2008-03-03 - Cooking a Hutt banquet

Galley-cooking, Hutt-style. Oh, woe is the stomach of the 'guest' of the Hutt, lest they savor the flavor of things which most other species might deign better to dispose of than digest. Many a visiting dignitary aboard the new Battlecruiser Stormfront has lost weight while waiting around. But...the Brood of Zergata, this is a group of sentients whose tastes for food are as different as their choice of company. Hardship breeds stalwart stomachs and sometimes, less-certain morals. 
Tonight's menu features a special dish prepared in honor of one human visitor-prisoner, should-have-been-dilletente, could-be-spy-but-definitely-head-turning-human-babe Karin Morrow. Fried Gonogo-Tree Spike-Snails with a Neep-Neep bechamel sauce, harvested today from Cerebra's vast holdings on his newly-aquired planet, Ardak. None other than head-chef Gaja Mardaka is at work in the huge kitchen, squalking orders at the help and working furiously to prepare the side-dishes while the Spike-Snails get their initial preparatory treatment - the careful snipping off of their terminal spike-ends, which are laden with a most-fatal brand of neurotoxin. Nearly the whole batch has been clipped, and only one sous chef has died so far. For a spike snail feast...so far, so good.
"Nreee, be-borsch, de-beep-bork, de moork be free goor, de toor - moor-moor-moorp!" Gaja sings contentedly to himself while his hands dance before him, knives whirling in a blur, chopping up vegetables for a companion stew.
The busy doors to the kitchen open and close endlessly, the pained hinges screeching every time a sentient runs for wares, platters, and other things crucial to the chaos-edge cooking that takes place under Gaja's skilled supervision. A particularly loud *Squeak* comes not from a heated hinge, but a gaunt Gamorrean who - when running out of the doors to fetch bread - collides with the knees of a human being. Let the mind's eye move up, to a leather belt keeping many-pocketed trousers in place, and a silk tank-top whose rich fabric compliments a pair of amused, dark eyes.
"I knew you were preparing a war," comes Karin's voice, bright with irony. She steps aside to let the servant bustle by. "But I never knew it took place in a kitchen!"
The whirring knives come to a sudden halt as the heart-achingly _feminine_ sound of Karin's voice is heard. Gaja's great floppy ears twitch, and the Ortolan's thin lips turn upwards in a slight smile behind his dangling trunk. He turns towards the archeologist with both pieces of cutlery gripped tightly, turned outward, pointing at Ms. Morrow...but not in a threatening way. The Ortolan waggles his ears in greeting, and then holds his trunk off to the side while he bows from the shoulders up.
"Ah, arky lojist lady. Good see you again. Like you shirt - Corellian spouse-handler model? Very good fashion. No Ortolan know fashion...but paint-fur. We paint-fur, very nice." 
He then sets the knife in his right hand down and picks up a just-washed orange tuber. "You hungry? Come kitchen? Dinner ready - three hour - but Gaja can make you quick salad. You need food now, belly angry?"
"Vanixian, actually." The archaologist sends an easy smile at the Ortolan and strides through the kitchen, setting a straight line towards Gaja. A few helpers, otherwise on collision course, quickly steps around her. "I like your dress. Very metallic, very haute couture."
Karin's lips quirk in an ironic smile at the little chef, but there is no menace in her eyes - nor is there anything but earnest kindness in the wink that she gives the other. "I'm not really hungry, just looking around. It's really boring, you know, hanging out in a cargo bay with nothing to do but look at ships. Mind if I lend a hand?"
Gaja steps to his right, making more room at the long prep counter. "Please, I honoring. Speak not good basic, eh, but get better. Practice with you speaking." He gestures towards a large pile of unwashed, unpeeled tubers - more of the orange ones, and a great many grey ones with red splotches on them, besides.
"If you like no-brains work...wash-peel Trukko root." He then points further to his right, over a prep-sink and at a 12-burner range. Another Gamorrean stands before it, watching pots and stirring one then the next. He scurries to Gaja with a ladle full of liquid, and the Orto sniffs, and shakes his head in disapproval. "Need four more spice!" he quips, "Not too much, no-no! Gremman, Fergamoch, Fre-Mek, salt - pinchy-pinchy."
"Why not start wash root, tell Gaja...about you dig old house?"
"Ah, your basic is fine, my friend. I've met Ortolans who couldn't even make themselves understood!" Karin's eyes follow the Gamorrean's path to Gaja, her ever-amused smile lingers at the edges of her lips at their exchange. "Just let me at those roots," she then grins and steps over to the counter. The archaeologist's hands lift and grab the ponytail on the back of her head, tugging to tighten it. "It's not always a house. It can also be a spaceship, a whole planet... or maybe just a mysterious device that noone can date. Don't you have things like there where you come from... where /do/ you come from?"
A lithe hand reaches out towards a grey and red root, turning it over a few times before determinedly scrubbing it with a nearby brush.
