation, as pies filled with meat is a satiating, tasty dish that is easy to handle on the go. Pumpkin pies, of course, would look like this.

 

Bread. Since this mod is going to add more types of bread such as rye, there has to be some way to distinguish them. Vanilla bread looks exactly like the traditional sourdough bread; a rye flour based starter and wheat flour, so that's very good. I've been thinking that rye bread should have the same breadloaf style, but should be richer and darker in colour. Special loafs that had spices, nuts, fruit, etc. added to them will have a more elaborate design such as this Finnish rye bread, or these two sourdough breads. This is a good example of a wheat nut/fruit loaf - walnut and raisin bread. Large, round loaves will be able to be split into fours, while bread loaves will be able to be split into two portions.

 

Small bread rolls that could go along with the main meal will look like these, or perhaps like these for a simpler design. Rye versions will be available.

 

Flatbread will look like this - Flatbrød. As always, there will be a rye alternative. Hardtack - ship biscuit, will look like this. Biscuits will look like this and will be able to be made with either wheat or oatmeal and have different fruit/berries in them.

 

Meat

 

Note, this section may make no sense whatsoever, so I'm going to edit it and refine the ideas later on. This is not the final model. Just an idea.

 

I've finally looked into cuts of beef. I've found these two very good resources illustrating the different cuts of beef. One. Two. As you can see, making over 30 (maybe a hundred if we're including other animals) different types of cuts, putting them into the game, and making them work with recipes while being easy for the player to understand is going to be a very tricky task. I'd say it's impossible. However, if you look at the bottom of the Angus Beef Chart, it says that;

 

22% are steaks,

22% are roasts,

26% is ground beef and stew meat,

30% is made up of fat, bone, and shrinkage.

 

and after looking at Wikipedia and the charts, I found out that;

 

The Chuck contains a lot of connective tissue. Meat from the chuck is usually used for stewing, slow cooking, braising, or pot roasting. Few steaks, few is still more than 0, few steaks are also made from the chuck - chuck eye steak. So, the chuck provides all the three types - Steak, Roast, Stew. Note, cuts that are said to be used for braising can be cut into stew meat, they are a pot roast, but those used for boiling are stew meat.

 

Brisket and Foreshank - Braising, so basically roast and stew meat.

 

Rib - Ribs for roasting, roasts, and steaks.

 

Short loin - Steaks. Tenderloin roast or numerous filet mignon steaks. Tenderloin roast and the filet mignon steaks will be separated from simple "Beef steak", will be more expensive, and just to keep variety.

 

Sirloin - Steaks.

 

Short Plate and Flank - Braise.

 

Round - Steak and Roast.

 

Then there is offal - tongue, liver, heart, kidneys, tripe, maybe even lungs.

 

The rest is fat and bones. The fat is going to be able to be rendered into Tallow, which can be used to replace butter in cooking ingredients, in particularly, pies, quiches, and tarts. The pastry is called shortcrust pastry and is made using the "half fat half flour ratio". The fat is any fat solid at room temperature. Butter, Lard, Tallow, for example.

 

The bones are going to be used to make stock, which will be used to enrich various dishes. For example, a very simple one. Rice. Rice made with stock tastes amazing, so it will have better benefits in game.

 

Now, we don't have many cuts, even though I want an in-depth butchering system. We have the 4 main cuts of meat - steak, roast, braise, and stew meat.

 

Steaks are steaks.

Roasts are roasts, but they can be made into stew meat.

Braise cuts are for braising, searing then slow cooking with water, but also can be made into stew meat.

Stew meat is stew meat. Basically meat cut into cubes.

 

This sounds confusing, but let's put this into in game situation. You've got a Chuck. You use the butchering menu and you get, lets say, 3 steaks, 4 roasts, 9 braising cuts. You then cook the steaks, roast the roasts, and then turn the braising cuts into 18 stew meat. That stew meat can be used to make 18 stews.

