sashene

Fandom: Chronicles of Narnia; No Reservations
Pairings/Characters: Gen; Anthony Bourdain, “Global” Alan Weeks, Todd Liebler, Tracey Godwin, Reepicheep, Aslan, and a cast of Narnian OCs.
Rating: Teen and up (mostly for Bourdain-characteristic profanity.)
Length: 6,228 words
Content Notes: a vast variety of food, not all of which will appeal to a given reader; drunkenness; smoking; Bourdain’s typical abrasive impertinence.
Creator Links: Edonohana, rachelmanija
Theme: Food and Cooking, previously recced for Crossovers/Fusions, previously recced for Small Fandoms, Cultural Differences, Fandom Classics, Research, Worldbuilding

Summary: I’m crammed into a burrow so small that my knees are up around my ears and the boom mike keeps slamming into my head, inhaling the potent scent of toffee-apple brandy and trying to drink a talking mouse under the table.

Author’s Notes: I had enormous fun brainstorming the food for this story with Coraa, who came up with the leeches, the name “terravita,” the concept of Dredge-the-Pond, a plausible blood-based alcoholic drink, and much more – a lot of the credit for this story should go to her. Also thanks to Ellen Fremedon for Hati Moon-eater’s name.

The style for this story was based on Anthony Bourdain’s book A Cook's Tour, which I highly recommend.

My main resource for the food served at Digwell and Mouldiscoop’s home was The Cooking of the British Isles (Foods of the World Series from Time-Life Books), by Adrian Bailey. If you enjoyed that section of my story, you will undoubtedly enjoy his loving tour through British foodways.

Except for the pavenders and the toffee-apple brandy, all the food in that section (and the fried breakfast in the beginning of the next section) is real British food, though some is old-fashioned and would be hard to find nowadays. Rainbow Pavender is based on the French dish Trout au Bleu, which I first read about in the original Joy of Cooking - apparently the vinegar makes the trout skin turn bright blue. I didn’t invent the toffee-apples, but I did invent the brandy.

You can read accounts of making Sussex Pond Pudding in Laurie Colwin’s wonderful book of cooking essays, Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen , and (with photos) here: http://bakerina.com/bakerina/a_pud_for_laurie_england_and_saint_george/. (The link is dead; here’s a Wayback Machine archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20160403205603/http://bakerina.com/bakerina/a_pud_for_laurie_england_and_saint_george/ —FMO.) Hers comes out better than Colwin’s did. I have never had it, but it sounds great. If anyone tries making it, please let me know.

Except for the eel stew, which is mentioned in the Narnia books and exists in many variations worldwide, and the terravita, which is my interpretation of the contents of Puddleglum’s little black bottle, Marsh-wiggle cuisine exists only in my imagination. Thank God.

Wer cuisine was drawn from a number of different real dishes from a number of different cultures. Swiftlets are real birds, though I’m not sure if they’re eaten in real life. The description of eating the roast swiftlet was based on Bourdain’s account of eating an ortolan in Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook. The chopped raw meat mixed with butter was inspired by the Ethiopian dish kitfo, though the Wers use Nordic flavorings and include pork cracklings. Mother and child is based on koumiss, a Central Asian fermented milk beverage, which is not actually mixed with blood. The name was inspired by the Japanese chicken-and-egg dish oyako-don, or “parent and child bowl.” I don’t think anyone actually eats leeches.

The Calormene dishes are based on Persian cuisine, with variations inspired by Lewis’s mouthwatering descriptions in The Horse and His Boy. The yogurt drink is called doogh.

In memoriam: https://rachelmanija.dreamwidth.org/2201519.html

Reccer's Notes: Okay; what’s the September 2025 Food & Cooking theme even for if this classic doesn’t circle around for a threepeat? (Twelve years since the last mention should be a sufficient interval.)

This brilliant crossover, all the more poignant in hindsight, nails both Bourdain’s voice and the Narnian sense of place, painstakingly hitting all the beats: Food Porn; Food Gorn (with the acknowledgement that the difference between the two is in the palate of the beholder); departure from what Diana Wynne-Jones would term the Guided Tour into Parts Unknown, with the aid of knowledgeable locals; hospitality in austere circumstances; martial arts (with thought given to the size logistics!); scary local politics; above all, food as a vehicle of cross-cultural understanding.

“No Reservations: Narnia” has the additional distinction of being RPF that not only reached but impressed the subject:

“This is astonishingly well written with an attention to detail that’s frankly a bit frightening…I’m both flattered and disturbed. I think I need a drink.”

Fanwork Links: https://archiveofourown.org/works/137185

Fandom: Mo Dao Zu Shi; Chen Qing Ling
Pairings/Characters: M/M; Song Lan | Song Zichen/Xiao Zingchen; Song Lan | Song Zichen, Xiao Xingchen
Rating: General Audiences
Length: 3,632 words
Content Notes: No Archive Warnings Apply, determinedly Taiwanese cuisine, Food Porn because the author inexplicably omitted that tag, racist microaggression (a character recounts getting renamed by his exchange host family.)
Creator Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, First Meetings, Taiwan, Street food, chinese diaspora feelings and food as love language, SongXiao Feast
Creator Links: (AO3) Irrelevancy; (Tumblr) touchmycoat
Theme: Food & Cooking, Cultural Differences, Fluff, Identity, Modern AU, Slice of Life

Summary: Flirting and cultural reclamation via Taiwanese street food. Songxiao modern meet-cute.

Author’s Notes:
For the #songxiaofeast on twitter, thanks for organizing the event~!!!! There's so much great art in the hashtag *~* love me some food love....

Chinese glossary at end lolol, and is this all a shameless marketing ploy for Taiwan night markets? yes.

…The menu (a twitter thread w pictures) (Unfortunately no longer accessible—FMO.)

大腸包小腸 (dà cháng bāo xiǎo cháng): "little sausage wrapped around a big sausage" lol
蚵仔煎 (ó-à-tsiān): oyster pancake. I'm using the Taiwanese romanization here because it better captures that Hokkien pronunciation. Ningxia Night Market seriously has the best ones.
臭豆腐 (chò dò fǔ): stinky tofu!! I think it smells delicious; don't be like SL eat it normally without that crazy amount of sauce nkfsjdfds
肉圓麵線 (bà wán miàn xiàn): meatball & rice noodles. Two separate things but they're typically sold together. Meatball is always pronounced in Hokkien and sometimes rice noodle is too (mǐ suǎ)
豆花 (dòu huā): tofu pudding. It's not too sweet and it's sooooo refreshing to have on a hot taiwan evening with ice!
雞蛋糕 (jī dàn gāo): egg cake! They're seriously very good but a hit-or-miss from street vendors lmfao.

Drop a comment~! Happy feastings!!!!!!!

Reccer’s Notes: Taiwanese bartender Song Zichen, taking both pity on and a fancy to diasporic American tourist Xiao Xingchen, proceeds to initiate him into the ways of local street food (as both a welcome into his heritage and a courtship overture.) This fic, stuffed with delicious Unresolved Sexual Tension, serves as a reminder that the Sinosphere is a very big and diverse place, and brought an outpouring of nostalgic yearning for the Taste Of Home from diasporic commenters.

(And Ningxia Night Market needs to hire Irrelevancy as a publicist, dammit; I was fervently wishing my neighborhood had something like that up the alley!)

Fanwork links: Comfort Food / 有可能的夜晚 (AO3-locked.)