 "Planet Orto!" Gaja exclaims, chuckling. "Ortolan from Orto, much all. Not very good planet - better than though Nar Shaddaa. But Ortolan...many leave Orto. It dying - little food. Also...Ortolan no like Ortolan. Sad species. No make partners, no make baby like other type, especially human. Human -VERY- nice for make many baby. So many human! How many baby you make? Fifteen? Twenty-five? Gaja hear many human mama make forty baby. Sell some for slave, keep other for make good money?"
His quick hands go back to work, knives a-whirring and chopping once more. Bowl by large bowl, he prepares the ingredients for the large stew which will form the main caloric portion of the meal. The Spike-Snails are a rare delicacy...and must be taken in smaller portions. Unless, of course, you are a Hutt - in which case they are devoured by the platter-full.
 Karin leans to the side, curiously eyeing a container with a myriad of crab-like creatures. Her hands still their work on the root as she bows over to inspect them further -- but her head snaps back when one of the blue shellfish suddenly lounges at her face, however inefficiently. It drops back into the jar with a drawn-out squeak, and the lady returns her attention to the vegetable with an expression of disgust.
"I never visited Orto, I fear. But I may, later," comes her dark alto at Gaja. The eyes take on a sparkle at his question of babies. "And humans like one another, so we make babies. But not... quite so many as twenty five. Most have two, three or four. I have none! And," an odd look is flicked to the blue creature. "I doubt any human would willingly sell their child to make money. But they may be forced to do so, to survive. How do you prepare these?"
The lady's gaze drops to the root, her hand discarding the brush and poises itself over a knife, pausing.
 Gaja listens to Karin explain how human women don't make forty babies, and nods politely even though his expression might indicate he doesn't wholly believe her. After all, there are just so damn many humans in the galaxy. There has to be a reasonable explanation for the mess. He reaches down for the large jar of Scuttlescrubs (aka blue crabs) and sets it on the table.
"This, two way make ready: first...fry quick in deep oil. Sprinkle salt. Very good this type, and so easy. 'Scuttlescrubcorn', from Vanix II. Vanix human no eat! Say it only problem, crab-thing make poop which eat metal-city feet. This nonsense. Tasty, very tasty, no poison, not like Spike-Snail. Second way...inject shell with fruit-acid, let turn slippy-sloppy inside. Poke shell metal straw, and suck haaaard!" He stiffens his trunk to look like a straw, and makes a jerky poking motion with his head and then mimics sucking through his trunk. His eyes bug out even further as he strives to indicate the force one must use to draw forth the sweet juices of the crab, once liquified.
 Discomfort dances in Karin's eyes at the latter description, but she cannot help but emit a long laughter at the Ortolan's illustration.
"I suppose there is a first for everything," she says drily, hands closing around the kitchen knife's hilt. "When you are out in the wilderness, you can't always afford to be picky about what you eat. Why, once there was this time on Alderaan..." The woman's hand - unusually skilled with a knife, perhaps, for one who isn't a chef - easily chops away at the vegetable, spraying red juice over her hands and table with reckless abandon. "... on Alderaan, when I was leading a dig on the Southern hemisphere. You know, low half of world." She arches an attentive brow at Gaja, waiting for the other to indicate understanding, perhaps, before carrying on:
"Some of the oldest buildings in the Galaxy can be found there. A rainstorm made it impossible to fly out speeders, and we were stuck in tents all day. The only thing there was to eat was jellyfish. I'm sure you'd have made them taste much better than we did. We could just think boiling them, and that wasn't a pleasant sight."
 
 "Dry one up," Gaja comments, "Then mix with proto-starch packets. Not so tasty...but not give you belly dirty rivers if you eat this way. Most jellyfish-thing, hard on most creature belly."
"Alderaan, Alderaan...what sort old building you find, that time? What sort being make home there? And...how many galactic-year ago this place...was with beings in it?"
 "You sure have a lot of questions," the lady gives an easy grin at Gaja. "But that's good! An inquisitive mind is good. It was humans that living there. Alderaan is one of the oldest, settled planets in the Galaxy. It must have been at least four thousand years old, dating back to the time when the Galaxy was settled by humans."
The chopped root is carefully pushed into a tray and she reaches for the next one, scrubbing it with a vengeance.
"Some of the settlers hunted prey on Kashyyyk. They enjoyed hunting a species that we until recently thought were extinct, today," Karin continues, conversationally. She really must have been bored.
 "Gaja is curious, yes. Not have school, like pretty lady arky-olojiss. Learn cook from father, before father kick Gaja out of hole when ten. Learn fly ship by, well...fy ship!" The Ortolan chuckles and sets down his knives. With a trunk-whistle, he calls a pair of Chadra-Fan's over to the prep counter and sets them to work with the vegetable-chopping.
