Fic: Recipes from Pegasus pt8

[anyanka_eg]

Title: Recipes from Pegasus
Rating: PG
Pairing: Subtle McShep and obvious Teyla/Lorne
Spoilers: All 5 seasons
Summary: After the stargate program was de-classified in 2010 and the initial furore died down, the book that captured the zeitgeist of the entire planet, tapping in to the almost insatiable curiosity for all things related to the Stargate Program, was Recipes from Pegasus. It was an accessible way for everyone to understand a little bit more about the people who had spent the last eight years living in an alien galaxy, fighting to keep Earth safe. It's author, Grace Mallory, the head chef of the Atlantis mission became a household name even though she appeared on a very few TV shows during the publicity tour. More importantly her stories about the daily lives of the people of Atlantis made them appear much more human than all the high octane TV specials did.

Note: this is an unformatted version (i.e. without colours and pictures)

 

 

An Athosian Wedding

Sometimes it seems like there is little to celebrate in the Pegasus galaxy and that every feast day or holiday is wreathed in sadness. I think that many of the members of the expedition have wondered how the peoples of culled worlds had managed to keep their culture alive and how they ever found any joy after all they had lost. Over time we all began to understand that life has to go on and that you have to take what happiness you can from each tiny piece of good news. A wedding is always a happy time, especially for people who have found peace together after suffering so much.

When the outbreak of Colobrian Pox struck the city and the mainland we were petty helpless, only managing to relieve the symptoms where we could rather than cure the sickness. Everyone was affected and finding a cure was beyond the fever addled brains of those who hadn't already slipped into a coma or died. Once the Daedalus arrived and the medical team in hazmat suits could get to work things improved but by then we had already lost twenty people, including Kanaan, Teyla's partner. Little Torren only just survived, lingering in a coma for two weeks, and I think Teyla's stoic grief nearly broke the rest of us.

People went out of their way to offer support to Teyla, almost as though helping now would diminish the feeling of helplessness we all had as we watched people succumb to the disease. I think, even though she was always polite, she became a little irritated with everyone's attention and withdrew from all but her team and closest friends.

One of those friends, the one who seemed to be able to quiet Torren when all he really wanted was his dad, was Evan Lorne. Despite being XO in an understaffed military, thanks to the pox, he always found time to visit Torren, bringing him things he found off world and telling him stories about Earth. The first time I heard Teyla laugh, after Kanaan died, was when she was walking down one of the corridors with Evan, a giggling Torren swinging between them.

I don't think that anyone on Atlantis was really surprised when, after a year, Teyla and Evan announced they were going to get married. Of course it wasn't as simple as that and behind the scenes there had been a great deal of secret negotiation and deal making between Atlantis, the SGC and the Pentagon. Teyla and Torren had to visit Earth and, besides meeting Lorne's family, she was interviewed by the US President. She described it as a not unlike having to ask the permission of a father to marry his favorite, if wayward, son. Needless to say the President and his wife were bowled over by her (and Torren) and from what I understand they still keep in touch via email.

Once it was all agreed the couple announced their decision to the city and preparations for the wedding began. Evan later let slip that he and Teyla had been married at his local church in front of his family when they were still on Earth, but everyone in the city counted the Athosian hand-fasting as the real thing and threw themselves into the preparations with an enthusiasm that I think frightened the happy couple.

There is a very set menu for the hand-fasting meal that, unlike weddings from most cultures on Earth, forms an integral part of the ceremony rather than something to do after the religious portion of the day is completed. There is in fact no separation of the religious and the gastronomic, with prayers being offered during the meal, and each course signifying something more than just a tasty dish.

Most people assumed that the wedding would happen in the Athosian settlement on the mainland but Teyla decided that it was best to hold the festivities in the city so as many of her friends as possible could attend and still be on hand if there was some crisis. Fortunately there was no need for anyone to leave the celebration before they had planned to and the whole day went of without any problems. Well, except the normal ones that arise from people having a little too much to drink at weddings.

What follows is the best extrapolation of the Athosian recipes to fit ingredients from Earth.

