2
It was now past noon.
The designated ingredients for dinner this time around were kimyuus meat and eggs.
Eggs definitely gave me more options to choose from than karon milk, at least. From numerous dishes I narrowed my candidates down to omelettes or oyakodon, and ultimately ended up choosing the former.
I could make most of a dish of oyakodon with no trouble at all under the circumstances, but it would just feel far too lacking without an ingredient to substitute in for rice. And honestly, I just didn’t feel like choosing a dish I would personally find dissatisfying.
And so, a kimyuus omelette it was.
With meat, aria, and milk fat around, this one wouldn’t be hard to make, either. As for the variety, I decided on making one with plenty of ground meat.
That alone didn’t sound all that interesting, though, so I focused on devising something special for the sauce. My plan for now was to try making it with two varieties, tarapa and white sauce, and see how that turned out.
For the white sauce, the process was the same as it had been yesterday. And so, I focused my time and effort on making the tarapa sauce.
If I went with a taste similar to ketchup, it wouldn’t harmonize properly with the white sauce. So for this time around, I tried aiming for something closer to a demi-glace or brown sauce.
First up, that meant frying fuwano flour and milk fat to make a roux. Unlike with the white sauce, this time around I heated up the fuwano thoroughly until it browned. And as that temporarily cooled, I set about creating the stock to help dilute the roux.
I started by finely dicing up my tomato substitute, the tarapa, and then grated the aria I was using in place of onion. As I simmered those alongside the fruit wine, I went ahead and adjusted the taste with salt, sugar, pico leaves, and pseudo-bouillon.
Though I wavered for a bit, I ultimately decided to try karon milk to replace the moisture that slipped away. The tarapa from the pantry here were a good bit sweeter than the ones sold in the post town, but I was still driven to suppress their sourness further. So, I used the tarapa as the main ingredient to make up a mellow stock, then used that to dilute the roux from before, which got it pretty close to the reddish brown appearance I expected of brown sauce, at least. And when I gave it a taste, the level of sourness was just right, meaning it really had turned out quite well. That owed a lot to the pseudo-bouillon, as just tossing it in was enough to greatly increase the depth and richness of the flavor.
If I rely on it too much, that could cause me some trouble when I go back to working in the post town...
That pseudo-bouillon was made by boiling down meat, bone, and vegetables. It really was an exceptional ingredient, but it would surely prove difficult to recreate in the post town. The cost of the base ingredients alone was nothing to scoff at, and when you added in the boiling time and the need to gather all that firewood, I just couldn’t see turning a profit while using it.
But if we were talking giba bones, I could get a hold of as many as I needed. And it may be possible to make something similar to it by borrowing some help from clans whose women have time on their hands...
And so, I went ahead and made a note of that in the back of my mind.
Would it be possible to purchase karon milk in the post town, too? If so, could we make our own milk fat and dried milk? How much did kimyuus and totos eggs cost, and were enough being produced to use in my business? And if they were, why hadn’t I seen them in any kitchens in the post town up till now? Also, what were the distribution channels and costs like for reten oil, mamaria vinegar, Jagar-produced sugar, honey, and the like?
I had only been here for 24 hours or so, but my mental memo pad was already full of so many crucial questions.
There’s no reason for nobles to be able to monopolize all that delicious food. I’ve really got to turn at least something from this whole disaster into a positive in the future, I thought to myself as I finally set about starting the omelette.
The process itself was exceedingly simple. After grinding down the kimyuus breast finely, I fried it up together with diced aria, nenon, and pula. And naturally, I went with salt, pico leaves, pseudo-bouillon, and fruit wine for the seasonings.
Once that was done, I poured the eggs into the flat-handled frying pan-looking tool. I mixed in just a bit of karon milk, and used milk fat in place of cooking oil.
Since it was apparently safe to even eat kimyuus eggs raw, I only half-cooked them so they came out nice and fluffy. Once the eggs were good and soft I added in my pre-prepared ingredients, then flipped the back half over on itself. Handling omelettes had been one of my specialties back at the Tsurumi Restaurant.
After moving the completed dish to a plate, I went to pour the tarapa and white sauce on the right and left sides, but then I remembered the poison testing.
If that happened after I added the sauce, it’d really make a mess of the presentation. And so, it seemed best to offer the sauces on the side in separate ramekins, like I had done with the fuwanocakes.
