Cooking with Wild Game (LN) - Volume 1 - Chapter 4.1

Chapter 4: A Tiny Visitor

1

How many times was it now that I’d gone “Hmm...” today?

My hated enemy, the poitan, lay there before my eyes.

It was now the fifth afternoon since I had come to this other world.

I already completed my daily routine of washing the utensils and checking on the pantry, and then I went ahead and made jerky.

This may end up being a bit of a long digression, but that actually didn’t end up being mere jerky, but more of a smoked meat. To give a rough explanation, I rubbed salt and pico leaf all over the surface of the giba meat, and then wrapped it up in that pseudo-rubber tree leaf (now that I thought of it, I never actually got the proper name for that one.) On the night of the third day I washed the salt and spice off, and then let it dry overnight. The next morning, I hung the meat on a tree just outside, then roasted lilo herbs and fresh pico leaves beneath it, and let it smoke until the sun reached its peak. And thus, I finished making some smoked giba meat.

Anyway, today was my fourth morning here, so I had been entrusted with finishing the smoked meat rather than gathering firewood and herbs. The task just involved adding firewood and herbs so that the flames didn’t grow any stronger, which was pretty simple. That wasn’t to say it was easy, though, as it meant manning the fire over the course of several hours. But with that said, I made it all the way to midday without any unexpected problems striking, allowing me to safely complete a large amount of smoked meat.

As I waited for Ai Fa to return from her usual gathering work in the forest, I stowed away the smoked meat in the usual storage space, bringing my current task to an end.

Once I had finished my work for the morning, I was permitted to spend the time between early afternoon and evening experimenting with the poitan. During that time, Ai Fa had headed back out into the forest in order to hunt a giba. We still had plenty of giba meat left, but in order to get ahold of the necessary poitan and aria, she still needed to hunt down one giba every five days. And since I was an absolute amateur when it came to hunting giba, I’d just get in the way, so I was able to get ahold of this free time.

Perhaps it should be called only natural, but over the course of these last five days, Ai Fa still hadn’t taken down a giba. Before I came along and added another mouth for her to feed, she could keep a pace of one giba every 10 days, and they probably weren’t exactly easy to hunt. And I mean, she had already caught one five days ago (albeit as the result of unexpected circumstances). Ai Fa just said that she’d be lucky if she could manage to catch one either today or tomorrow.

Anyway, back to me. On that first day I had dissected the giba, and then in the four days since, I had been spending every afternoon experimenting with the poitan. It was proving to be quite a tricky foe, though.

To put it bluntly, I just plain didn’t know what it was. All I could figure was that this vegetable didn’t exist back in my world.

In terms of its outer appearance, it looked just like a potato. I got the feeling that it was a bit pale for one, but otherwise it was identical to your average spud.

And yet, it was something completely different on the inside.

You couldn’t eat it by biting straight into it, as it was terribly bitter, yet also excessively floury. I couldn’t help but wonder if it was really a vegetable at all, because it was just so utterly lacking in moisture and flavor.

As you already know, when you cooked it in water it fell apart under the heat and turned into a nearly flavorless muddy water. When I had to go and add it to my completed giba soup, it certainly didn’t improve things in the least. But even so, it apparently contained crucial nutrition, so for the past four days I’d been been adding it to the remaining soup after I’d had my fill of meat and aria, then chugging it down.

Finishing off a stew with some rice gruel or udon makes me so happy, but that honestly felt more like a punishment. I couldn’t help but wallow in self-pity, wondering why I had to gulp down this muddy water.

That was why I was worrying about it so much, but... I still hadn’t found a means of overcoming it just yet.

I had Ai Fa’s permission to waste one a day for the sake of research, so I’d tried out all sorts of stuff, but nothing had worked yet. When I heated it, it collapsed into a mush. When I baked it, it crumbled into a powder. I tried soaking it in water, but nothing changed. When I fried it in animal fat, I just got a floury lard. On top of that, I tried mashing it, frying it without any fat, exposing it to sunlight, and everything else I could think of, but I had yet to find anything that looked promising.

