Star Navy SOS Recipe and a Peek into What Remains

From What Remains, Chapter 4: “Big Damn Hero”

Today was Shit on a Shingle, that most ancient and venerable of navy grub. The Earth Republic’s version was toasted rice flour bread packed out with seeds, alongside a barley and a dried mushroom gravy so thick you could stand a spoon up in it, always served with canned green beans, canned fruit, and pickled beets as a matter of course. Sora was pretty sure she’d had this for dinner or lunch a thousand times by now; its familiarity made her almost instantly relax, soothing her stegosaurus brain the moment she smelled the mushroom gravy and the earthy, vinegared tang of ruby-red beets. 

….

“Well, I mean… getting half your body replaced with chrome isn’t something you see every day,” Sora pointed out, examining a chillbox full of drinks, before she selected a melon-flavored soymilk in a refillable pouch, like back in school. “It’s a lot less common than an arm or an eye or a hand, or a positronic headplate.”

“Yeah, fair enough,” Novak murmured, pulling a coffee-flavored soymilk out and spotting her melon one. The sight made him smile suddenly. “Man, you really are just perpetually sixteen, aren’t you?”

“Fuck off, Novak,” Sora told him companionably, already sucking melon soymilk out of the pouch as they made their way back to the table.

Dr. Kalgari was waiting for them, and Sora could tell from the entertained sparkle in his eyes that he’d been watching them, along with the progress of the other patients as they filtered over to the dinner line.

“You two seem to be getting along.”

Sora and Novak glanced at each other and grunted mutually, before both going back to spreading gravy evenly over their toast. Sora had spent a lot of time with Novak, in her sophomore and junior years especially, before he’d graduated. They hadn’t often talked about all their hopes and dreams or anything—they’d just been around each other a lot, had a lot of fun and talked about stuff that bugged them or freaked them out, and played a lot of video games, so it was easy to fall back into a sort of effortless level of comfort with him, like being back in school. By default, she knew what to expect from him, except when he threw around some of his new post-death crazy. She guessed he’d see some of hers too, sooner or later.

~*~

Food is an extremely important part of Starship Valkyrie game culture and What Remains. It was there, beginning in 2023, that I started truly building out the food landscape of the Earth Republic, going beyond brief mentions during game events and side writings, and taking the time to imagine and lay the foundation for the menu of the ERSN and Indoc Centers.

Sora Kuromoto and Jaesan Novak, the story’s deuteragonists, are the children of officers and officers themselves in their adult lives. They’ve been institutionalized their entire lives, from military schools to Star Navy Academy to ships and space stations, and they’ve nearly always eaten off a chow line, except during visits to their family homes and grandparents. Like many people in the Earth Republic, they lay somewhere between the worlds of heritage cooking—the foods of their grandparents that they enjoy and adore—and the institutionalized food that they’re extremely used to.

Institutional food in the Earth Republic is insistently healthy, generally vegan with optional non-vegan components, easy to batch for large groups, and low in real sugars. Elements common to North American cooking today, made possible by factory farming operations, like eggs, dairy, and meat products, are no longer cheap or plentiful in the Republic; considered energy intensive, dairy is held aside for heritage foods, while real eggs are only ever seen on farms. Almost all meat is grown in vats; the institutions use leftover, formless bits of this meat to form meatballs, “Republic spam,” deli meats, and other such products.

Institutional cooking in the Republic is a paradigm of food preparation very different from our own. There is no butter or lard for roux, no chicken bones for stock, no eggs for binders or baking, no milk for creaminess. From the ground up, all Star Navy Grub Guide recipes—even when they’re inspired and drawn from the history of navy grub guides and other institutional food—have to be rebuilt for a different food environment and preparation regime.

All this is to say that I’ve gotten very good at making a vegan roux, to the point where I can make myself a personal batch of Star Navy SOS—that’s Shit on a Shingle for those not from navy families—at the drop of a hat. Sora and Jase, by contrast, have been ensigns on Star Destroyers in the ERSN. Ensigns, especially the new ones, usually come onto a vessel thinking they’re hot shit, so it’s tradition to take them down a notch… nominally by giving them mess shifts in the galley, at the mercy of Cook, in addition to their other duties. Nothing humbles you like dishing slop on the chow line for the NCOs.

But you’re not cooking for a ship of the line. You’re cooking for you! Enjoy this modified recipe below for one or two servings of Star Navy Shit on a Shingle, vegan all the way down, with optional dairy components if you want them. Enjoy it while you read What Remains, and get a taste of chow in the Earth Republic institutions. If you want to enjoy it like Sora, add some canned green beans and pickled beets. I love ‘em.

~*~

Mushroom Gravy SOS

You will need:

5-6 dried shiitake mushrooms, soaked in water for a half hour before cooking

¼ cup minced onion

2 tablespoons flour

Olive oil (you can also use butter if you prefer)

Salt and pepper

1 cup veggie or mushroom stock

Dried parsley

Optional: 2 tablespoons unsweetened plant milk of your choice (or dairy milk)

2 slices of toasted bread

Procedure:

Squeeze moisture from your mushrooms and sliver. If stems remain hard, remove.

Sweat your onions in oil or butter, then add mushrooms to pan. Cook both until browned. Add more oil or butter, then add your flour. Stir to coat mushrooms and onions in flour-oil paste, then keep everything moving as the flour browns with the oil. Once it has a nice, toasted color, add liquid (stock and milk, if using), and stir to combine. Keep the gravy moving as it thickens, then reduce heat to a simmer. If it’s too thick, add more stock. Salt and pepper to taste (salty dogs like it salty), add parsley, then remove from heat.

Toast your bread so that it is ready to receive the gravy when piping hot. Dish gravy directly on top and cover toast completely. Eat with a knife and fork—it will be messy! Fantastic with pickles to cut through the gravy.

One shingle is generally a good center of a meal for one diner (two for a marine), if you have lots of sides. Two shingles with no sides make a filling, comforting meal.

Enjoy a taste of the Star Navy—and please enjoy What Remains! You can find chapters up for free now on https://starship-valkyrie.ghost.io/