4
After that, Reina Ruu and I hurried on over to The Kimyuus’s Tail. As we walked along, the second Ruu daughter was in quite a huff.
“I can’t believe that at all.”
“But it’s the truth. That girl seemed to have more polished cooking skills than I do.”
“There’s just no way such a young girl is as good as you say. You must be terribly confused somehow, Asuta.”
“I don’t see how, since I’m just offering my earnest impressions after actually eating the dish she prepared.”
“I just don’t see how that could possibly be true...” Reina Ruu retorted, cutely turning away.
Still, I had no intention of retracting my statement. After all, I saw it as a hard, unshakable fact.
Of course, it wasn’t as if I was totally convinced that my skills fell short of Myme’s. But if we were to do a taste test to compare under the same conditions at present, there was a very solid chance she would defeat me. Even if nobody else would acknowledge it, that was something I had sensed personally with my own tongue.
Now that I thought back on it, I never felt like I had lost to Roy, Yang, or Timalo. Since we were born and raised in completely different environments, the tastes we sought were just too divergent. No matter how skilled they might be as chefs, or how impressive and surprising their skills and ideas were, I wasn’t able to truly find their cooking delicious from the depths of my heart.
But for some reason, my cooking was able to bring joy to the people of the forest’s edge, the folks from the post town, and the nobles of the castle town. While I occasionally faced some harsh words, at the root of things they acknowledged my food as delicious.
And so, I was sure that Myme’s cooking could move everyone too. At the very least, that was the case for me. That was exactly why I couldn’t just disregard her.
“Well, if Donda Ruu and Ai Fa and everyone agree to it, I should be able to invite her to the forest’s edge. Then that should clear everything up, right?”
“I suppose. Since you’re saying all that, I certainly feel a need to try her cooking too.”
It was around that point in the conversation that we arrived at The Kimyuus’s Tail. This was the one inn we still visited in the afternoon to prepare the food in person.
“Sorry that we’re a little late,” I called out as we passed through the door and were greeted by Milano Mas’s frowning face.
“You’re not late. And even if you were, that just means you would be leaving later anyway.”
“I suppose that’s true. Well then, we’ll be getting to work.”
When we entered the kitchen, the ingredients we had delivered were laid out atop the work station.
Seemingly having gotten herself back on track, Reina Ruu broke out in a smile.
“I’m looking forward to working with you again today. If we can receive your instruction a few more times, I’m sure Sheera Ruu and I will be able to handle the cooking for this place too.”
“Yup, let’s give it our all.”
After reopening the stalls for business a month and a half ago, I had also been preparing two dishes for The Kimyuus’s Tail. The one I was making today was sweet and sour giba.
Just as the name implied, the dish was modeled after sweet and sour pork, and it made full use of the mamaria vinegar and sugar that had been flowing in from the castle town.
Firstly, I beat the giba thigh meat with a wooden pole, then after severing the tendons, I cut it into cube-shaped chunks two centimeters on a side. Once that was done, I coated them in a bit of tau oil and fruit wine, then seasoned them.
In the meantime, I used reten oil to fry up aria, nenon, pula, and the chamcham I used in place of bamboo shoots in the giba manju.
After all that, I then coated the thigh meat in a thin layer of fuwano flour and fried it. This would all be reheated later, so my goal was to condense the delicious flavors and improve the texture. In order to prevent an excess of oil in the dish, I tried to keep the frying time to a minimum. Once that was done, I set about making the sauce to go with it.
I brought tau oil and sugar to a simmer in a pot, added in mamaria vinegar and chatchi starch with water, carefully stirred so lumps wouldn’t form, and then once it thickened a bit I threw in the main ingredients and heated them through. Since it would be reheated before being served to the customers anyway, I stopped it before it boiled too far down, completing my work.
“Milano Mas, what’s the reception of the sweet and sour giba been like?” I called out to the inn owner standing in the doorway to the kitchen.
“So-so,” he bluntly answered. “The other dish still sells out quicker, but there hasn’t been any need for us to deal with leftovers or anything. The sales have really improved in the past month and some change, so I suppose there’s no real issue.”
“I see. That sounds like good news, then.”
By the way, the other dish I alternated this one with each day was a tino roll modeled after cabbage rolls, and that had supposedly been a big hit right from the start.
On the other hand, sales of the sweet and sour giba had only just reached the levels I anticipated. When it came to introducing new ingredients to the post town, mamaria vinegar ended up being the first barrier in my way.