I had no clue how many times I’d done it today, but I ended up letting out yet another “Hmmmmmm...!”

And then, I was suddenly slapped on the back of my head.

“You’re too noisy. Do you really have to make so much of a racket when you’re worrying about something?”

Naturally, that bit of violence had come from Ai Fa.

Rather than heading out into the forest all that much, she had spent most of the day rummaging around in the storage shed, though she had apparently finally finished her work in there. Now, she stood there dauntingly in her usual light attire, glaring at my face.

“That hurt! And it’s not like I’m whining because I want...” I started to say, but then I noticed she was holding something under her armpit. What was that? It was some sort of bundle of cloth that had some seriously beautiful coloring to it.

Perhaps because she had noticed where I was looking, Ai Fa went ahead and spread out one of them.

“These clothes belonged to my father.”

I see. Apparently it was a sleeveless vest that opened in the front. It didn’t have any buttons, instead being made so that you tied it with a cord at the bottom. The design was simple, but the whirling patterns and various colors made for a rather chic outfit.

“Ooh, that’s pretty nice. I’m sure it’d look good on you, Ai Fa,” I earnestly responded, only for Ai Fa’s cheeks to turn red for some reason.

“A-As if I could wear an outfit like that! It may be true that I carry out the giba hunting as head of my household, but I’m still technically a woman!”

“Huh? It’s not like I was telling you to wear just that!”

It was the sort of vest that Aladdin might wear, so the front was left wide open, with nothing to cover the wearer’s chest... Yeah, that was no good. That just plain wouldn’t meet social standards.

“Naturally, if you wore that, you’d leave on that top you have on now! And I mean, there’s no way I’d treat someone with such a pretty face like a man in the first—”

“Oh shut up already! This is for you to wear!”

As she flipped her lid for the first time in a little while, Ai Fa threw the outfit right at my face.

“That outfit of yours stands out way too much! I’m sick of getting strange looks whenever I’m out with you!”

Oh, so that’s it. I knew full well from my morning trips to the stream and the like that my pure white outfit attracted an awful lot of attention. Plus I was sort of lacking in outfits, so I had to alternate between my t-shirt and uniform every day, and when it came to my pants and underwear, I had no choice but to put them back on sopping wet after washing them. Well, the climate was so warm that they would dry in a few hours, and you could never tell when a localized squall would sweep through and get you wet anyway, so I had already given up and accepted that... Though it did make me feel a bit sad seeing my pure white chef’s uniform grow more and more dirty as I took it out into the forest.

And so, I truly felt deeply grateful to my enraged benefactor.

“T-Thank you so much. But isn’t this really precious to you?”

“That may be so, but if there’s no one to wear it, then it may as well be mere garbage,” Ai Fa said, still looking angry and reaching down for the knife at her hip.

I instinctually took a step back, but Ai Fa thrust it at me still in its sheath.

“This was also something my father left behind.”

Now that I looked closely, I saw that Ai Fa had another identical knife dangling from her hip.

“So... I can use this, too?”

“I’m just loaning it to you, though! It’s a pain having you always getting my knife all smeared in fat! But let me just say that if you fail to take proper care of the grip or the blade rusts or the like, I swear I’ll cut off your ears!”

“Got it. And thank you. I really do appreciate it. I’ll be sure to treat your father’s mementos right. That’s a promise.”

Ai Fa suddenly looked away, but rather than going anywhere she sat down beside me.

“So, did you find a way to make poitan taste delicious?”

“Not yet. It looks kind of like it’s fought me to a standstill. I mean, I can’t think of any vegetable from my world that resembles this thing. Giba are just like boars, and aria are just like onions, but this thing just plain doesn’t have a counterpart.”

“Then how about just admitting defeat? I’m... not at all displeased with how things are now.”

Ai Fa kept stubbornly looking away, so I took the opportunity to look at the side of her face from point-blank range.

“You really aren’t the least bit dissatisfied? I’m so darn annoyed that I can’t even stand it! The giba soup is approaching perfection, but thanks to this thing, it’s all for naught! I may still just be a trainee, but this whole ordeal is thrashing my self-esteem as a chef to bits!”

