Phytozoa Culinary Arts

As a Nebula Culinarian, it is your job to learn to salvage and handle ingredients straight from the Fog, and turn them into deliciousness. In this class, you will learn how to handle Phytozoan species in particular. Prep up, we will head out for our first lesson!

— A Professors Introduction

Cooking Leaves and Meat Simultaniously

Phytozoas are a category of plant/beast fusions that were discovered not too long ago during the Expo Raids. We, the culinarians have immediately realized the potential they hold in the world of food, and thus began to cultivate the Phytozoa Culinary Arts.

PCA Introductory Course

In this lesson of the textbook, you will learn how to make your first dish alongside the basics of PCA cooking. We are making Bloodvine Meatrolls, from skinning and preparing to serving the dish.

Preparation

For Bloodvine Meatrolls, we need almost all of our basic Phytozoa Tools as well as Normal Equipment:

Phytozoan Tools by Midjourney

• Woodcutters
• Fangclaws
• Sharp Blade (Preferrably A Long Dagger)
• Small Carving Knife
• Different Baskets and Containers
• Gloves

As for the ingredients, we don't need too much:

• A Bloodvine
• Salt
• Pepper
• Currypowder or Chilipowder
• Any additionals you might want

Preparing the Phytozoa

Bloodvine within the Fog by Midourney

This is the essence of Phytozoan Culinary Arts. Broken down into the essentials, a Phytozoan species is nothing more than meat and plant stuck together, which often we don't want in our dishes. Combatting this, we need to seperate the two aspects of a Phytozoa with the tools we have.

Seperating the Bloodvineparts

First we remove all the plantery covering up the Bloodvine. With gloves on, so we don't get stung by the thorns all over its body, we use the Woodcutters to remove the vines and roots. Do be careful, since we will need them later on in the dish. It is common practice to always cut the largest possible parts off of Phytozoas, so to have the most options later on when cooking.

Now that only the leaves remain, we use either our hands or the small knife to shed the green from the limbs of the Bloodvine. To distinguish the vines and limbs is often not so easy. You can identify the limbs by their larger redder thorns, instead of the smaller interwoven vines and roots.

Now that the Bloodvine is plantless, we still have to get rid of the teeth and thorns. For the thorns that reside on the head, we use the longer blade to swiftly cut them off. Those on the limbs are best cut off slowly with the precise knife. The teeth are easily removed with the Fangclaws. Now you should only have a naked Blodvine infront of you.

Notice: These steps are almost always repeated with every Phytozoan dish

Identify Edible and Nonedible Parts

With the Bloodvine this step is easy. The head is not edible and can be safely discarded. However the valuable lesson with identifying your ingredients goes a long way. Some Phytozoa use poison to attack. Where is it stored? Is it dangerous? Can it be used in the dish? Can I use the part, do I need special treatment for it or do I have to discard it? Those are all questions that need to be answered beforehand. Bloodvines, as shown i the illustration have a hard skull-like head which is not edible. Their bloodsucking nature saturates their limbs, thus giving us a very rich flavoured meat to work with.

Meatroll Madness

Bloodvine Meatrolls by Midjourney

Skinning and Sealing

Now to get into the meat and potatoes of the dish, we need to act quickly with handling the Bloodvine meat. Its skin keeps the meat juicy by trapping the fluids inside. Once removed, the meat will slowly bleed out, meaning that the pre-heated 200°C oven will have to already be ready. Once skinned and put into the oven, the pores will be sealed once again, and the meat will slowly cook. With most of the Phytozoa meats, they don't need too much time to cook.

Seasonings and Wrappings

The next 30 minutes will be spent chopping down smaller leaves, using their basil-esque nature for seasoning. The bigger leaves have a more earthy taste to them, due to them having absorbed more blood than the others. They will be used to wrap the meat. For aesthetic purposes, we will cut a wave-shape into the top of them.

The vines can be seperated to become holding-strings. Use the small knife and a grindstone or sharp edge to remove the small thorns throughout the sinew. Lastly, we stage the non-Bloodvine seasonings by combining it into a spread to toppel over the meat once it is finished.

Building the Meatroll

After 30 minutes of cooking the meat, we take it out the oven and season it with the seasining spread we just made. After that we pour some basil leaves over it before wrapping it in the Bloodvine leaves. After that, we secure the meatroll with the sinew made of vines. For the finished meatroll, let it air dry by hanging it from a shelf and serve it once the outer leaves have turned slightly brown from the heat within.

Takeaways

With this dish, you learned the basics of preparing Phytozoan species and the tools needed to cook your first Phytozoan meal. While a Bloodvine Meatroll is not the most sophisticated dish, and certainly not the most dangerous dish to create, it gave you an idea of what's to come. The next lesson will revolve around different Phytozoan meats and how their difference is accounted for during cooking.