Raisa's Journey I: Urschnitzel

I was born in an Abramite shtetl in the outskirts of the Austerreich. A small village by the name Hühnerberg, roughly six leagues north of Vindobana. Born a quarter-dwarf (on my mother’s side) I was raised to only cook and clean for the men of the village. While I loathed the cleaning, I grew to love cooking. Not that I cared much for what the boys said of my cooking (nor did I care much for boys anyways). It was my Bubbe Breindel who taught me everything I knew during my time in Hühnerberg. It was during one Sabbat in late Summer when Bubbe Breindel told me to leave Hühnerberg for Vindobana, there I could truly hone my culinary craft. Under the cover of night, I stole away from Hühnerberg, atop my donkey Eyzl, with only my cooking journal, a set of knives, and a couple ducats. 

Vindobana was breath-taking, a bustling urban metropolis in contrast to the rural hovels of Hühnerberg. Steamwagons cruised through the packed streets as smoke billowed from the rooftops. Barkers and merchants shouted above the roar of factories hoping to attract a couple ducats from passerby’s. At Vindobana’s heart was the Kaiser-Kochschule, a culinary university of the highest degree where lowly cooks are trained to be high-chefs or magirists. The few students who show enough aptitude are taught in the ways of gastromancy or culinary magic. Gastromancy as an art infuses magic into the cooking process creating unusual meals and eliciting magical effects upon tasting said dish. 

I was allowed to prepare a single dish for my entrance exam, to be tasted by legendary headmaster of the university. While other cooks prepared elaborate Gaulish entrées and Latin desserts, I opted for something more homely. Urschnitzel is often sneered at by the culinary elite, seen as a dish for drunken farmers not the nobility. Ur or Aurochs were massive horned bulls that could produce enough milk to feed a whole family but due to the amount of grazing land they required, they could only be raised in rural Austerreich. I could only imagine how I looked, a quarter-dwarf frantically pummeling strips of Auroch Steak with an oversized mallet as the grains fell from the inspector’s hour-glass. I only just managed to garnish the Urschnitzel with a handful of Petersilie when the bell rang. 

Applicants fell like flies as the Headmaster rejected dish after dish. I began to sweat as I feared maybe I had simplified my dish too much, why would the instructor of high-chefs choose to eat a simple peasant dish? With a swift flourish of his silver fork and knife, the Headmaster sliced off a coin sized piece of the Urschnitzel. It felt like the entire world froze as I waited in dread for the Headmaster to slowly chew and swallow the morsel. He said nothing but gave me a curt smile and moved along to the next candidate. When the Deputy Headmaster stepped up to the Podium, I sighed and began to pack up my tools expecting the worst. But by some miracle, he called my name, Raisa of Hühnerberg, as among the newly accepted students at the university. It was only after the ceremony did the Deputy Headmaster stop me to say that the Headmaster had grown up a poor boy in the mining town of Iuvavum, the dish having reminded him of his humble origins and childhood. The recipe for Urschnitzel is as follows:

Depiction of an Adult Male Auroch or Ur

Ingredients:

    • 4 Auroch Steaks (roughly 200 grams each)

    • 50 Grams of Flour

    • 7 Grams of Paprika

    • 5 Grams of Salt

    • 3 Grams of Pepper

    • 2 Eggs

    • 250 Grams of Grated Bread

    • 140 Grams of Auroch Lard

    • 2 Grams of Petersilie

    • 2 Lemons

Instructions:

Pound the steaks with an iron mallet to an even 10 millimeter thickness. Add the flour, paprika, salt and pepper together into a bowl. Add the grated bread and beaten eggs in two other bowls. In a large cast-iron scutella pan heat the auroch lard until melted and crackling. Dredge each steak in the flour mixture first, then the beaten eggs and finally the grated bread completely coating the steak. Then gingerly place each steak into the scutella pan. Fry each steak for 3 to 4 minutes on each side until a deep golden bread. Serve with lemon slices and garnish with petersilie. 

Raisa of Hühnerberg, the Author of the Liber Gustum, Magirist, and Gastronomancer Extraordinaire

Next: Raisa and the Pasta Pot