“I’m ready. Please, go ahead and check it for poison.”
Roy then cut off a chunk from the right of each of the three omelettes, then poured the two types of sauce over top.
And as Chiffon Chel took a bite, she once more let out a sigh of, “Aah... At this point, I no longer have words to describe it. All of your dishes are so mysterious, Sir Asuta... And delicious too, of course...”
Since I didn’t get to see that spoiled little lady or Diel eating it, Chiffon Chel’s impression was everything to me.
However, I had another thought at this point. Whether it was the omelette or the fuwanocakes, there was always a bit missing from somewhere thanks to the poison testing. Just how did that make Lefreya feel when she ate them? On top of that, when her father or guests weren’t around, she always had to eat alone.
Food made for just one person, that had to be tested for poison first... No matter how high quality the ingredients used or how renowned the chef that made it, could such a thing truly be tasty?
I guess being a noble isn’t all sunshine and roses...
At any rate, the pages once again solemnly carried off tonight’s dinner.
I used the opportunity to ask the soldiers on guard duty if I could have another meeting with Lefreya, but the response that arrived after the sun set was, “No.”
“Today’s cooking was not bad. If you continue to strive to the best of your ability, you will be returned home before five days are up with a reward, as promised. That is what I was told to convey.”
“But I’ve got my own life to worry about, too! I mean, couldn’t you at least let me properly arrange to take a few days off work in the post town and prepare to come here to cook, with full understanding from the people of the forest’s edge?” I argued, but unsurprisingly all I got back was another, “No.”
On top of that, the pages had removed the curtains I had torn up last night while I was in the kitchen, and they hadn’t been replaced, which meant I no longer had any means of contacting Diel.
So I’ve got no options left but to keep on cooking, huh...?
As I prepared to spend yet another lonely night in this place, I couldn’t help but wonder where exactly I’d made a misstep to end up in this predicament.
◇
The seventh day of the white month had dawned.
For the day’s snack, I was instructed to use minmi fruit.
This was an ingredient that was completely and utterly unfamiliar to me. The fruit was around the size of a tennis ball, and had little one centimeter long skin-colored hairs growing out of it wildly, giving it a rather unusual appearance.
From what I was told, it was apparently an incredibly rare ingredient that had to be imported from fairly far south in Jagar. As I wondered just what type of fruit it was, I timidly peeled back that eerie skin and revealed the juicy pink flesh inside.
There was a sweet aroma wafting gently through the air, and when I gave it a bite, I found it tasted pretty similar to a peach. It wasn’t sour in the least, and just had a mild sweetness to it. And it certainly was juicy like a peach too, with the nectar-like liquid gushing forth when I bit into it.
I figure tasty fruits are best just eaten as is... I thought to myself as I went ahead and tried out a variety of things with my small sample.
Just mashing it and adding sugar alone was enough for me to make a rather excellent sauce, but ultimately I decided to take the texture into account too. And so, I went ahead and boiled down some of the stuff I had mashed, then added sugar and just a touch of fruit wine with a high alcohol content, which finished it off.
Today, though, I also had the karon milk I had prepared yesterday.
Since it had been left alone overnight, the moisture and fat had separated splendidly. The fat had condensed to the surface, and even the color had turned a nice creamy white. And there was even more of it than I expected, too.
With cow’s milk, there was at most four percent fat in the stuff even when raw. In that case, I would only be able to get a maximum of 80 grams from two liters of milk, and this was easily at least twice that.
Water buffalo milk’s supposed to have twice as much fat as cow’s milk, right? Now that I think about it, karon dried milk is like mozzarella cheese, so is the milk similar to water buffalo milk?
Well, there was certainly no issue with getting more than I expected. At any rate, I carefully scooped out as much of the fat as I could and moved it to a separate container. It came out as a pure white, sticky substance.
That was enough to make ordinary cream, but if I wanted it to be truly delicious, I needed to make it into whipped cream. And so, I transferred it into a small earthenware container, then started shaking it up and down. I didn’t really have a choice there, since I couldn’t find anything like a whisk even here in this kitchen.
But whipped cream got its characteristic fluffiness by mixing air into it, so this method seemed like it would also prove effective.
