(The following was taken from The Alex Kilgour Jokebook, which was in turn based on a scene from Sten #4 - Fleet Of The Damned. Read the story. Make the BBQ sauce and slather it on your favorite beastie. A wonderful way to spend the final moments of Empire Day.)
The Eternal Emperor had definite ideas about a picnic.
*****
A soft rain of five or ten minutes that ended just before the guests arrived added a sweetness to the air.
Said rain had been ordered and delivered.
He thought that a breeze with just a bit of an invigorating chill in it whetted appetites. As the day progressed, the breeze should become balmy, so the picnickers could loll under the shade trees to escape the warming sun.
Said gentle, shifting winds had also been ordered.
Last of all, the Eternal Emperor thought a barbecue the best form of all picnics, with each dish personally prepared by the host.
The Eternal Emperor scanned the vast picnic grounds of Arundel with growing disappointment as he added a final dash of this and splurt of that to his famous barbecue sauce. Meanwhile, all over the picnic grounds, fifty waldo cooks manning as many outdoor kitchen fires exactly copied his every dash and splurt.
Hundreds of years before, the Emperor’s semi-annual barbecue had begun as a nonofficial event. He started it because he loved to cook, and to love to cook is to watch others enjoy what you have lovingly prepared. At first, only close friends were invited: perhaps 200 or so—a number he could easily handle with a few helpers. In fact, the Emperor believed there were many dishes that reached near perfection when prepared in quantities of this size: his barbecue sauce, for instance.
It was a simple event he could comfortably fit on a small shaded area of the fifty-five-kilometer grounds of his palace.
Then he had become aware of growing jealousy among the members of his court. Beings were irked because they felt they were not part of a nonexistent inner circle. His solution was to add to the guest list—which created a spreading circle of jealousy as far out as the most distant systems of his empire. The list grew to vast proportions.
Now, a minimum of 8,000 could be expected. There was no way the Emperor could personally prepare food in those proportions. The clotting thing was getting out of hand. It was in danger of becoming an official event—the likes of an Empire Day.
He had been tempted to end the whole thing. But the barbecue was one of the few social occasions he really enjoyed. The Eternal Emperor did not consider himself a good mixer.
The solution to the cooking was simple: He had a host of portable outdoor kitchens built and the waldo cooks to tend them. Every motion he made, they duplicated, down to the smallest molecule of spice dusted from his hands. The solution to the now-official social nature of the event, however, proved impossible. So the Eternal Emperor decided to take advantage of it.
He invited only the key people in his empire to Prime World, and he used any potential jealousy of the uninvited to his advantage. As he once told Mahoney, “It’s a helluva way to flush ’em out of the bush.”
****
The Emperor's Barbecue Sauce
The Emperor sniffed his simmering sauce: Mmmmm...Perfect. It was a concoction whose beginnings were so foul-looking and smelling that Marr and Senn, his Imperial caterers, refused to attend. They took a holiday in some distant place every time he threw a barbecue.
The original creation was born in a ten-gallon pot. He always made it many days in advance. He said it was to give it time to breathe. Marr and Senn substituted "breed," but the Emperor ignored that. The ten gallons of base sauce was used sort of like sourdough starter - All he had to do was to keep adding as many ingredients as there were beings to eat it.
He dipped a crust of hard bread into the sauce and nibbled. It was getting better.
The secret to the sauce was the scrap meat. It had taken the Emperor years to convince his butchers what he meant by scrap. He did not want slices off the finest fillet. He needed garbage beef, so close to spoiling that the fat was turning yellow and rancid. The fact that he rubbed it well with garlic, rosemary, and salt and pepper did not lessen the smell. "If you're feeling squeamish," he always told Mahoney, "sniff the garlic on your hands."
The sauce meat was placed in ugly piles on racks that had been stanchioned over smoky fires - at this stage the recipe wanted little heat, but a great deal of smoke from hardwood chips. The Emperor liked hickory when he could get it. He constantly flipped the piles of meat so that the smoke flavor would penetrate. In this case, the chemistry of the near-spoiled scraps aided him: They were drying and porous and sucking at the air.
Then he - and his echoing waldoes - dumped the meat into the pot, filled it with water, and set it simmering with cloves of garlic and the following spices: three or more bay leaves, a cupped palm and a half of oregano, and a cupped palm of savory to counteract the bitterness of the oregano.
Then the sauce had to simmer a minimum of two hours, sometimes three, depending upon the amount of fat in the meat - the more fat, the longer the simmer.
