Voidbrood Cuisine

Voidbrood cuisine varies quite a bit in spite of their nutrient-poor native environment.
Like the voidbrood themselves, their foodstuffs are organosilicon-based, with a side of minerals and metals, and to a lesser extent, carbon-based compounds. The tissues of Abyssan organosilicon lifeforms are made of various types of silicone, and their bones of silicon-based ceramics.

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Spine Tree Bark Bread

Prompt: Bread

Ingredients
– Spine tree bark flour
– Water
– Leavening agent of choice
– Rock salt
– Optional other spices

This is your basic bread recipe, and there are many variants of it. It's usually baked, or fried in oil.
Bread is commonly eaten with dried or fried meat of various creatures, as a side to other dishes, or when fried with spices also on its own.

While it does have thorns, the spine tree is named for the appearance of its trunk, which looks like a spine — as in, the kind made of vertebrae.

Stuffed Spine Tree Fruit

Prompt: Plant-Based

Ingredients
– Ripe spine tree fruit
– Dried crystal vine berries
– Chopped lantern plant bulbs
– Chopped void lichen
– Oil for marinating and frying
– Powdered sunblood
– Optional other spices

The fruit of the spine tree is bulbous, purplish-black, and has a rich umami taste when fried.
The core is removed and the fruit stuffed with a mix of chopped lantern plant bulbs and crystal vine berries, both marinated in oil flavored with void lichen and sunblood.
The fruit is then fried until crispy, and often served with crystal berry wine.

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Rock Crab Dumplings

Prompt: Dumpling

Ingredients
– Minced rock crab meat
– Lantern plant root flour
– Chopped void lichen
– Rock salt
– Oil

Mix all ingredients, form them into dumplings and boil them for a simple meal that tastes great with rock crab sauce.

Rock crabs are crustacean-like creatures found on many large asteroids.

Rock Crab Sauce

Prompt: Condiment

Ingredients
– Algae broth
– Chopped dried rock crab
– Chopped void lichen
– Powdered sunblood
– Oil

A spicy sauce with a meaty flavor used as a condiment for a variety of dishes.

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Leviathan Stew

Prompt: Soup

Ingredients
– Algae broth
– Chopped leviathan meat
– Chopped void lichen
– Powdered sunblood
– Optional other spices
– Spine tree bark bread as a side

A very common stew available in every spaceport tavern. There are local and personal variants, but the base recipe remains unchanged.

Leviathans, also konwn as space whales, are large nomadic creatures the voidbrood have used as food and means of transport long before they acquired voidships.

Ice Wraith Blood Sorbet

Prompt: Frozen

Ingredients
– Ice wraith blood
– Mashed lantern plant bulbs
– Crystal vine berry juice

Ice wraith blood contains the same carrier molecule as voidbrood blood, giving it the same bright yellow or dull orange color.
Mixed with lantern plant bulbs and crystal vine berry juice and subsequently frozen, it makes for a reddish-orange sorbet with a rich and fruity taste, rounded off with a slightly sour note.

Ice wraiths are native creatures of many ice rings and small moons with cryovolcanic activity.

They look like the offspring of very large jellyfish and some kind of ethereal bird.

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Crystal Berry Wine

Prompt: Fermented

Ingredients
– Crystal vine berries
– Fermentation microbes of choice

Crystal vine berries come in small, bluish-black clusters and have a fruity, slightly sour taste. They can be eaten raw, but are often dried or frozen for preservation.
Their juice is a deep red, and the wine has the same color.
When made from dried berries, the wine is sweeter, while overripe berries result in a higher silanol content.

The crystal vine is a climbing plant found on larger asteroids. Its name comes from the moissanite scales covering its mature stems.

Spicy Lemonade

Unsolicited Bonus Content

Ingredients
– Water (regular H₂O will do)
– Spent uranium fuel rods
– Optional flavoring

Voidbrood have a not entirely undeserved reputation as being walking, talking toxic waste dumps. What less extremophile species consider hazmat, they might very well consider food. Such as contaminated reactor coolant.
An accidental discovery in the most literal sense, spicy lemonade has become a bit of a staple and is now produced on purpose and with fewer partial reactor meltdowns.
It's a hot, fizzing, yellowish liquid with a uranium content high enough to kill in a short time — unless, of course, you can digest the stuff.
Spicy lemonade is the the number one energy drink among voidbrood. It comes in a variety of flavors, or without any added flavoring.

The term "lemonade" is the human moniker given to the drink, due to its appearance.

But its color doesn't come from lemons, nor does its fizziness result from carbon dioxide coming out of solution — instead, both are due to happily fissioning uranium-235, which makes it boil.

Since voidbrood are radiotrophic, they can taste gamma and Roentgen radiation, which they commonly describe as "spicy".

Sunblood is the common name for a range of yellow uranium-bearing minerals widely used as a spice.

Related Species

Voidbrood

Primary Related Location

Abyss

Entry for the unofficial challenge Food, Glorious FOOD! (May 2024) by moonflower-writing.