The leather-bound cookbook contains three-hundred seventy-seven recipes, including instructions for preparing alligator skin, thickening petroleum into flan, and slow-cooking ingots of iron until they’re tender enough to swallow. Before all of this, however, the text begins with a set of initiatory instructions, required for the chef to “survive their own work.” These instructions are as follows:
1. The initiate must obtain a live starfish, as well as an aquarium by which to keep it alive. The optimal specimen should be at least twelve inches across, when measured from the end of one arm to another.
2. The initiate should measure each of the starfish's arms, from its mouth to the end of the limb. Whichever arm is longest should be removed with a single stroke of a brass knife, taking care not to wound the star's central body or organs. This amputation should only be performed on the night of a new moon.
3. The severed arm should be stored in a glass jar filled with water, vinegar, and salt.
4. The starfish should be allowed to heal over the next six lunar months, feeding it only live, whole mollusks. Once the removed arm has fully regenerated, the regrowth should be removed, taking care to use the same brass knife. This should also only be performed on the night of a new moon.
5. As before, the severed arm should be stored in a jar filled with vinegar and salt. The initiate should keep this limb in a separate jar from the previous removal.
6. The procedure should be repeated every six lunar months, until the initiate has in their possession seven exact copies of the same limb, each pickled in its own jar.
7. The initiate should consume each of the starfish’s pickled limbs in the chronological order that they were severed. They should make no effort to prepare the starfish in any way, and consume it directly from the jar.
8. The initiate is to then sever their own tongue using the same brass knife that they previously used upon the starfish. They are to make no effort to cauterize or treat the wound, no matter how much blood is lost. So long as they have successfully followed the previous steps, they will survive.
9. After six lunar months have elapsed, the initiate’s new tongue will have grown into position. The texture of their second tongue will not be the same as the first, though it will be familiar, and may remind them of a certain echinoderm.
At this point, all the flavors of the cosmos are theirs to know. No longer a mere initiate, they are free to fulfill any recipe within the book that they desire.
The blackletter starfish cannot be used towards these ends.
Beware of picked starfish on the menu at certain restaurants.
The book even contains instructions on how to cook teeth.
INGREDIENTS
1 Noh mask
1.5 gallons rooibos tea
7 specimens dried coral
1 pair caribou antlers
FIRST COURSE
paris-style tobacco gnocchi
wrapped in pan-seared dollar bills, glazed with jalapeño jam
The leather-bound cookbook contains three-hundred seventy-seven recipes, including instructions for preparing alligator skin, thickening petroleum into flan, and slow-cooking ingots of iron until they’re tender enough to swallow. Before all of this, however, the text begins with a set of initiatory instructions, required for the chef to “survive their own work.” These instructions are as follows:
appetizers
twice-baked eel skins with gruyere - $12
braised trilobite on soft seaweed crisps - $16
nudibranch tempura with lobster honey - $18
During the early 1990s, single-use magic wands began appearing in dollar stores throughout America. For the most part, these were simply hollow, black tubes of polystyrene filled with a light dusting of powdered aether. Each contained just enough mystical potency to help with a single household task, whether that be washing the dishes, grilling burgers, or cleaning stains from the carpet. No incantations or prior initiation were required; after a few seconds of vigorous shaking, the wand’s plastic tip would pop off, allowing the pressurized magic to escape as a jet of violet smoke.
During the first phase of manufacturing, jellybeans are perfectly transparent. In this preliminary state, they look like misplaced contact lenses, or raindrops that failed to burst on impact. These beans have no flavor of their own, yet contain the potential for all flavors; when bitten, there is only that familiar texture of a tender shell giving way, followed by that of semi-molten starch oozing apart.
STARTERS
$7.99 BEER-BATTERED INSECT MEDLEY - A mixture of hornets, fireflies, and grasshoppers, deep-fried in our signature pilsner batter, then glazed with charcoal salsa. Don’t forget to spit out the stingers.
$4.99 WEST TEXAS POPCORN - Cooked over an open flame the old-fashioned way, then tossed in thistle butter, dusted with rock salt, and finished with a drizzle of cactus blood.
$9.99 HUMMINGBIRD SKEWERS - Grilled whole on shish kebabs with peach slices, brussel sprouts, and artichoke hearts. Painted with a glaze of local petroleum, served burning.
Jellied piano keys. raspberry jam, sesame seed. $9. - black keys only - $3.
Deep-fried dragonflies. tempura batter, quicksilver crema, mirror honey. $11.
Tree frog poppers. whole poison dart frogs, tempura batter, unstable habanero isotopes. $11.
Long pork sliders. pickled radish, black onion, hemlock vinaigrette. $10.
“You’re not seeing my shadow because I ate mine in the womb.”
