Cooking with Wild Game (LN) - Volume 1 - Chapter 5.4

4

Now then, time to change gears and focus.

I got the feeling that I had been distracted by the voices all around and had been starting to neglect the task at hand. And doing something like that would soil my honor as a chef, wouldn’t it? And if that happened while I was using my old man’s knife, he would never forgive me.

“The cooking method for these poitan isn’t actually that tricky. I’d imagine you could even start making them yourselves tomorrow, assuming your grandmother Jiba Ruu likes them.”

As I made that statement, I saw the poitan start to boil. When I went to stir them with a ladle so they wouldn’t burn, I found that they were already getting pretty sticky.

“Um, could it be that you intend to heat them until all the moisture is gone,” Reina Ruu asked.

“That’s right,” I replied, only for a troubled look to appear in her round eyes.

“But if you do that, the poitan will harden like clay, won’t they? I don’t think it would be possible to eat that...”

“Huh? You’ve heated a poitan that much before, Reina Ruu?”

Reina stopped and stared for a second, but then responded, “Yes!” with a twinkle in her eyes. “I tried out all sorts of methods to see if there was a way to make poitan easier to eat. Everyone yelled at me not to waste food, though.”

Huh? Despite what she was saying, there was a wide grin spreading across her face. Why would she make an expression like that now? It couldn’t be because I called her by name for the first time, right?

Gah. Focus, focus...

“Well then, I’ll leave the poitan up to you, Reina Ruu. Still... I’m glad to hear someone amongst the people of the forest’s edge was experimenting with cooking methods, too.”

“Right. If Granny Jiba hadn’t ended up like that, I don’t think the matter would have ever bothered me, though... So I just need to wait for all the moisture to be gone?”

“Yeah. And take care so that it doesn’t burn.”

“Right!”

Now then... There was still some time till sunset, but we had taken care of everything that we could for now.

“Now then, I’m going to start preparing the giba meat. Regulating the heat is pretty tricky with this cooking method, by the way. But I think you could apply it in a lot of different situations, so definitely feel free to memorize it.”

As I said that, I went ahead and opened up the bundle of shoulder roast. When I did so, Rimee Ruu let out a big, “Huh? That’s a weird shape! Is it really giba meat?”

“Hmm? What’s so strange about it? It’s just the meat from between the giba’s back and shoulder.”

“Wow! I’ve never eaten that before!”

“Huh? But big families like the Ruu clan bring back the whole giba, right?”

“That’s just to skin off the pelt. We only eat the rear legs, Asuta,” Granny Tito Min replied.

“But why? The rear legs alone shouldn’t be enough feed such a large family, surely.”

“It is, because the men of the main Ruu house hunt two giba a day. The hind legs provide enough meat that sometimes we even have some go bad.”

“Two a day...?” I was a little shocked to hear that.

Well, if we’re talking a giba in the 70 kilo range, then the rear legs would amount to about 20 kilo, which meant two would add up to 40 kilo... It certainly would be hard to eat such a large quantity of meat in a single day. Even considering the amount that they smoked, the legs really may be enough.

Something else came to mind, too: One giba’s horns and tusks only got you enough aria and poitan for ten people. That meant that hunting one giba a day wouldn’t provide enough for the 12 people (plus one infant) of the Ruu family. It left quite a surplus, but they needed to take down two a day.

Of course, I did understand that this system would always result in excess meat. That was plainly clear even from looking at our pantry.

The meat from the giba Ai Fa took down six days ago was around 45 kilos, which shrunk to about 40 kilos after the pico leaves absorbed the moisture. But Ai Fa and I could only eat around a kilo a day and it would only stay preserved for about 20 days, so at this rate I’d end up having to smoke over half of it.

On top of that, Ai Fa needed to hunt down one giba every five days for their tusks and horns, so the only choice for handling that excess was to simply leave it for the animals out in the forest.

And so, since it was a waste to use all that meat I had carefully bloodlet and prepared just for smoking, I was actually happy for the chance to use up around 10 kilos of the stuff today. Plus it was just sad to imagine a family this size having only ever eaten thigh meat.

As I cut up the shoulder roast, I glanced up at the bright, cheerful face of Granny Tito Min, who was standing right in front of me.

“So after you skin the giba and removes its tusks, horns, and hind legs, you just throw the rest of it away?”

“That’s right. So that it does not end up in the hands of the people of the forest’s edge, we throw it down into the valley. There’s a mundt nest down there, so they return the souls of the giba to the forest.”