While he was waiting for the meat to simmer to completion, he could drink many shots of Stregg and prepare the next part of the sauce at his leisure. At one time he invited a few friends to keep him company during this process, but in the end this created so many squabbles for the favor of his company that he declared that this was a sauce he must cook alone.
The sauce presented many possibilities in the choice of ingredients, but the Emperor liked using ten or more large onions, garlic cloves - always use too much garlic - chili peppers, green peppers, more oregano and savory, and Worcestershire sauce.
He sautéed all that in clarified butter. Then he dumped the mixture into another pot and set it to bubbling with a dozen quartered tomatoes, a cup of tomato paste, four green peppers, and a two-fingered pinch of dry mustard.
A health glug or three of very dry red wine went into the pot. Then he added the finishing touch. He stirred in the smoky starter sauce that he had prepared in advance, raised the heat, and simmered ten minutes.
The sauce was done.
*****
The entire 8-novel landmark science fiction series is now being presented in three three giant omnibus editions from Orbit Books. The First - BATTLECRY - features the first three books in the series: Sten #1; Sten #2 -The Wolf Worlds; and Sten #3, The Court Of A Thousand Suns. Next: JUGGERNAUT, which features Sten #4, Fleet Of The Damned; Sten #5, Revenge Of The Damned; and Sten #6, The Return Of The Emperor. Finally, there's DEATHMATCH, which contains Sten #6, Vortex; and Sten #7, End Of Empire. Click on the highlighted titles to buy the books. Plus, if you are a resident of The United Kingdom, you can download Kindle versions of the Omnibus editions. Which is one clot of a deal!
Two new companion editions to the international best-selling Sten series. In the first, learn the Emperor's most closely held cooking secrets. In the other, Sten unleashes his shaggy-dog joke cracking sidekick, Alex Kilgour. Both available as trade paperbacks or in all major e-book flavors. Click here to tickle your funny bone or sizzle your palate.
STEN #1 NOW IN SPANISH!
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ALL THREE STEN OMNIBUS EDITIONS NOW ON TAP
The entire 8-novel landmark science fiction series is now being presented in three three giant omnibus editions from Orbit Books. The First - BATTLECRY - features the first three books in the series: Sten #1; Sten #2 -The Wolf Worlds; and Sten #3, The Court Of A Thousand Suns. Next: JUGGERNAUT, which features Sten #4, Fleet Of The Damned; Sten #5, Revenge Of The Damned; and Sten #6, The Return Of The Emperor. Finally, there's DEATHMATCH, which contains Sten #6, Vortex; and Sten #7, End Of Empire. Click on the highlighted titles to buy the books. Plus, if you are a resident of The United Kingdom, you can download Kindle versions of the Omnibus editions. Which is one clot of a deal!
Here's the Kindle link for BATTLECRY
Here's the Kindle link for JUGGERNAUT
Here's the Kindle link for DEATHMATCH
*****
HERE ARE ALL EIGHT AMERICAN EDITIONS OF STEN
YOU CAN BUY THE TRADE PAPERBACKS, E-BOOKS AND AUDIO BOOKS BY CLICKING ON THE STEN PAGE!
*****
THE STEN COOKBOOK & KILGOUR JOKEBOOK
THE STEN COOKBOOK & KILGOUR JOKEBOOK
Two new companion editions to the international best-selling Sten series. In the first, learn the Emperor's most closely held cooking secrets. In the other, Sten unleashes his shaggy-dog joke cracking sidekick, Alex Kilgour. Both available as trade paperbacks or in all major e-book flavors. Click here to tickle your funny bone or sizzle your palate.
*****
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IT'S A BOOK!
THE COMPLETE HOLLYWOOD MISADVENTURES!
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TALES OF THE BLUE MEANIE
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| Venice Boardwalk Circa 1969 |
In the depths of the Sixties and The Days Of Rage, a young newsman, accompanied by his pregnant wife and orphaned teenage brother, creates a Paradise of sorts in a sprawling Venice Beach community of apartments, populated by students, artists, budding scientists and engineers lifeguards, poets, bikers with a few junkies thrown in for good measure. The inhabitants come to call the place “Pepperland,” after the Beatles movie, “Yellow Submarine.” Threatening this paradise is "The Blue Meanie," a crazy giant of a man so frightening that he eventually even scares himself. Here's where to buy the book.
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Diaspar Magazine - the best SF magazine in South America - is publishing the first novel in the Sten series in four
episodes. Part One and Part Two appeared in back-to-back issues. And now Part Three has hit the virtual book stands. Stay tuned, for the grand conclusion. Meanwhile, here are the links to the first three parts. Remember, it's free!
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