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A salad of bitter leaves

This salad, served as the first course of the marriage feast, is made from bitter herbs and leaves that must be collected separately by the couple on the day before the wedding. It's combined with a dressing made by the Leader of the Feast, who is part priest and part Maître d'. It's a role that anyone can take, as long as they are willing to learn the blessings, recipes and rules that must be followed, including the meaning behind all the different foods. This salad signifies the bitterness of being alone before the couple are joined and also the people who have been lost, and can't be there to witness the happy event.

Obviously with such a large number of guests attending the wedding, and it being held on Atlantis instead of some nice, fertile planet, the collection of herbs by just two people could have been problematic. Fortunately the families of the happy couple are expected to help them gather the food, so the day before the wedding two puddle jumpers were dispatched to different planets, one for Teyla, Torrren and six Athosian women, with Rodney as pilot, and the other for Evan, his gate team and Ronon.

Rodney was almost dizzy with excitement and nerves at being picked as part of Teyla's family but terrified of flying the jumper. Sheppard, despite his protestations, wasn't allowed to accompany them as he was considered part of Lorne's family. Halling, in his role as Leader of the Feast, was quite strict about roles and responsibilities for the wedding, insisting that Rodney's presence at Torren's birth made him of Teyla's blood, much to the scientist's surprise and delight.

Both jumpers and their crews returned unscathed (if a little bumpily in Rodney's case) and leaden with herbs and greens that we washed and put into the chillers on Atlantis. Halling made the dressing on the eve of the wedding, saying his blessings over it, and leaving instructions for how to make up the salad with my kitchen staff.

The next day, when everyone was seated at the tables we had set up on the big balcony, Halling stood and began the wedding with a welcoming blessing, touching both the bride and groom on their heads. Teyla sat on his right and Evan on his left, their poses reverential and their eyes cast down. Teyla was serene in her obvious happiness but Evan looked pale and very serious. Later, over a glass of Ruus wine, Radek said that he thought Lorne was the only man he'd ever seen get married who looked like he knew exactly what he was doing and meant to do it regardless of what it cost him.

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Ingredients

10 mint leaves

4 cups of mixed greens and bitter herbs (like chicory, arugula, watercress, purslane, sorrel, radicchio, or lovage), torn into bite size pieces

10 dry cure olives (optional)

For the dressing

½ cup extra virgin olive oil

2 tbsp wine vinegar

2 garlic cloves minced

½ tsp salt

¼ tsp mustard seeds, toasted in the dry frying pan and ground in a pestle and mortar.

 

Instructions

Make the dressing by whisking all the ingredients together in a small bowl.

In a large serving dish mix the mint leaves and greens together with the dressing. Add the olives and serve.

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Roast Wild Boar

After the bitter herbs that signify the couple apart, the next course is all about togetherness and working as a team. It's not some abstract representation of working together, as the bitterness of the herbs is for loneliness, this meal requires the couple to work together as the perfect team or there can't be a wedding.

The grenik is a creature a lot like a wild boar that lives on a densely wooded planet called Virn and it forms the centerpiece of the marriage feast*. The couple must go to Virn, hunt a grenik and bring it back to demonstrate that they can work as a team. They have to go alone (something that gave all the senior staff nightmares) and they have to use only the traditional Athosian weapons of spear and knife (something that gave Evan nightmares).

Everyone worried pretty much from the moment the gate disconnected until the they received Teyla's IDC a little over a day later. Teyla's team spent almost the entire time in the gate room, getting under everyone's feet, even though they had been charged with babysitting Torren for the day. Eventually Chuck snapped and they were forced to beat a tactical retreat until the Teyla returned.

The happy couple were tired, and a little banged up, but they had killed an enormous grenik and proved they could work together as a team. They spent the next day recuperating in private as the beast was prepared for cooking. The recipe below is for a joint of wild boar that can be cooked in the oven but for the wedding feast it was cooked whole (cleaned and gutted) in a specially built fire pit and roasting contraption out on the east pier. The science department did an excellent job building it to Athosian specifications, so good in fact we still use it on occasion.

