Paragon Cuisine
The cuisine of Paragon is largely a modern development, traditional cuisines of the coastal South transformed by the magically-enforced rule of its Prefect.
Citizen Cuisine
The cuisine of Paragon’s people is based on the ingredients they have readily available. Grains are a major staple, with maize, wheat, and barley ground to flour for baking and, more coarsely ground, cooked with water or milk to for the grain porridge ( known as ‘grits’) that serves as a base for many dishes in Paragon and the surrounding lands.
Protein comes most commonly from locally-grown nuts and poultry, the consumption of birds a particular tradition of the wealthy or upper classes. Vegetables are mashed and cooked thoroughly, mixed to ensure they reach a brown-grey colour, and fruit is not consumed in large quantities, save for local grapes which are dried into sweet raisins.
Paragon’s grains and grapes are also used to produce alcoholic beverages: white wines and whiskeys.
The breakfast meal is the largest meal of the day in Paragon, with a second meal in the evening being less substantial. Many visitors note that Paragon dishes seem to be bland, shades of white, brown, and muted yellow, much as their dress is colourless. This is intentional: a citizen wearing a shirt coloured by red tomato or green spinach stains violates the command of the Prefect as much as one dressed in a pink-dyed jerkin, and the consequences of violation are the same.
Some dishes include:
Shore Grits: A base of coarse corn porridge, topped with crustaceans caught off the coast of Paragon by local fishermen and cooked with ground hot pepper, garlic, onion, and oil. The brown sauce so created covers the oft-colourful seafood.
Crackling Grits: Grits cooked longer to reduce their moisture, then formed into squares, breaded in egg and wheat flour, and fried to create a crispy snack for evening meals, or (when cut thin) by nobles seeking to soak up their numerous sauces.
Malt Loaf: A bread of malted barley, with raisins mixed throughout, popular as a supper snack.
Grain Tea: Grain Tea is tea brewed from roast barley and/or corn grains. Tea of only corn is sweet-tasting, while that of barley is bitter-tasting, with the blending of the two to create a perfect drink a valued skill in the kitchens of Paragon’s nobility. Grain tea is typically served cold with the morning meal, and hot with the evening meal.
Noble Cuisine
Noble cuisine is consumed by the upper classes in Paragon, and its colors reflect the greater freedom seen in their dress. Vibrant, bright-coloured sauces dominate, made from fruits and vegetables sometimes supplemented with edible dyes, making Paragon dishes distinctive and aesthetically appealing to foreign chefs.
In addition to such sauces, Paragon’s noble kitchens have mastered a number of poultry cooking techniques. The most exalted of these is the Savoury Bunting, but others include:
Foie Gras: One of the richest dishes in Creation, at least amongst mundane ingredients, Foie Gras is the liver of a Southern Goose, which has been force fed through a feeding tube to fatten it. The resulting liver takes on the consistency of butter, rich and delicious.
The tubing and techniques for creating foie gras originate in the early years of Motonic Gastronomy during the First Age, and had largely been forgotten until the Prefect of Paragon spread the methods in his domain.
Foreign Cuisine
Travelers from Paragon often find foreign foods somewhat inaccessible or unappealing, depending on class: for the common citizenry, exotic foods with their attending bright colours simply cannot be brought back home, for the same reasons that Paragon’s common cuisine tends to plain-looking brown and white dishes. Paragon does import some quantity of rice, both from The Lap and the Blessed Isle, and its upper classes import a number of spices and fruits from across Creation, along with red wines from the vineyards of the Isle and Harbourhead.
The Realm’s Office of the Satrap and Imperial Legion garrison are a source of culinary difference within Paragon, much as they have differences in dress. Though not visually stunning, Legion rations tend to more colour than those of Paragon’s military, something Realm officers seek to maximize, enforcing a sense of superiority amongst their soldiers and evoking envy from Paragon’s own troops.
The Satrap’s Office also employs a number of chefs for Dynastic Dim Sum, a style of cuisine popular with many nobles. In turn, the chefs to the Dynasty of the Realm have adopted a number of noble dishes from Paragon, top Realm chefs particularly favouring the decorative potential of bright-coloured sauces as well as foie gras and songbird dishes, blending Paragon techniques with the Realm’s dim sum to create acclaimed dishes. Most of the songbirds eaten on the Isle are canaries from local breeders or imported from Paragon, though there is some dispute amongst Realm gourmands: one group believes that birds of a month’s seasonal imagery are ideal for songbird dishes served in that month, while another holds that it is the song and flight of such birds that is seasonal, and ought be preserved rather than consumed.
