The Cuisine of Kjellos

Food in Craftsman's Reach and Kjellos centers primarily around the sea. In all the Sun Shores, Kjellos has the most developed and most consistent fishing -- bladefish, shrimp, salmon, bream, and others make up the majority of the diet. In the Reach, this is often supplemented with hare and other wild game, while Kjellos proper tends toward the raising of pork and chicken.

Common Kjellan dishes include...

Bladefish fried in oil with sardines and marjoram; commonly supplemented by the wealthy and the noble with Vesimian orange juice in the frying solution.

Boiled shrimp, served with fennel.

Salmon baked with salt and seasoned with pepper, parsley, anise and sage, then baked into a small pastry with a thick fish reduction sauce -- known generally as salmon pies.

Any fish cooked in a red wine sauce composed of the Kjellan standbys of vinegar, pepper, olive oil, caraway seeds, celery seeds, and dried onion. This is a common tavern food, as it can be prepared in large batches.

Halflings and gnomes prefer game animals to fish for the most part, probably stemming from the historic unavailability of saltwater fishing in the Reach, and therefore Kjellan cooking amongst the smallfolk (save the dwarves, who raise eels at Aella's Hall in great subterranean eel ponds) tends to focus on hare, partridge, eggs, chicken, and, when the hunting is particularly good, venison.

Stags on the peninsula are protected by decree of King Lucas, as they are the symbol of the royal house. Therefore, hunting parties are restricted to hunting fox, boar, and bears. Bear meat is considered to belong particularly to the province of the nobility of Kjellos, and killing a bear is thought to be a feat of particular skill -- this type of Kjellan hunting is done with a long two-handed spear, much the same as boar hunting, though it is generally heavier and used for thrusting, rather than skewering the oncoming foe. Killing a bear is thus, generally, something one does when passing to manhood or womanhood if one intends to be a knight on the peninsula.