The roasting of the grenik forms a sort of stag night type ritual, only without the groom, as it is the preserve of the men from both the bride and groom's families. I think there must be some sort of universal law that says that anything that is remotely like a barbecue is 'mens' work. Fortunately Halling, who took charge of the event, is an excellent cook and, along with Sheppard, they ensured that the cooking rota was followed so no one was too tired, or hungover, the next day for the feast.

The sauce is sweeter than we're usually used to with meat but it is really excellent with something like wild boar. Use it sparingly until you're sure you like it with the meat though, especially if you've got pork instead of boar. For the marriage feast this is served with Athosian flat bread (a little like Lebanese flat bread) and steamed balalath leaves (green leaves a lot like spinach) flavored with spices that tastes like a cross between cinnamon and nutmeg.

 

* The grenik was described as 'f*cking huge' by the team who went to collect it, it was actually about six feet (1.8m) at the shoulder when the zoologists measured it. To this day new marines get taken to see it's massive skull, displayed with the spears Teyla and Evan used to kill it, and are told just how impressive their XO and his wife really are.

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Ingredients - serves 6

2lb (1kg) wild boar joint with the bone in, ideally leg but shoulder will do (use pork if you can't get boar)

2 tbsp freshly ground black pepper

2 tbsp cumin seeds, roasted in a dry frying pan and crushed

1 tbsp sea salt

2lb bacon slices

For the sauce

1 pint (500ml) red wine

2 tbsp honey

3½ oz (100ml) dessert wine

½ tsp salt

 

Instructions

Remove the bristles and skin from the meat, then scatter over it the sea salt, crushed pepper and roasted cumin. Leave it in the refrigerator for 2-3 days, turning it occasionally.

Wrap the whole joint in slices of bacon, trying to cover all the exposed surfaces as wild boar can be quite dry when cooked.

Then put it into the oven at its highest setting and allow it to brown for 10 minutes. Reduce the oven temperature to 350°F/180°C and continue to roast for 2 hours, basting regularly.

Meanwhile prepare the sauce. Put the wine into a pan and boil gently to reduce the volume of the wine by a little under half. Add the honey, the dessert wine and salt.

Take the meat out of the oven and leave it to rest while you finish the sauce. Pour off the fat and juices from the roasting tin into a jug. Put the tin over a low heat on the stove and pour in the wine and the honey mixture. Scrape all the lovely burned on bits off the bottom of the pan, mixing them into the wine.

Carefully pour this mixture into a saucepan and add the roasting juices. It's easier if you have a separating jug but if not you can still carefully pour off the fat from the first jug into another jg or dish, and then add the juices to the pan. Add some of the fat for a little more luxurious feel and more meaty flavor.

Carve the boar into thin slices at the table, and serve the sweet sauce separately.

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Poached Appum

Appum are a Pegasus galaxy delicacy, as they grow only on one planet and are prohibitively expensive, reserved for only for feast days by most people. Halling was apparently quietly concerned by how enough for everyone invited to the wedding could be obtained without mortgaging the city, because it's the grooms family that provide the dessert for the feast. And the dessert must consist of appum.

Teyla of course had a solution and convinced Halling, despite his rather strict adherence to the feast's rules, that using pears from Earth would be an acceptable substitute. Teyla selected a few of the ripest fruit from the boxes delivered by the Daedalus on its regular supply run and presented them to Halling to sample when he visited the city. There were about twenty anxious people crammed into the kitchen, waiting to see his reaction. I think Richard Woolsey was more nervous than Evan because he knew he'd gone to bat for the Major with the IOC and he wasn't going to let the wedding fail over fruit. He knew he'd have to get the apum somehow.

Halling was stunned by the similarity of the pears to appum (having tasted one I have to agree) seemed to be a little resentful that Teyla had been enjoying them all along and had said nothing. When he saw the twenty crates the Daedalus had delivered straight to our cold room and hearing tell of the millions of the fruits that grew on Earth, he suddenly realized that he could become a very rich man if he played his cards right. We sent him home with a box of them and a promise of more once he'd agreed that pears were appum by another name.