“Wait, ‘so that it does not end up in the hands of the people of the forest’s edge’...?”

“Yes. If someone who lacks the strength to hunt giba was to find it they may end up eating nothing but discarded meat, giving birth to a people lacking in pride.”

The pride of the people of the forest’s edge, huh?

Seeing as I was born in another world, I couldn’t just accept that quite so easily.

Well, what I could accept least of all, though, was the way that they treated such delicious roast and rib meat as garbage!

“Just for reference, what becomes of families whose men are injured or grow old and are unable to hunt giba?”

“They have no choice but to rely on extended family. And in cases where family cannot support them, they need to rely on a more powerful family in turn. But as long as they are capable of at least doing some sort of work, everyone should have the right to eat giba meat, even if they cannot hunt them down.”

“I see.”

That explanation was enough to quell the ethical concerns I was having.

“I got it, now. Thank you. Now then... After the meat is more or less cut up like this, the next step is to beat it into ground meat with your knife.”

Once more, my attention turned back to cooking. It wasn’t the time to be gathering information right now.

“It’s easier to use a bigger knife to start with. You can rely on the weight of the knife rather than putting too much strength into it, then tenderize the meat thoroughly like this.”

“What’s that?! It looks fun! I wanna try!”

“Hmm? Right, then... I suppose I can leave that much up to you.”

We still had leeway left, after all. And as long as I handle the finishing touches, it should be fine. Plus thinking of tomorrow on, it was important to teach them at least a bit about making giba meat taste delicious.

“Whoa, it’s all slimy! This is neat!”

If you just heard that you would think she was playing around, but I couldn’t see anything unsafe about the way that Rimee Ruu was handling her knife. Though she was still young, she seemed plenty capable when it came to work around the house.

“U-Um, Asuta...! I’d like to give that a try, too!” said Reina Ruu, looking over my way as she continued to stir the poitan soup.

Even if she didn’t ask so desperately, there was still 14 people worth of giba meat, 7 kilos or so in total, to make into hamburger meat. If she wanted to pound it, she could do as much as she pleased.

“Ah, the poitan are looking pretty good. Um, could you carry them like that?”

“Two of us can carry them if we pass a pole through to act as a grip!”

“That would be a big help. Well then, Ai Fa...”

“If this is all you need, then I should be able to handle it,” Reina Ruu said with a smile and a grigee pole in her hands.

In that case, it would be Ai Fa and Reina Ruu... Or so I thought, but my animal instincts were screaming that I shouldn’t pair those two up.

And so, I passed the grigee pole through the sideways handles while taking care not to get burned, and then Reina Ruu and I carried it on outside.

Ai Fa didn’t have as much of a chilling gaze right now, but ever since she had that conversation with Granny Tito Min, she seemed to have been thinking about something with a bit of a gloomy look in her eyes. And man, I hated that. Ai Fa all down in the dumps was the last thing that I wanted to see.

“So, what do we do with this pot now?”

“Right, we should place it in a spot where it’ll get lots of sunlight, and then let it dry out. And I suppose we should spread a bit of water around the outside of the pot so that it doesn’t burn.”

“Got it!”

In spite of my current concerns about Ai Fa, I couldn’t help but be impressed by the work ethic of this Reina Ruu girl. Not only did she work swiftly, she was also a quick learner. I guess this was what you’d call being highly intuitive. You could tell her one thing, and she’d learn ten. And just like Rimee Ruu, she seemed to earnestly have a strong desire to learn the techniques in order to help out her grandmother.

Not long after we carried out the poitan, Reina Ruu set to work pounding the meat and did an even better job than Rimee Ruu, resulting in such beautifully minced meat that I didn’t even need to add any finishing touches. And there were plenty of knives so Granny Tito Min joined in too, meaning it wasn’t long before the seven kilos of giba meat was converted into a little pink mountain.

They really were excellent pupils.

“Huh? Asuta, there’s still meat left over here! Should I make this all slimy, too?”

“Ah, just leave that as is. It’s for a bit of something different.”

I figured if her teeth were so bad we might need some soup, so I set aside three kilos of the roast for that in addition to the seven kilos of meat we had for the burgers. Rimee gave a disappointed sounding “Tch!” and pouted.

“It’s a little out of order, but let’s prepare the aria next. We need a number of other things for this, so could you lead me to the pantry, Rimee Ruu?”

“Yeah!”

“Ah, and could you please light the stove for another pot soon? Ai Fa, I’ll need your help carrying things, alright?”

With an indifferent expression on her face, Ai Fa took her back off of the wall.