“Self-esteem...?”

“I mean it’s crushing my pride.”

“Hmm... Well, as I am now at least, I would naturally prefer something to taste good rather than bad. But you can’t just keep on wasting ingredients forever, either.”

“Yeah. I get that, but still...”

“These tusks and horns aren’t solely for exchanging for food. They can be exchanged for a knife if one breaks, or clothes if you lose your clothing, or medicine if you fall ill,” Ai Fa said, clutching the necklace dangling in front of her chest. “Up until now, I could obtain enough aria and poitan by hunting down a giba once every 10 days, so I was able to build up this surplus of tusks and horns. But now that I need to defeat a giba every five days, I worry that I may need to eat into this surplus. That’s all the more reason that we must treat our food stores as precious.”

“Right. But still, you gave your word that I could use one poitan per day as I pleased.”

With that said, though, I’d already gone and wasted four poitan. That made my comment just now more than a little pathetic.

“But from today on, I’ll stop wasting them. I’ll just take one out of my portion to experiment—”

“You can’t,” Ai Fa yelled out in a surprisingly firm tone, bringing her face closer to mine. “How many times do you intend to make me repeat myself? Two poitan and three aria. That is what the people of the forest’s edge determined as the bare minimum required to live a healthy life. If you decrease that number, then no matter how much giba meat you may eat, you will eventually become ill.”

A blue flame burned bright in Ai Fa’s eyes. I suppose the ethics of the people of the forest’s edge wouldn’t allow for something like me sacrificing my health for the sake of research. No... That wasn’t just limited to them. A chef should never allow such a thing to happen, either. A chef who failed to properly monitor his own eating habits was like a doctor who neglected his health, or a dyer who only wears white.

I mean, I get all that...

A chef supplies their customers not only flavor, but also nutrition. No matter how delicious a dish may be, there was no point if it caused harm to the person eating it. And no matter how well balanced a dish may be nutritionally, if it tastes bad then it’s pointless. Being a chef meant aiming to achieve both of those goals. I don’t know about other chefs, but at the very least, that was the sort of chef that my old man was.

Naturally, there were plenty of dishes out there that prioritized taste over nutrition. I mean, I was rather fond of greasy tonkotsu ramen myself.

But that couldn’t be the norm when it comes to food. Food that prioritized taste heavily was so impactful and delicious precisely because you only ate it every now and again.

It’s because that’s how we get the nutrients our bodies need that we desire to eat. We humans may have destroyed our natural instincts as animals, and we may have lost sight of it by and large, but that key premise is something we can never do away with.

Giba meat was truly delicious.

I could sense the fact that it included nutrients that my body needed. And I could feel it being converted into flesh and blood inside of me. Perhaps you’d laugh that off as me just imagining things, but that’s how I truly felt.

It was a powerful enough dish to make me think that... And I had been the one to make it.

To have that precious person eat food that was delicious, and also good for her...

Eating poitan should be good for you. Ai Fa is proof of that.

Ai Fa was stronger and more lively than anyone else I knew. And what she had grown up on was giba, aria, and poitan... There had to be some way to cook it so that it tasted good.

I mean, the poitan contains nutrients that are essential for humans...

...Hmm?

Essential nutrients...?

Something that humans need?

In other words...

“That’s it! So that’s what it was!” I yelled out loudly without even thinking and, similarly without thought, grabbed Ai Fa by the shoulders. “I was barking up the totally wrong tree! I mean, what was it that was missing?! Man, I can’t believe that was it...!”

“Have you suddenly lost your senses...?”

Ai Fa tried to pull away like I was being a real nuisance, but I unconsciously pulled her closer.

“It’s because of you that I figured out the answer! You really are the best, Ai Fa!”

I swear I was just doing this all inattentively.

Anyway, I unconsciously threw my arms around Ai Fa’s body, which was slender yet also taut like a leather whip.

It was only natural that a rain of blows came down upon my head seconds later, but my heart was still trembling with excitement at the thought of my victory.