Playing with food: Meet at the Graveyard

Last night was “Meet at the Graveyard” an online roleplay thingy from Omen Star, held over Discord video call.

The character brief had Caprizant the Hungry Ghoul as a chef who seasons with extracted emotions, rather than some beast who eats the dead. “You distil the fear, the hopelessness and the despair into a fine liquid and use it as a key ingredient in any number of sources and dressings. A fine salad with a red wine and hopelessness vinaigrette, a hate glazed carrot, mushroom and hazelnut tart”

The challenge in Caprizant’s brief for the game was to cook “The sage and joy bliss butter sauce over butternut squash ravioli.”

I didn’t fancy the tart, so the salad gained carrots, and hazelnuts, and the ravioli got some mushrooms.

While the brief implied a vegetarian ghoul, I decided to go a logical step further and go proper vegan.

So, I got my mise en place together, and started cooking when the event began. My first chat was a command from Abs Malady’s vampire that I cater for her dinner, delivered with such authority that it settled my arc. I was to feed her living guests, and then they were to feed her.

I couldn’t find any hopelessness, so the salad was seasoned with loss that a wonderfully played Poltergiest had for a lost love.

Apart from that, it was a matter of roasting some hazelnuts, toasting some cumin to go with the carrots I’d baked earlier, and tossing some leaves in a vinaigrette made with a splash of wine, red wine vinegar, dijon mustard and olive oil.

Starter away.

Then I made some pasta – 200g 00 flour, 100ml lukewarm water, kneaded it, and made into a thin sheet with 3 goes through the pasta machine. Folded that round some roasted squash cut with the excellent Bute Island Vegan Creamery Greek-style Sheese, and that was my ravioli. Put to one side, while I fried some sage leaves in oil and grated some garlic in to brown. Fried some breadcrumbs in oil too, with a bit of lemon zest and more grated garlic. Fried some slices of mushroom.

I too a break from cooking, managed to harvest some joy, and drank that with Campari.

Then it was finding the bliss, which was jolly tricky until I met a quite adorable werewolf, who’d found a new place to belong after her pack kicked her out.

So with about a half hour to go, I put the pasta on, served it with mushrooms, sage oil, and fried breadcrumbs for texture. I forgot the chilli flakes I’d planned, but generously forgave myself.

Another character told me they needed a chocolate torte for dessert, and I blanked. If I’d really been on the ball, I could have knocked up some caramel icecream with chocolate and kahlua sauce, but it didn’t occur to me until the after-party. Hey ho.

I’d never made pasta before, and I was genuinely nervous before the event – but it all worked out ok. I felt I’d done the challenge, anyway. Two-course meal, from scratch, while roleplaying a quite horrid ghoul… (I pantomimed squeezing emotions out of people with a lever-armed juicer….)