"Enough rooting," he grunts to Karin. "Come...see main prize: Spike-Snail. Really, very nice looking creature, this is." He waddles through the bustling bodies of the many chefs until he arrives at a great central cooking isle, and here, in wide shallow basins full of tainted yellow water, the snails crawl, still alive though likely wounded due to their poison-imbued spine-tips having been carefully trimmed off.
"Tell Gaja...what species...'extinct'? Heard this once before...means...no more of the same, yes?"
 Karin navigates around the furry Chadra-Fan, whipping a piece of cloth away from the table and carefully drying her hands as she follows Gaja to the basin. "I'm not going to take a closer look at them," she quips darkly, tilting her head at the muddy waters. "They look deadly. How do you eat them?"
Her raven head then turns to the Ortolan, dipping a nod at the creature: "Yes, it means no more of the same. Like, if you continue to eat those Spike-Snails, faster than they can make children, they'll become extinct. And… does he really enjoy to eat that." She turns and wrinkles her nose at the shell-like snacks, /he/ no doubt meaning Cerebra.
 "Hutt life long time. Make start..eat simple food. But Hutt big belly very tough, and tasting node, very dull. Need strong food to make happy. So...they like more thing like spike-snail, older Hutt get." Gaja's explanation is simple enough. The Hutt's wear their taste-buds sheer-out through over-indulgence. Makes sense. But what of others? Why would they eat such things? The Ortolan volunteers his own opinion relating to food - to this particular food - to answer any such lingering questions. "Ortolans...they very simple peoples. Most Ortolan, eat too much, love food so much more than life. Love every taste. Love alcohol. Love spice. Ortolans...make short life much often. It not often, in space, an Ortolan live to Prime Age. Gaja...has live to Prime Age."
 Karin nods a few times to the Ortolan's explanation, but she leaves the subject of the Huttese tastebuds behind to raise a curious brow.
"How long does an Orto live, then? And how did you get to work for Cerebra? You must have had some very good references," she quirks a grin.
 Gaja becomes rather still, in body and spirit. There is a moment of silence, awkward silence, before he answers. 
"Eighty-one Orto-Year. Gaja have...eighty Orto-Year. Six more month...and...no more Gaja." It cannot be said that he sounds happy about this fact. But neither sounds he angered. Rather...resigned. 
"Work for Cerebra...well...land on Nar Shaddaa. Make begging for food, for credit. Come to Cerebra door, and they say: 'make good food, or we kill you. Make good food, we hire you, and you never, ever quit work for Brood. Gaja now Brood until Gaja die...but, that only six month. Not so bad."
 The woman's teeth tug gently into her lower lip, and the eyes that regard Gaja are earnest.
"Well, you never know," Karin's alto is level, almost soothing. She reaches out a lithe hand to briefly pat the Ortolan's blue shoulder. "Perhaps you'll live longer than six months? Nothing in this Galaxy is certain, in my experience. For instance, who'd have thought I'd be learning to cook from a Hutt's first chef?"
 Gaja is already back at work, his mind having moved on past the subject of his own imminent mortality. He makes no motion to respond to Karin's thoughtful touch. "No...Gaja right. Orto keep very close track of Orto-years, every one. Right now, in Gaja-belly, new Orto is growing. Six month, and new Orto grow into all organ, make new organ copy, dissolve old, then break out through Gaja-skin. This will be Gaja-son, and if Gaja not return to Orto before so pup can be raise with other Orto - he will die. This how it always work."
The cheif chef's hands again work at a remarkable speed, examining each snail carefully to insure that the spines are all trimmed, and then transferring them to a next basin - in which the water has not yet been stained yellow by snail-trails. At his feet is a bucket with two snails in it, with spines that are not adequately shorn. 
Suddenly, the Ortolan's comlink makes a squeching noise, and he lifts it to his head. A tinny-sounding voice speaks in an alien tongue over the other end of the link-up, and the Orto nods and grunts in affirmation with each statement's ingestion. When the other voice is finished, he clicks the comlink back into idle-mode, and hangs it from his bandolier once more. A clicking sound comes from his trunk, and he turns to Karin.
"We have little trouble in star-bay with some ship. Need my engineer-wise... so...must go, for now. We see you at dinner, then?" The blue creature smiles, politely, but he is clearly fidgety, still standing here when there is some 'fire', literal or otherwise, to be out out elsewhere.
Gaja backs a step away, looking still at Karin, but almost ready to bolt. 
At the foot of the cooking-island, the bucket with the two still poisonous snails in it sits.
And sits.
The kitchen bustles onward, unheeding.
 /Two/ snails?
Perhaps there were two snails when the little Ortolan was working with their spines. But after the call, strangely, there is just one snail in the bucket. He likely must have shed it already. Right?
"I will not keep you from your duty," smiles Karin, still holding the kitchen cloth from before in her hands. "I'm leaving the room as well, I have done enough cooking for today."
And with that, the lady archaeologist walks towards the ever-revolving door to exit the room.
Category:March 2008 RP Logs