I got the knowledge on how to do so from somewhere completely different: the fact that when brewing a delicious black tea, it was better to use tap water rather than mineral water from a bottle, since tap water had more air mixed into it. But when you wanted to use mineral water even so, it was best to firmly shake the bottle to mix in the air.
It was a pretty haphazard application of knowledge, certainly. But though it was frustrating to admit, I had to rely on every little bit of information or experience I could scrounge up when it came to making sweets.
Umm, I’m pretty sure Reina said you have to whip it for eight whole minutes when you can’t use an electric hand mixer...
How long would be proper with this method, though? If I whipped it too much the fat would separate further and I could end up with milk fat, but on the other hand, it would be nice if it was that easy to make the stuff.
And so, I went on and on thoroughly whipping that cream. Unsurprisingly, Roy looked astounded as he watched me with the same serious look in his eyes as yesterday.
According to my internal clock, I ended up going for around ten minutes, inserting a break in the middle. When I was about at the point where I’d cause myself some definite muscular pain if I kept going, I went ahead and poured out the freshly whipped contents into a metal bowl.
It had been sticky to start with, and now it trickled on out. I tried poking it with one of the wooden skewers I had been using in place of long chopsticks and found it was actually pretty dense, but not enough to be an issue. Ultimately, I’d describe it as being in a semi-liquid state.
At this point, I went ahead and added sugar, then whipped it with the wooden skewers.
Before that, though, I filled a bowl one size bigger with water and sat the bowl of cream in it. From what I could recall, even the heat from human skin was enough to melt cream back to a liquid state, so you had to keep it chilled. Even though the water was room temperature, it was at least enough to give me a bit of peace of mind, if nothing else.
Then, after around 30 to 40 minutes of stirring, it finally started to put up some firm resistance.
“Good grief. Is that enough, finally?” I went ahead and decided to go for a taste test with some fuwanocakes that I made, which were less sweet than yesterday’s. First up was the minmi sauce.
Honestly, hotcakes and peach sauce made for a rather eccentric combination, but at least to someone like me who didn’t have much of a sweet tooth, it seemed plenty tasty.
As for my improvised whipped cream, it frankly felt a bit lacking on its own.
But that mellow fluffy sensation would probably be quite novel here in this land, and since I had used flavorful karon milk as the base ingredient, it shouldn’t come across as especially lacking when served alongside panam honey.
And so, I added honey and milk fat alongside those options again today, to be combined however the recipient pleased. And from Chiffon Chel’s expression when she checked for poison, it had come out at least as well as yesterday.
Without getting a hold of sugar or karon milk, it won’t be possible to make proper sweets at the forest’s edge or in the post town. I sure would like to treat Rimee Ruu and Tara to some, though, I thought to myself as I watched the completed dish get carried off, and then I stood in front of the pot I had neglected all this time. It was what was left of the karon milk after the fat had been separated out.
“Now then, what should I do with this...?” I asked myself aloud, and then Roy, who had been focusing on his own work, turned my way.
“Hey, if you’re going to get rid of that, then have the soldiers call for someone. Karon milk stinks horribly when it spoils, so it has to be disposed of properly.”
“No, but it should last till tomorrow or the day after without going bad, right? So I was wondering if I could use it in some sort of dish.”
“What could you even make with milk that’s had the fat wrung out of it?”
“Even without the fat, it should still be full of plenty of nutrients. It feels like too much of a waste to just get rid of it.”
Milk with the fat removed would be classified as skim milk. And in its powdered form, that would be powdered skim milk. Though that stuff didn’t have all that great of a reputation in Japan, skim milk itself was something used mainly as an ingredient in sweets, as far as I knew.
However, I couldn’t imagine there was a way to turn raw milk into a solid here in this world. Even copying the method they used for that pseudo-bouillon, you would need to add in salt to help preserve it, so it seemed like it would prove quite tricky.
Well, we’re talking about raw milk here. It’s definitely possible it isn’t handled in the post town just because the stuff stores so poorly.
All these concerns were predicated on the hope that I’d someday be able to get a hold of karon milk in the post town to begin with, though. And so, I was running some simulations in my head as to how I’d apply it if I was able to purchase it for my personal use.