Now that I thought about it, the people of the post town were only familiar with sourness through the lemon-like sheel, strawberry-like arow, and prune-like dried kiki. And so apparently, vinegar was a bit too novel for them. Yang had also thought of serving pickled vegetables and karon drizzled in vinegar as dishes on offer at the inn he was working with, but from what I was told, none of them were really selling.
However, Polarth had a strong desire for the usage of mamaria vinegar to spread throughout the post town. Poitan was steadily replacing fuwano in the local diet, and apparently that was quickly ramping up the pressure on the finances of the house of Turan.
“Though that was initially the goal, Cyclaeus has now been officially judged. That is why I would like to see as much mamaria vinegar selling as possible for the sake of Sir Torst, who is devoting himself to rebuilding the house of Turan,” he had said.
That mamaria vinegar was produced along with fruit wine on the Turan lands. From Polarth’s point of view, it was like he had stabbed the house of Turan in the back and caused unintentionally deep wounds, so perhaps that was why he was left in a fluster, worrying about the state of affairs.
“If anything, I’d have to say that sauce you made to go with the kimyuus meat omelettes has become pretty popular. What was it called again? Ketchup?” Milano Mas asked.
“Yes. But the base for that is tarapa first and foremost, with the mamaria vinegar just providing a bit of subtle flavoring. I’d say that mayonnaise uses more of the stuff.”
“I see. Well, at any rate, there’s no need for you to worry about how things play out for the nobles. It’d be good for them to suffer a bit of poverty too for a change,” Milano Mas stated, but he didn’t look all that serious.
Now that the criminals had all been judged, it seemed his anger toward the house of Turan had vanished. I had no reason to doubt that, especially since the man’s distrust toward the people of the forest’s edge had also gone away when Zattsu Suun’s crimes had been brought to light.
“I’m sorry that it seems like The Kimyuus’s Tail drew the short end of the stick. How about you stop selling the sweet and sour giba and I come up with something new?”
“It’s not like we’re getting stuck with leftovers or anything, so it’s no issue. Or do you intend to give up on spreading this new flavor after just a month and a bit? You’re surprisingly impatient, aren’t you?”
“No, I just don’t want to place a burden on The Kimyuus’s Tail, so—”
“I’m telling you, it’s no burden at all. You sure do love to go on and on, don’t you?” Milano Mas grumbled with a frown.
I couldn’t help but worry I had been taken in by his gruff demeanor and unintentionally allowed myself to rely on Milano Mas’s kindness.
“At any rate, I’ve clearly been getting more customers thanks to you. I’ve even been seeing customers come for the food when they aren’t staying here, which never used to happen.”
“I really am glad to hear that, but still...”
Beyond just giba dishes, The Kimyuus’s Tail also sold other food I thought up, which included karon strips cooked in fruit wine, karon milk soup, kimyuus meatballs, and kimyuus meat omelettes, which had apparently made dinnertime there quite busy.
On top of that, the variety of sauces added over the meats and vegetables such as Worcestershire sauce, ketchup, and mayonnaise had also been favorably received. So if that meant I had been able to pay back even a fraction of what I owed Milano Mas, then I was glad.
“If you come up with something new and fantastic then I certainly wouldn’t mind. But if you don’t, there’s no need to force the menu to change. Not when that girl there’s just about mastered this dish, right?”
Reina Ruu nodded with a polite smile.
Taking the towel off my head, I bowed to Milano Mas. “Thank you. I’ll keep giving my all so that your kindness doesn’t go to waste.”
“I keep telling you, you don’t need to bow all the time like that.”
After saying farewell to Milano Mas, who remained grouchy right to the very end, we departed from The Kimyuus’s Tail.
“You’ve been getting better, Reina Ruu, so it looks like we’ve got a bit of extra time on our hands. How about we stop by The Westerly Wind for a bit?”
“Well, I certainly don’t mind, but still...” Reina Ruu replied, staring at me with adorable upturned eyes. “Somehow, I feel like I can tell what you’re thinking even more than usual today. Should I try guessing your thoughts right now?”
“Huh? That’s a scary thing to say. It’s not like I’m thinking anything weird, you know.”
“Is that so? Then feel free to just brush it off as a practical joke on my end... Aren’t you wondering just what sort of dish that Myme girl would make using mamaria vinegar?”
I ended up staring at Reina Ruu in shock.