They are served at the end of the meal, the Leader of the Feast stepping back from the table to allow the bride and groom to move their seats together and share the dessert. Everyone else is paired with someone to share their dessert with too, which means the seating arrangements at Athosian weddings are even more complex than on Earth. Teyla of course had managed everything perfectly and no one was mortally offended by who they shared with.

Appum have a slightly different shape than the pears we are used to and it's this distinctive appearance that gives their meaning at the feast. The appum look almost alarmingly like the torso of a heavily pregnant, large breasted woman and their use in the meal is supposed to bring the couple children. It seems to have worked because Torren now has a beautiful little sister, Charin Beth Lorne.

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Ingredients

4 pints (2lts) water

½ cup (125ml) sweet sherry

1½ cups (265g) brown sugar

2 sticks cinnamon

4 cloves

4 firm pears (like Williams, Packhams or Beurre bosc), peeled

 

Instructions

Place all the ingredients, except the pears, into a large pan over a low heat and stir until the sugar has dissolved.

Simmer for 25-30 minutes or until the pears are cooked through. Once they are, turn off the heat and allow the pears to cool in the liquid.

Serve with heavy (double) cream or a really good quality vanilla ice cream.

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Russ Wine

Ruus wine, the Athosian's celebratory drink, has the unfortunate combined characteristics of being completely addictive and lethally potent. It's usually only made in enough of a quantity to allow people one or two servings but at weddings it's made almost to excess. There are numerous toasts that must be undertaken by what seems like all the participants of the feast, some of them pretty formal like the one Richard Woolsey had to make as 'Father' of the groom, and some are simple congratulations from friends.

Not everyone took Sheppard's warning about the potency of the wine seriously, after all the Colonel is notoriously bad at holding his liquor, so there were some interesting incidents towards the end of the celebrations. I won't be naming names here but there are some people who really wish that Miko wasn't tea total and didn't have a camera.

The wine can be drunk at room temperature but it's much nicer served warm and is a little like mulled wine or Gluhvine. It's made from the pressed berries of the Ruus bush which grows on a number of planets, including the mainland of our planet, fermented and then fortified with distilled spirits much like port wine is. The berries have a natural sweet, spicy flavor and nothing but the juice is used in ruus wine. The recipe below is as close as I can get with Earth ingredients.

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Ingredients

1 unpeeled orange

12-18 whole cloves

lots of brown sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

A pinch of powdered cloves

A pinch of mace

½ tsp allspice

½ tsp ground ginger

1 strip lemon peel

1 cup (250ml) water

1 quart (1.9l) port wine

¼ cup (60ml) brandy heated

A nutmeg for grating
 

Instructions

Stud the orange with the whole cloves, put it in an ovenproof dish and then pack thickly with brown sugar. Roast in 350 degree oven till sugar caramelizes and forms a crust on the orange. Let it cool and then cut the orange into quarters and place it in a punch bowl.

Simmer the remaining spices, apart from the nutmeg, and the lemon peel in the water until water is reduced by half.

Heat the port wine in another pan until hot but not boiling. Combine spiced syrup, wine and heated brandy in punch bowl with the orange and sprinkle with nutmeg to taste.

 

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Back cover

Recipes from Pegasus has captured the zeitgeist of the entire planet, tapping in to the almost insatiable curiosity for all things related to the Stargate Program. This is an accessible way for everyone to understand a little bit more about the people who have spent the last eight years living in an alien galaxy, fighting to keep Earth safe. No matter what your views are on the merits and the morals of the missions the Stargate program has undertaken there can be no doubt of the bravery of the people involved and their dedication to the cause. This book allows us a small glimpse into the everyday lives of these people, something that none of the other publications or TV shows have managed to really capture.
 

“Quick easy recipes and great stories” Rachel Ray
 

“Some of the best food I've ever eaten has been in the mess on Atlantis” Opera Winfrey
 

“Mmmmmm pie” Major General Jack O'Neill