He didn’t exactly believe her, but then again, she really didn’t have one. “Is that normal?”
“It’s not very common, but it happens.” She ran an index finger around the rim of her wine glass. “Have you ever tried umbratarian cuisine, my dear?”
He let her pick the appetizers on their second date, and in turn, she ordered the peach pit fondue.
“I love this place. They only use peaches with bottomless pits here,” she explained. “Birds that peck into them in the wild often lose their beaks, if not their entire heads. It takes a chef with real skill to craft them into something that humans can safely swallow.”
“Wait! Doesn’t that hurt your hands? At all?”
She pays her date no mind, however, and continues unscrewing the light bulb from its socket in the lamp hanging over their table. It eventually comes loose, but never loses power; the glow continues as she balances it between her long fingers. “I learned this trick back in college,” is her only explanation. She then taps it against the edge of her plate like a hardboiled egg, forming a loose webwork of cracks along its shell.
My apprentices have arrived with thirteen jars of pineapple jelly, and one by one, they pour them into the cauldron. Tonight, I’m teaching them a recipe that I learned while temporarily dead, during which time I worked in the underworld’s highly competitive seafood scene. The golden ooze begins to bubble as saltwater and black rum are added, combining into a thick, honeyed lava. I dip my sword into the concoction and stir it gently, watching wounds form and heal along the surface of the mixture.
“The clawfoot bathtub,” this book begins, “is a distant cousin of the crockpot and cauldron. Although its natural habitat is typically found outside the kitchen, it demonstrates a particular susceptibility to culinary magic due to its shape and composition. Being quadrupedal and wrought from relatively flexible materials, bringing one to life is often one of the most basic lessons taught to apprentice deep chefs.”
The discerning chef of the deep kitchen carries a revolver on their person at all times. There’s no telling what might emerge from the Black Oven if its door has been left open for too long, but for those who thrive in such a high-stakes environment, the recipes for gourmet bullets are just as familiar as formulas for cocktails are to bartenders. Hundreds of variants have been developed, and several of the most coveted are detailed herein.
Most who throw rainbow filets onto a skillet for the first time are surprised to discover how much they sizzle. They are not lean, and store numerous tender hues in their belly in addition to those outwardly displayed. It is not advisable to gaze directly into the pan while cooking is ongoing, as many of these colors are too volatile for the human eye to process, and may cause damage to the optical nerve.
The laws of nature are said to be written in the same language that birds sing their songs in. Mastery of this secret tongue has only been claimed by a handful of human beings over the centuries, and even they could neither speak it nor translate it, only understand it.
The leather-bound cookbook contains three-hundred seventy-seven recipes, including instructions for preparing alligator skin, thickening petroleum into flan, and slow-cooking ingots of iron until they’re tender enough to swallow. Before all of this, however, the text begins with a set of initiatory instructions, required for the chef to “survive their own work.” These instructions are as follows:
The seventeenth chapter of Abstruse Geometry concerns the mathematical problem of snakes swallowing their own tails. Following in the footsteps of a lost treatise by Athanasius Kircher, the tome describes a mysterious knot known as an “ourobohedron,” which is composed entirely of snakes engaged in varying degrees of autophagy. What it lacks in mathematical rigor, it makes up for in curiosity. The figure is described as follows:
Jack and the Beanstalk begins with its titular character making a pact with the devil. This element of the story is largely overlooked, but undeniable; he sacrifices his family’s prize calf to a mysterious salesman in exchange for a handful of magic beans. The consequences of this Faustian bargain are left out of the legend’s most well-known rendition, but given other tales from the past with similar devices, it is safe to conclude that in some way or another, Jack has committed an act of self-damnation.
You’d read enough Borges to know that wandering into a strange library alone was an ill-advised move, but you couldn’t resist this time around. Its gates exuded that incense of savory dust unique to the most ancient of tomes (which is, perhaps, the most tangible manifestation of wisdom known to mankind). From outside, it resembled a cave as much as it did a temple; you found it hard to determine whether the entrance was lined with stalactites, or columns, or teeth.
“The clawfoot bathtub,” this book begins, “is a distant cousin of the crockpot and cauldron. Although its natural habitat is typically found outside the kitchen, it demonstrates a particular susceptibility to culinary magic due to its shape and composition. Being quadrupedal and wrought from relatively flexible materials, bringing one to life is often one of the most basic lessons taught to apprentice deep chefs.”
The cover of the book is printed in thick, loud lettering: “The Secret Taxonomy of Lightning and its Anatomical Details, by Thomas Edison.” This misattribution is surprising, as despite it being the only copy of the book to ever exist, the Wizard of Menlo Park still managed to be plagiarize its contents. Despite this, you know the truth about its author, as well as the ramifications of its existence.