Since there obviously weren’t any refrigerators to be had in Genos, raw milk would apparently only last for two or three days. In that case, the main use for it would be as an ingredient in milk fat and dried milk. But as I saw just now, you could only get 200 grams or so of fat at best out of two liters of the stuff.
Even though that was certainly more than I had first expected, it still left you with more than 90% of the stuff left as skim milk. And I figured that it still had a high amount of nutritional value to it, so I couldn’t just go chucking it like nobles did.
I wonder if they’ve found a good way of using it in that Dabagg town where they sell karon...?
That might just have been another item for me to research. But for now, all I could do was try to use my own intuition to figure out how to use up this skim milk.
Alright, I guess first off is the usual method of trying it as an ingredient in soup. And I’m pretty sure Reina used skim milk to make custard cream, right? Guess I should prepare to give that a try tomorrow.
I really hadn’t ever imagined the day would come where I’d be relying on my childhood friend like this.
As that painful feeling welled up in my chest, I offered thanks to my friend who I would never meet again, then set about focusing on my work.
◇
The request for the night’s dinner ended up being a dish using kimyuus meat and dried milk. Considering she had asked for kimyuus three nights in a row now, Lefreya must have really liked it.
Kimyuus meat and dried milk... So, pretty much chicken and cheese, eh...?
Since I actually had an oven on hand, I had been considering trying out an imitation pizza of sorts. But since there wasn’t any such equipment at the forest’s edge or in the post town, it seemed like even if I took the time to figure out how to make one in this world, I wouldn’t be able to use that knowledge after all this.
If that’s how things were going to be, I decided to take a somewhat wild swerve and make a piccata-like dish instead. It was a form of Italian cooking in which you covered meat in flour and egg and then cooked it.
Of course, I had never had a proper Italian style piccata, so I would be taking my old man’s imitation and doing my best to copy that. And I had actually already made my own original piccata in the past for a late night snack or whatever, just not as a product to be sold.
Since I had used chicken fingers back home, I ended up selecting kimyuus breast meat here. After peeling the skin, I cut it into long, one centimeter-thick cuts like salmon fillets, then tenderized it with a wooden pole. I would be using two slices per person, which meant six in total.
After seasoning it with pico leaves, I then dropped in plenty of dried milk between the cuts of meat, as finely sliced as I could manage. Since the variety wasn’t specified, I chose the richly flavored, yet firmer and easier to cut gyama dried milk.
When that was done, I beat an egg. Then I used a grater to finely shred some karon dried milk over it to a consistency close to powdered cheese, and mixed them together.
That was how the recipe I learned from my father went, but what was real piccata like? From what I had heard, I was pretty sure you were actually supposed to use veal with the dish.
At any rate, I sprinkled the fuwano flour atop the meat from before, mixed in the dried milk and egg combo, and cooked it all up in a flat pan. Milk fat would be too heavy a flavor here, so I went with reten oil instead. Since it had a similar taste to olive oil, I figured it would go well with my self-taught piccata, which was inspired by Italian cooking.
That was enough to finish off the main dish itself.
As for the sauce I drizzled over the top, I chose the orthodox tarapa sauce I used with the giba burgers. Even back home, I ate my piccata with a tomato sauce that used a heaping helping of diced onions, so I figured a tarapa sauce using plenty of diced aria and the garlic-like myamuu should pair quite well with a kimyuus piccata.
I gave my sample a try and found that the fried and egg and fuwano flour mix gave it a nice crispy texture, while the dried milk added an exquisite bit of gooeyness.
If I could serve this dish in the post town, it would definitely earn itself quite the reputation. And as long as I could at least secure oil and eggs, it would be entirely possible to recreate there.
Gyama dried milk could only be obtained through peddlers from Sym, but that issue could be overcome if I could figure out how to make my own with karon milk. If I couldn’t get a hold of reten oil, though, I’d have no other option but to use giba lard.
Ah, and I needed to consider the compatibility with giba meat, too.
Would the meat itself have too strong of a flavor for the dish?
I wouldn’t know for certain till I gave it a try, but I got the feeling that it could turn out to be a real impressive dish in its own way. Not pork piccata, but giba piccata... It could do well as a snack in the post town, served wrapped up in baked poitan.
Still, frying like that in the stalls might be tricky. Maintaining the flames could be troublesome, and I feel like the flavor would decline if I made them and let them sit... I thought to myself as I set about making the actual dish for dinner. And as I devoted my brainpower to such matters, I could feel my concerns about the future start to slip away.
