Fingelan

"It tastes great, so long as you don't smell any of it before you're done swallowing it."

A Kalemite fisherman describing fingelan to Grand Surveyor Zaoh Zenya

A rather notorious dish originating from the southernmost parts of Kalem. Making fingelan is a very involved affair, as well as a long-term project. First, you take a whole fish - typically lean fish like snapper or halibut, but some Kalemites swear by using fatty fish- then completely scale and gut it. After that, marinate the fish in a wine bath, then stuff it with garlic, rice, and an earthy herb native to Kalem called multa. Once the fish has been stuffed, put it in a jar filled with salt. Seal the jar, then bury the jar in soil for thirty days, taking it out every six days to dump out the salt and replace it with more salt. (Thrifty fingelan makers usually keep the fishy salt and will mix it into boiling water and then separate the salt from the water via evaporation, allowing the salt to be reused for other purposes or for filling the fermentation jar again.) Once the thirty days of fermentation have passed, take the fish out and boil it until it almost completely liquifies and becomes a stew. It is usually recommended to do this step outdoors to prevent your home from smelling like fermented fish for days on end.
Despite the pungent aroma that fingelan possesses, it has a very complex flavor profile and is often used as a cure for colds and hangovers. Some Kalemites let the fish ferment for even longer- one household allegedly had a jar of fermenting fish that dated all the way back to the Age of Scouring. If such a claim is true, fingelan has been around for centuries.