Roasted Cockatrice

Welcoming an important guest to the Soft Stone Monastery traditionally involves the serving of a special dish. Commonly referred to as roasted cockatrice, this dish is widely rumored to be worth becoming a patron of the monastery all on its own.

The simple name of the dish belies the effort and skill that goes into its making. The ingredients for the original recipe are snow cockatrice meat, ice spices, salt, garlic, and ashrooms. Recent variations have swapped out the cockatrice for bison, snow grouse, and even bear, as a way to hunt less dangerous game. Sometimes butter is used in the garlic sauce.

The dish is served raw, in a deep plate, with the meat resting on a bed of ashrooms. Separate bowls contain the ice spices, salt, and garlic, which is ground into a paste, optionally with butter. Then a spark is struck into the plate and the ashrooms burst into their gentle, bright flame. As the meat cooks, its juices mix with the delicious ashroom ashes and slowly create the sauce. The salt is added and the meat is stirred often in the flame, to better mix the juice with the ashes and also baste the meat with the sauce.

This is where the best chefs show their skill. It is a point of honor to have calculated the ashrooms precisely so that the meat is perfectly cooked just when the flames die out. At that point the ice spices and garlic sauce are added as a final garnish. Alternatively, as some guests prefer some actual ashroom with the final dish(or when a chef overestimates the amount of ashrooms needed), the ice spices are sprinkled on to douse the flames early(with a dramatic puff of smoke), and preserve some fungi for a different texture.

It is customary for important discussions to take place while the dish is cooking in front of the parties concerned and the amazing taste always helps salve the pride of whoever gets the short end of the deal. It is usually not the monastery.

Important Locations

• Soft Stone Monastery

Related Organizations

• The Order of the Open Hand