Alta'zula (all-ta-a-zoo-la)

Images by Kbignell via Midjourney

Alta'zula is a dish originated by the Seven Tribes of Uhl. Each tribe has its own specific recipe, but each has, as its main ingredient, the meat of an Ice-shade and the broad leaf of the Sandit bush. The basics of the dish are a thick, fresh steak of ice-shade meat, coated in various spices and salt, wrapped in an aged harvested leaf of the Sandit bush, then cooked slowly in a pit or over an indirect heat, typically cooked for 10 or 12 hours. The leaf keeps the juices of the meat inside, if wrapped properly. The wrapping is a skill, or more precisely, an art that usually takes months or turns to learn and a life time to perfect.
Once the dish is cooked, it is left to rest for several minutes until the swelling of the whole package reduces by half. The dish is turned over several times during this time. The outside of the leaf becomes crunchy and brown with tiny beads of fat leaking through here and there like delicious stars coming out in the darkening sky on a clear night.
The steak, leaf and all, is then cut into thin slices, the leaf sticking to the meat, bonded during its rest, the smell of meat and nutty leaf blending in perfection. The slices are served on sour white bread that soak up the juice of the meat. The taste is meaty, nutty, sweet, salty and sometime, depending on the specific tribe, spicy or garlicy. To have this dish cooked by an elder cook-master of any of the tribes is to truly taste life.
Few on the continent have tasted this dish because of the difficulty in obtaining the ingredients as well as the knowledge to cook it properly.
To be certain, the meat of the ice-shade is, in itself, a meal worth pursuing if you can, but to have it prepared by an expert chef as Alta'zula is the best way to experience the taste.