Edited January 21, 2013 by Omeletter

[Eckss]

Looks good. :thumbsup:

 

Lungs are a vital ingredient for Haggis (which some sources say was brought to Scotland by Viking settlers) - which is basically stomach stuffed with minced offal and barley and spiced with lots of pepper.

As you can see, making over 30 (maybe a hundred if we're including other animals) different types of cuts, putting them into the game, and making them work with recipes while being easy for the player to understand is going to be a very tricky task. I'd say it's impossible.

 

That's why I suggested Fresh Meat as a generic meat, however I like your idea of Steak or stewing meat etc.

 

Stews and pies both use the same meat. Any cut can be stewed, it just requires different cooking times depending on how tough it is. A cold stew can be used as pie filling.

There is a significant difference between red and white meat as much as between fish and fowl, so I suggest having 4 meat types: Fish, Fowl, Red Meat, White Meat; with the possible addition of Horker and shellfish.

 

For the purpose of an easy to use Mod, the differences between a stew made with goat or beef or venison probably shouldn't be as great (if there is any difference at all) as the difference between them and chicken or fish stew.

 

All in all, I'm liking where you're going with this. Good Modding. :D

[Omeletter]

Yeah, haggis seems like a good thing to put in the mod now. I'm also going to include sausages in that case. Few kinds will be added, most likely using offal meat in the recipes, just like they were traditionally made. Some will be dried to last longer. You will require pig's intestines though. I think there might be boars in the Dragonborn DLC, so they could be used instead.

 

Yep - cooked meat is used as filling instead of it being cooked inside, so a stew can work with a pie.

 

I was thinking of having several meat categories as well. Mainly, it is grouping birds into poultry, and beef, goat, and horse into simply "meat", while venison, bear, and other possible cuts being "game meat". This is mainly for complex recipes like pies, not simply cooking the meat on its own. For example, chicken or pheasant can be both used to make a Poultry and Mushroom Pie.

 

Stuff like Horker, Salmon, Dog (will become Wolf instead, makes more sense), and whatever else there is will be kept separate.

 

I was also thinking about that gourd thing we have in Skyrim. It's useless, and it was wrong to place it into the game, considering the climate, even in Riften, is unsuitable for it to grow. I was thinking of renaming it to Squash and allowing the player to use it in cooking, using it in similar recipes to butternut squash, for example.

[Eckss]

One of my favorite Uncles (RIP) worked in North Africa for many years and he said that the cook at his work cooked a delicious cous-cous dish (which would contain gourd & cabbage in Skyrim) and the other workers kept arguing over whether it was lamb or goat meat. The answer to this quandry could be found by noticing that the number of stray dogs hanging around the outskirts of the living area went down by 1 every time he cooked it. :D

Apparently dog tastes a lot like mutton or goat and stews up really nice.

 

My dad used to poach venison in his youth and he said you can turn a whole deer into sausages in one night using it's own intestines (old poachers' trick to hide stolen meat - no-one can prove the source of meat in a sausage)

 

On the matter of salmon, I don't know how nutricious sushi is, but I suspect it isn't necessarily as much less nutricious than cooked fish as is the case in vanilla Skyrim.

 

On the matter of Horker, Eskimos eat raw frozen blubber to keep warm; it's apparently very effective.

 

On the matter of Gourd, use it anywhere pumpkin, squash, marrow (which makes great homemade rum btw) or courgette can go. Soup, stew, stir-fry (or other method of doing cooked mixed veg or greens).

[Omeletter]

Hahaha, that's pretty funny! I wonder what their reaction was when they found out what they've been eating...

 

I looked around the internet a bit, and yes, dog and wolf stews up really nice, that's true. Someone served wolf meat without people knowing, and when he told them what they ate, they didn't believe it - it tasted too good. Also, "during the filming of The Grey, the cast members famously ate wolf meat. Accounts on how wolf meat tastes vary greatly, with descriptions ranging from "tough", "gristly", "distasteful" and "smelly", to "somewhat [resembling] chicken", and "very superior to lean venison"." So, I guess wolves can be used to replace some meat in stews, but it's best kept separate from other recipes when cooking it on its own.