Tito Min took charge of the stoves, while the other four of us headed off for the pantry.

There were three doors to the small building, leading from the right to left to the kitchen, the pantry, and the dissection room. When Rimee Ruu led me through the middle door, I couldn’t help but let out a “Wow...”

I hadn’t been expecting this.

The pantry had rows and rows of ingredients I had never seen before all lined up.

“What is all this? It’s amazing, like some sort of mountain of treasure!” I yelled out, unable to stop myself.

Doorless shelves lined the roughly 12 square meter-large room. On them were stupidly big pumpkin-looking fruits that were bright red like a tomato, green vegetables that looked like roses made of lettuce, some mysterious mass that looked like a bundle of coiled snakes, a blue-skinned fruit that was all spikey like a durian... At any rate, there were a whole ton of ingredients aside from just aria and poitan.

There were the familiar pico and lilo leaves hanging from the walls. Hanging next to them, though, was a mysterious two meter-long plant that was thick like bamboo but also hairy like burdock root, as well as what looked like yellow dried persimmons.

And yet, I didn’t see the giba meat anywhere. There was a door in the back of the room, though, so that was probably where they stored it. In other words, this 12 square meter-large space was almost entirely filled with new ingredients. Honestly, it made for a truly heavenly sight.

“Asuta, the aria are over here!”

Rimee Ruu had been darting amongst the shelves, and now she was approaching a corner on the right side of the room. Sure enough, there were both aria and poitan over where she was. And a truly impressive number of them, at that.

“So there really is a huge variety of vegetables in this world, too...”

“World...? But yeah, it’s neat how the taste changes depending on what you put in the pot! I really like tarapa! And big sis Reina, you’re fond of tino leaves, right?!”

“But Rimee Ruu, people can live off of just aria and poitan, right?”

“Hmm? Ah, yeah, apparently so! But it’d get boring eating the same thing each and every day, right?”

I see. So all these foods were luxury items for a powerful family, huh? But I’m sure they were still highly nutritious. Even if they were luxury items, they probably weren’t full-on indulgences.

Now that I thought of it, all the women here had some meat on their bones, aside from Rimee and Lala Ruu. Plus, they looked incredibly healthy on top of that. And ever since I figured out the poitan was a grain I had been thinking that the aria being the lone vegetable in a diet may be a little insufficient, so I assumed they must have been getting the missing nutrients from these vegetables.

But still... No matter which vegetables they may be using, they’re still just chucking them in a giba stew with dissolved poitan, right?

What a waste. I mean, just imagine all the fantastic dishes I could make with all these ingredients... Ah, just thinking of it caused me to tremble.

“Do you want to use these ingredients too, perhaps?” Reina Ruu asked with a reserved smile.

Though I could feel myself being incredibly tempted, I ultimately gave a firm “No,” back. “There’s no time for tasting, so although it’s a shame, we’d better not. It would be a real issue if I used ingredients I had never seen before and ended up wrecking the dish, right?”

I mean, it had taken me four whole days to figure out the poitan. I couldn’t exactly just toss aside Ai Fa’s feelings and my pride as a chef to head off on that adventure.

Now that I think of it... I thought, turning around to look at Ai Fa, only to find her looking at the various ingredients with little interest. Right... She needs to take down one giba every five days in order to obtain the bare minimum amount of food we need. I can’t let myself go getting all envious of folks who are better off...

As someone who grew up in an eatery, I had nothing to do with ingredients like caviar and foie gras. So I just had to think of these as similar luxury items, outside of the reach of common folk.

At any rate, we grabbed enough aria, fruit wine, and bundled up rock salt for 14 people, and left the pantry.

And then... they were there waiting for us.

“What’s this? Giba crap? Don’t go leaving junk in the middle of my path!”

His thick, vulgar voice resounded like thunder. And I could clearly see the tension in Ai Fa’s face.

“Hmm? Oh, Papa Donda, welcome home! You’re pretty early today, aren’t you?!” Rimee Ruu happily exclaimed while holding the wine flask as she ran towards him.

Immediately after we left the pantry, we had found four men with an animalistic stench about them standing in our way. The large man in the lead who had stared down at the pot of poitan in disgust was now glaring straight at me past Rimee Ruu.

“Oh, so you’re the outsider who’s been staying in the Fa house? I’d heard you were pale, but man are you ever one white kid!”

Even the breath of this large, bearded man stunk of animals.

Naturally, this was Rimee Ruu’s father, the head of the Ruu clan, Donda Ruu.