figjam | Chef

This is Ulindu, who will be the main character for my NaNo this year :D He's a chef from Ni-Badra, the town at the mouth of the Ra-Lin and hence is as much a coastal community as it is a river community. The inspiration for this one came from this Insta post, where she took selfies, printed them out, then made a collage of props on top of the photo to make a story. Raykin hasn't invented cameras yet so Uli gets a sketch. All the props are coastal plants used in cooking, plus some cockles and his chef's knife.

Sketch on its own, just cos I'm proud of it :D The table is made of Norfolk Island pine (which they just call island pine cos they don't have a Norfolk Island) which is practically a requirement of every beachside town or suburb in Australia.

In his hand is sea parsley, which tastes kinda like a cross between parsley and celery (it's also sometimes called sea celery) but a bit more peppery. All these are Australian natives, btw, most especially native to the SA coast.

Up the top left, the silvery one is coastal rosemary, which I cannot for the life of me find. I plan on going for a beach forage a bit further from the city beaches in the hopes of finding the things I haven't tasted yet, but it's cold and extremely middle of winter right now so the beach is uninviting. Anyway. The internet tells me coastal rosemary is an extremely close substitute for regular rosemary so.

The reddish one in the top right is seablite, another one I've not tried, but which is apparently quite salty and kinda succulent and crisp.

Cockles, which I've already talked about and which of course live all along the Raykinian coast, too.

The little berries are muntries, little salty-sweet pops of apple-currant-clove and they're delightful. I have a plant in the garden but it's only smol and hasn't started producing yet.

In the bunch down the bottom left we have ice plant, which the Raykinians call dew plant, named for the teenytiny blisters all over it, stems and leaves both, which look like it's covered in dew! Tastes like succulent, slightly salty spinach. I found one at Brighton beach, dug it up and took it home and it's happily living in a pot now =3

The twiggy one in that bunch is samphire, which is kinda like salty asparagus but really skinny.

Last of all, the pink flower is karkalla, a kind of pigface, with thick, fat, juicy, succulent leaves, also kinda salty. These things are everywhere and usually used as ground cover by beachside councils because they're very self-sufficient.

Also Uli's knife, cos I felt like I needed something to indicate he's a chef not a gardener. Just a simple iron knife which he keeps meticulously sharp.