 

Sushi is a no no in this mod. I can't see it being lore-friendly in any way. While the Dunmer certainly had some asian influences, they are a unique race with a unique homeland. Maybe high elves had some sushi, but I doubt anyone wanted to bring the recipes to Skyrim. Even if somebody did, I can't see anybody making it considering this High-Elf/Thalmor thing going on.

 

Yes, blubber of many animals - seal, whale, walrus, is eaten by many cultures living near the arctic. Many ways of preparing as well, and many uses for it besides food. Very healthy - animal fat full of Omega 3 and Vitamin D. What's not to love? Yeah, I said animal fat is good. People, and other animals, have been eating it for hundreds of millions of years as things evolved. I'm willing to bet this whole "low fat, plenty of grain" message that is common today is just a bunch of crap.

 

Anyway, I decided to google walrus meat. This is what I got. It is basically "Horker meat" we get in Skyrim, except it actually looks correct. This is Skyrim's meat. Skyrim's horker meat is muscle riddled with fat, while realistic walrus meat is blubber. I'm going to change Horker Meat to Horker Blubber, along with the texture. Horker Meat will be actual meat, deep below the fatty surface of the horker.

 

Marrow? Oh, you mean the type of squash. Yep, those are the uses I want to give to the Gourd.

[Eckss]

I wasn't suggesting that you add sushi, i was suggesting that the nutritional value of raw fish (and other raw meat) is currently too low in Skyrim. Lots of real world cultures ate raw meat/fish and, although cooked protein is easier to digest, and cooking destroys microbes, calorific content is unchanged:- Eat 3lb of raw Venison and you'll probably catch E-Coli, but you will get approximately a day's worth of calories, just as you would if you cooked it.

 

As to the workers' reactions when the stray dogs ran out, some threw up (a bit late) others were disgusted, even more so when my uncle pointed out that they'd been feeding their scraps to the other dogs. They chased him into the desert when he asked them whether the dish got better when cooked with dog-fed-dog. :P

[Omeletter]

Oh, I see. I don't know about increasing the value of raw food. That's a good reason for cooking food in the game. Cooked food will have small stat/skill bonuses along with increased health/stamina values. If I were to increase it for raw food, I feel that people might sometimes eat up raw meat just because. As you said, cooked protein is easier to digest. Cooked anything is easier to digest. I've read somewhere that humans managed to evolve to this, well, stage, because they have learned to use fire to cook meat, fatty bone marrow, and some vegetables, which not only made food easier to digest, but also opened up more things in said food to digest, as some vitamins and energy are broken down by the heat to a useful form. It's also the reason cooked vegetables, for example, taste better. A roasted carrot will be easier to draw nutrients and energy from.

 

@Workers

Haha, wow. I didn't expect that last part. Hmm... what if he made that couscous with dog-fed-dog-fed-dog? :biggrin:

 

Ok, tomorrow I'm going to make a big post once again. I'm far too captivated by Half Life 2 to do anything here. The thing is, the more I play the more I want to play!

[Eckss]

Cooking releases Anti-Oxidants from some vegetables, but also destroys a lot of vitamins. As to flavour, cooked veg tastes better because it's usually salted and often has other stuff on it. If you want to test for yourself, get some carrots, Boil half in water only and leave the other half raw: Then do your own taste test. Most veg is boiled in salted water which is a flavour enhancer. Plain boiled carrots are bland, raw ones are noticeably better.

 

On the subject of meat, the biggest advantage is the destruction of microbes which prevents parasites/disease, second is ease of digestion. However, cooked meat animal feed (Dog/Cat food &tc.) is so lacking in vitamins that if it wasn't supplemented by the manufacturer it would cause malnutrition in the animals concerned.

 

Overall, we are better off eating cooked food, but it's not such a one-sided comparison as you think.

 

On the subject of dog-fed-dog: There's a reason he was one of my favourite uncles, he was a great raconteur and lived a very interesting life; I had a lot of uncles growing up. :) I guess I was lucky that way.