Cookery is a Labours ability and involves the preparation of well-balanced, finely presented full meals. The full meal has all of the restorative properties of snackfoods but, in addition, benefits one's physical well-being (see HELP WELLBEING and HELP FOOD). Cooked food should be eaten as close as possible to the time of its preparation. It can stay overnight in an eatery shop but any time beyond that risks the food going rotten, wasting it and losing the cost of its ingredients.
Cooking is done in front of a stove. Stoves are fashioned, in general, by the city foundries and placed in kitchens or back-bars around the land. A stove may be actively used by one cook at a time. Meals are made in special 'cooking pots', also fashioned by the city foundries, by standing before the stove, ingredients in hand, and typing COOK MEAL or COOK MEAL WITH DESSERT. The latter attempts to include a dessert with the finished product; meals with desserts being much more effective in restoring well-being than meals without. Stoves must be kept stoked with fuel and lit - wood or oil are the most common fuels. Type STOKE STOVE WITH WOOD, for instance, to shove some wood inside and, if necessary, LIGHT STOVE. Ensure you have a fire-source if you need to light fuel from scratch.
Cooked meals MUST have two types of ingredients foodwise, and one drinkswise. The food ingredients are twofold: first the main component (such as a meat, a fish) and second a companion (such as bread, or a flan). Desserts can be any sweet foodstuff (like a jam tart) but can also be ten items of freshly grown fruit (or just seven if in a well selected medley). Cooking must take place with ALL ingredients held in the hands of the chef (liquid in its container). The ingredients then transfer to the pot, pot onto stove, and eventually meal from the pot, raw ingredients used-up.
Central food ingredients:
Smoked ham, bean-curd or hunter's omelette, chicken legs, pork chops, fishcake, river-caught fish, meat slabs, meat pies, salted meats, bird pie, sausages, and potato pie (for vegearians).
Secondary food ingredients:
bread loaves, pitta bread, flans of any savoury variety, baked potato, potato turnover, asparagus pasties.
Dessert ingredients:
fruit pies, cakes of all kinds (especially chocolate ones, for Wraith's sake), croissants, buns, satsumas, sweet rolls, fruit or jam tarts, seven of any mixed fruit preselected as a medley, or TEN of any single unprepared fruit (to be sliced and diced as best one can at time of cooking).
Liquid refreshment possibilities:
fresh water (not salt or river-drawn), tavern sold liquors including wines, spirits, ales, meads, ciders, and non-alcoholic substantial beverages like milk, tizer, fruit juices.