And in response, she shot me a glare like a sulking child.
“You’ve been able to use vinegar without any trouble because you were familiar with the ingredient to start with, right, Asuta? So I certainly can’t imagine that girl making a dish that would surpass what you’ve created so easily.”
“Yeah, that may be true...”
I hadn’t intended to go so far as to bring up Myme in hypotheticals like that.
At any rate, Reina Ruu’s mood just didn’t seem to recover as we headed over to The Westerly Wind.
The inn was located along a backstreet that didn’t see much traffic. It was a bit of a dangerous area, the sort of place where you shouldn’t ever set foot alone after dark. In terms of scale, The Westerly Wind was bigger than The Sledgehammer but smaller than The Kimyuus’s Tail.
“Hey there, Asuta! It sure is rare for you to stop by at this time of day,” Yumi called out from behind the inn’s reception desk.
The place was built so you entered the dining hall right after you stepped through the door, with that desk in the back. And currently, there were five ruffians drinking there in the middle of the day.
“Yeah. I figured we haven’t had time to chat lately. So, how are the giba dishes selling?”
“It’s going perfectly! I figure we’re at the point where we can buy enough meat for another ten meals’ worth and still sell out.”
I had been able to enter into business with The Westerly Wind too. However, I wasn’t offering them my cooking. Instead, all I did was sell them raw meat.
In the past, Yumi had told me her father had a strong prejudice against the people of the forest’s edge, so it was possible he would have asked me to prepare karon or kimyuus dishes rather than giba ones.
And so, I chose a roundabout approach. Which is to say, I only taught him how to make delicious giba dishes, setting things up so that he would want to order giba meat.
If I sold him my dishes directly, then they would end up costing more than other meals. And it was right after Polarth advised us to revise our prices, so that difference would become even more striking. It was then that I raised the proposal that they could earn more of a profit by purchasing the giba meat directly and then cooking it themselves.
As for the meals I instructed The Westerly Wind on, they were okonomiyaki and karon milk soup. Those dishes could be made without needing too much meat, so it was possible to keep the prices at the same level as meals made with karon. Plus, the process of cooking them was quite simple.
When I was finally able to actually show off those dishes at The Westerly Wind, that was when I somehow managed to form a contract to sell them fresh meat.
At first it had been kept to five kilos of meat a day, but now it had increased to fifteen. In terms of pure numbers, that was around double the amount of fresh meat ordered by The Great Southern Tree, which was our largest business partner. Of course, that was because they sold my giba cooking directly, so they had less of a need for fresh meat.
“Once tau oil started spreading throughout the post town, you taught us how to make Worcestershire sauce and mayonnaise, right, Asuta? That seems to have really improved the sales of the okonomiyaki.”
“Yeah, back where I came from, you added those on top of okonomiyaki too. I figured that would be more popular than sprinkling salt on top or dipping them in soup.”
“You sure were right on the mark. My dad’s always making a weird face nowadays, like he’s happy and frustrated at the same time,” Yumi replied with an exceptionally joyful grin. Naturally, I was quite satisfied with the results myself.
Our long-held goal had been to sell giba meat itself rather than just my cooking. Nail and Naudis had been purchasing some, but that was ultimately to supplement whatever extra they needed in addition to my cooking. The Westerly Wind ended up being the first inn to solely purchase giba meat from us.
“But no matter how much meat is getting sold, none of the profit goes to you, does it? That part sort of frustrates me.”
“There’s no need for that. The more fresh meat starts selling, the more the wealth spreads around to clans other than just my own. So I really am grateful to you for persuading your father to do business with us, Yumi.”
“Stop saying embarrassing stuff like that, jeez!” Yumi chuckled, slapping me on the back. It was lighter than a slap from a girl from the forest’s edge like Lala Ruu, but it still certainly did sting.
“No, I really mean it. When I first started doing business, I never even imagined this much giba meat would be selling all over the post town after just four months or so.”
Including what was used in the completed dishes, we were currently selling 130 kilos of giba meat in the post town each day. Or in terms of people, we were probably talking around six or seven hundred folks eating giba every day.
In terms of the overall population of Genos, that might still have been pretty small. But still, it was hard to wrap my head around how not a single one of those people would even touch giba meat until four months ago.
And nobody could have predicted we would be advised to adjust the price since it was selling so well. As I stood there between Yumi and Reina Ruu’s smiling faces, I was filled with a secret joy and a sense of satisfaction.
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