While the typical ingredients in chumétl are well known, Professor Barker also said that there were many other types - including fruity and sweet varieties. I found this in something he wrote in the old Blue Room archive.
It's also well known that 'typical' chumétl is not very appealing to most western Earthlings. An 'acquired taste', as the Professor put it.
So it occurred to me to see if I could come up with a recipe for a 'legal', if not typical, variety of chumétl that would be more agreeable to more actual Tékumel fans. A 'dessert' chumétl, if you will.
Down here in Texas (among other places I'm sure) there's a Mexican drink called Horchata. It's sweetened rice milk with cinnamon, and I happen to be a big fan. Helpfully, we know there's cinnamon or a cinnamon analog on Tékumel, else how do they know what Ssú smell like? I also thought that the kind of spicy cinnamon flavor found in Red Hots candies might give dessert chumétl an appropriate 'hotness'. So I decided to try to make a sweet/hot cinnamon chumétl.
My first experiment went quite well. To a base of Greek yogurt and buttermilk, I added brown sugar for sweetness and powdered cinnamon for flavor. For the hotness, I mixed crushed habanero pepper seeds in a tiny bit of butter - straining out the seeds and adding the butter to my mix. The result was surprisingly tasty, though not nearly 'hot' enough. Which is less than optimal, considering the rigmarole I went through to try to add hotness. An easier and more effective source of hotness needed to be found.
Talzhemir Mrr, my partner here at UNIgames, has since provided a bottle of cinnamon oil. That stuff is quite spicy on its own, like the Red Hots candies that originally inspired me. It's also amazingly potent. I ruined my first attempt at dessert chumetl using cinnamon oil by adding waaay to much.
The experiment continues; I plan to make another attempt in the coming week.
|
Author
Chumétl Experiment!