Dwarf Tales

Gyros Technically, gyro is any meat that is cooked on a vertical rotisserie or some such devilish device. Dwarfs don't have the luxury of such machines . There are boar spears and other pointy sticks that can be laid over a fire ( but they tend to burn as well). The prescribed dwarfish method for making gyro is thus slice it and cover it and stick it in the oven or under a fire. This recipe is for pork gyro and includes a side dish rather than serving in a huge bread roll.

Migas This is a dish based on stale bread and is rally the ultimate in a throw together meal - not a throw up meal. It is supremely useful when you don't really want to get off your dwarfish backside to cook but know that you should or when the prospect of another meal of beans on toast covered with lashings of tabasco sauce, paprika and freshly ground black pepper. On second thoughts maybe beans....These one pots also come into their own when that other family of dwarfs TURN UP UNANNOUNCED AT THE DOOR. Don't expect too much vegetarian food here - we're not elves you know - but there are one or two meals of vegetables that it would be churlish to ignore.

Vegetables You might think a plate of vegetables if fighting talk to a dwarf and in many cases it is. There are however, some vegetables that charge the dwarf imagination. One good example is the honorary meat known as egg plant or to the elves, aubergine. Sometimes it isn't one vegetable, it is a combination that does the job as in this particular recipe, involving kale and a collection of available vegetables and chick peas roasted in the oven with a spicy seasoning and lashings of olive oil. Sometimes it is nothing more that what the larder will bear given that it may be a long walk to the nearest market or when all the smart meat is holed up in burrows or caves under several dwarf heights of snow.

Chorizo Smoked paprika sausage from the wilds of Aragon is one of the many adopted meats of the dwarfish palate. Introduced to the northern dwarf marches by the renowned gastronome, Scofya the Corpulent, this sausage has become almost a staple of those dwarfs who specialise in forages into the southern lands. Admittedly, it is never going to top the Yarlish blood pudding but it is considered by some to be a good substitute even though it neither looks nor tastes the same or even similar. This simple recipe uses chorizo, (pronounced CHOR-REE-ZOW) in defiance of the Aragonese pronunciation which sounds uncouth and strange to the dwarfish tongue, with a simple dish of stale bread and selected vegetables.

Fesh! Fish is honorary meat on the basis that they are critters that live in that most treacherous of environments - water, and in particular the sea - and dwarfs have a great respect for anything that goes over it on through it and yet lives. (At least until they catch it and kill it and put it in a pot!) One of the noblest of fish to the dwarf is the salmon because it lives in both salt and sweet water and therefore is a master of these most treacherous fluids. It should be noted, but only briefly here that the eel, being able to live for a while out of water, is regarded with even greater respect by dwarfs but more in the sense of grubby alternative hero than majestic conqueror. Here is a simple dish for salmon.