However, I once again didn’t receive any special praise from Lefreya that day.
◇
It was now the following day, the eighth of the white month.
And I ended up receiving a complaint from the spoiled little lady of the house first thing in the morning.
Apparently, she had said, “I will not tolerate being fed the same sort of dish three days in a row.” In other words, “Prepare some other sweet than fuwanocakes.”
“I’m telling you, that’s really not my specialty...” I muttered, but it seemed unlikely those words would ever reach that little tyrant’s ears. And since I really had no choice here, I decided to take a crack at making cookies.
The only applicable memories I had were of watching from the side as Reina made some. And so, this was even more a case of me purely imitating her work than it had been with the hotcakes.
First up came further softening the milk fat by stirring it until it entered a semi-solid state, then I kneaded in sugar and fuwano flour. I had to add the fuwano bit by bit, stirring carefully so that it didn’t lump up.
Next was spreading out the freshly made dough atop a floured tray, then pounding it flat with a thick mixing rod, as if I was making soba. Naturally, there weren’t any cookie cutters or the like around, so I used a small-mouthed wine glass to cut out round shapes, then tried cutting those into squares and stars and like afterwards with a knife. Then I balled up the excess dough and flattened it out again atop the tray, and once I had pushed that to its limit I just rounded up the last little bit.
It was then time to use the oven that I had neglected yesterday. It had a simple construction to it where you only had to light the fuel storage in the bottom, but I kept the flames low for now so they wouldn’t burn. The one to teach me how to use it was Roy. And as for the fuel in question, it was that charcoal, which I was finally getting a chance to use.
In the meantime, I went ahead and tried making custard cream with the remaining skim milk.
First, that meant mixing together kimyuus yolk and sugar, then adding a little fuwano flour. Once it was sufficiently combined, I started pouring in the skim milk bit by bit.
Up until this point, the preparation actually felt pretty similar to how I made the cookies, just with different proportions. When it came to western-style sweets, the key ingredients really were flour, milk, sugar, eggs, and butter.
Once that batter was sufficiently soft from mixing in skim milk, I heated it up in a pot. Then, after enough of the moisture evaporated and it was nice and thick, it was ready.
It wouldn’t be all that easy to reproduce, but since the karon milk and its milk fat were so rich in flavor, it certainly tasted good. Since I was well out of my field of expertise, this was about the best I could manage here.
And while all that was going on, the cookies finished baking. Once they had cooled a bit I gave one a try and found it had a nice crispness to it, and honestly it could be even easier to make these again in the future than the hotcakes.
While I was at it, I also went ahead and baked the extra batter I had prepared in case I screwed up. And while they were cooking, I made up some more of that arow jam like I had done the day before yesterday. The cookies were already plenty tasty on their own, so I figured that jam and the custard cream should be more than enough as far as toppings went.
And so, my task had come to a close.
Since I had managed to bake them all without incident, I ended up with quite a large quantity.
“Well, they shouldn’t spoil all that quickly, so please feel free to take the extras for after dinner snacks or whatever,” I offered as a message, but unsurprisingly there was no response back from Lefreya.
◇
The request that came that evening was, “Make whatever, as long as it uses kimyuus meat.”
Now that I thought about it, her afternoon order hadn’t included any ingredients, either.
I hadn’t had a chance to talk to Diel since that first night to ask whether or not those comparisons with that famous sous-chef or whatever were continuing, so I had no clue how that little game was going.
Still, “whatever” was hard to deal with. My options were just far too vast with so many ingredients on offer.
After struggling with the issue, I ultimately decided to go with a dish I was currently experimenting with: kimyuus meatballs. I was in the process of going through some trial and error with the dish so that it could be sold at The Kimyuus’s Tail.
I used kimyuus breast for the meat, and went with a simple initial seasoning of just the salt it had been pickled in to start with. After mincing it with a meat cutting knife, I went ahead and actually made them into little, flat rod shapes rather than ovals.
The issue, though, was how I would season them now.
It was at this point that I decided to try bringing in another new ingredient, the kiki fruit.
I had seen them in the past in the post town, but I had never even tasted one before now. It was a purple fruit a little smaller than a human fist, and was wrinkly like a dried persimmon. From what I knew, it was sold as portable rations for travelers, the same as dried aria.
