Description/Reason:
I've seen Klingon foods depicted in trek that look as if these adjectives may apply. If nothing else, it might describe the texture of dried-out gagh, commonly (though regrettably) served as snacks and at breakfast.
Word: be crunchy, be crispy
Category: Verb
ghotI' mIQlu'bogh vISoptaHvIS nujwIjDaq rIStaH.
As I ate the fried fish it made a (continual) crackling sound in my mouth.
I for one would prefer something more generally useful like be brittle.
Though with that said, from what we know about Klingon foods it wouldn't surprise me in the least if there were a dedicated verb be crunchy, be crispy. We already have several adjectives for describing Klingon food textures (ngal be chewy, tlher be lumpy, char be slimy), and with deep-frying (mIQ) the most popular means of cooking, presumably crispy or crunchy is another such texture, which is otherwise really hard to describe (that is, unless it's also subsumed under ngal, and I wouldn't have thought that would be the case). How do Klingons describe the hardened coating on the outside of deep-fried tlhombuS (KGT p.93)?
What's more, pages 87 to 89 of KGT describe a great many other foodstuffs that one would assume would be crunchy or crispy whether cooked or raw: whole bugs, scales, hooves, claws, bones… It also has this to say about Klingon consumption of eggs: "[they] do not play a large role in the Klingon diet as food items in their own right, though they are mixed into many sauces, usually along with the pieces of shell (pel'aQ), for flavor and texture. The small eggs of the Tokvirian skink (toqvIr lung), however, are often eaten whole, shell and all, usually by the handful" (KGT p.88). What's the nature of the texture that eggshell gives to sauces, if not added crunch or crispiness?
In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think this (along with, perhaps, the already-proposed suggestion of be spicy, be peppery) is a small but important gap in Klingon food lexicon, and one worthy of filling. I agree that be brittle would also be useful, but it seems likely that there would also be a verb be crunchy, be crispy (of food).
I agree that the semantic gap is worth filling; I just think that like tlher and char, this word should have applications beyond culinary mouthfeel.
That's entirely fair. rIS (which you suggested earlier) would have been great for this if its additional senses hadn't become so broad, including the emission of sound, radiation, and most problematically for food contexts, smell.
be brittle would work for me. I suppose having overly-nuanced, overly-specialized variations of the same basic concept such as crunchy, crispy and whatnot isn't really very Klingon, anyway.