Earlier in the day I gave one a taste and found it had a rather unique flavor, combining a light sweetness with a powerful amount of sour, reminding me a bit of a dried pickled plum.
From what I was told, this dried kiki was produced using a method that originally came from Jagar. After pickling the kiki fruit in salt and fruit wine, it was then dried out over the course of several days. And to my surprise, apparently quite a few travelers tossed it into their poitan stew before eating it.
Furthermore, it seemed heavy drinkers enjoyed it when made into a marinade. It was incredibly salty, so the normal method was to cut it with fruit wine, water, or fruit juice. It must have made for quite a unique taste, there.
At any rate, dried kiki saw frequent use in the post town too thanks to that.
Meanwhile, in kitchens in the castle town, it was employed as something of an eccentric seasoning.
As for me, well, I certainly was glad to have encountered the ingredient. After all, I had been right in the midst of searching for something to help spice up the kimyuus meatballs.
Though the skin of the kiki fruit was all parched out, the inside was still moist with juices. Just mashing it into something like a shredded dried plum dip was plenty to accompany the meatballs. In fact, I’d really like to add it as a new dish at The Kimyuus’s Tail.
It was too simple for a place like this, though, so I went ahead and prepared a separate seasoning for each of the four meatballs I’d be making for each person.
For one, I fried it up with milk fat and tau oil, or what we called “butter soy sauce style” back in my old world.
With another, I used the now familiar white sauce.
And then for the last one, I went with a rather elaborate method for the sake of variety. Well, at least I could describe it that way, but it was a pretty standard method back in my old home country. That is, I would be mixing the highly alcoholic fruit wine, tau oil, pico leaves, sugar, and panam honey as a secret ingredient to make salty-sweet meatball teriyaki.
That wouldn’t be all, though. No, I also went ahead and tried garnishing that meatball teriyaki with my own homemade tartar sauce. In order to make it, mayonnaise would be indispensable. However, with egg, vinegar, salt, and oil, mayonnaise was actually relatively simple to whip up.
First you mix together the yolk and salt, then you add the vinegar followed by the oil, at which point you just have to keep whipping it. That was all there was to the process.
The key point was that you had to focus on mixing in air until you added the vinegar. Since I didn’t have a whisk at hand, that one point was a bit troublesome, but it wasn’t that big of a deal since I was already getting used to the inconvenience.
However, there was a bit of a discrepancy here in terms of ingredients. The reten oil was just like olive oil, while the mamaria vinegar was somewhat similar to white or balsamic vinegar in terms of flavor. And mamaria vinegar was so dark brown it was near black, so when it blended with the yolk it became a dark orange mayonnaise.
Still, despite the unusual color, it really didn’t turn out half bad. Though I had my concerns about the raisin-like flavor of the mamaria vinegar, it had a proper mayonnaise taste in the end. Thankfully the sourness from the mamaria wasn’t all that strong, so it was a rather mild flavor overall.
All that was left was to finely dice up a hard-boiled egg and some raw aria and then mix them together, then adjust the flavor with salt and pico leaves in order to complete my tartar sauce. When I spread that over the meatball teriyaki and gave it a try, I found that the tartar sauce drew out the rich sweet and salty flavor, making for a lavish taste that reminded me of junk food.
“This will certainly make the poison tasting difficult...” was what Chiffon Chel had to say when presented with the meal I prepared — four different varieties of meatball each for three people. She had to make a truly valiant effort to suppress her grin.
Honestly, it would have been fine to make them all up teriyaki style with tartar sauce. But after all my testing with the time allotted to me, I didn’t entirely feel that version was head and shoulders above the rest. That of course applied to the butter soy sauce and white sauce ones, but I felt that even the dried kiki dip meatballs were plenty tasty too. In fact, I could see that one really standing out after tasting the rich flavor of the teriyaki meatballs.
Since I couldn’t come up with a plan to slip away, all I could do was keep on cooking in the hopes of eventually breaking down Lefreya’s stubbornness. Such thoughts drove me forwards, to make every dish the absolute best that I possibly could.
But in the end, I ultimately didn’t hear so much as a single peep from Lefreya on that day, and my requests to talk to her were unsurprisingly turned down.
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login