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“Which part of the giba will you use? Could I have you give them a taste test before cooking?” I asked, holding out the plate with the slices of meat I had prepared in advance toward Myme. It was a bite each of sirloin, rib meat, and thigh meat.
“Okay, if I grill them up and give them a try, that should help me grasp the pure taste of giba meat, I’d imagine.”
“You can borrow my handheld pot.”
Since all the stoves in the kitchen were occupied, Myme, Mikel, Mia Lea Ruu, and I went outside. Then, I pulled out a cooking tool from the wagon.
In this world it was called a handheld or single-handled pot, but back where I came from it was known as a frying pan. Naturally, this was a new cooking tool I had purchased from Diel along with a saucepan.
“Thank you. Well then, allow me to grill these up.”
Mia Lea Ruu lit up the outdoor stove, and before long those three pieces of meat were grilling away. And since all three cuts were plenty fatty, there was no need to worry about anything burning.
Meanwhile, Vina Ruu’s group of three had circled around and were now staring from the shadows along the wall.
“What are you all up to? You’ve at least finished your own work, haven’t you?” Mia Lea Ruu asked in an astounded tone.
“Of course,” Lala Ruu replied. “We’re all done with skinning pelts and drying out pico leaves. Vina and I rushed to get it finished together.”
“Then why not just come on out and observe normally? You’re going to worry our guests for no reason, sneaking around like that.”
And so, we got three additional spectators.
Still, Myme was already focused on the giba meat, so she paid them no heed.
“Just like with kimyuus meat, you should grill giba thoroughly enough that all the red goes away.”
“Right, understood.”
She then flipped over the three pieces of meat using the wooden spatula I had loaned her, revealing nicely grilled surfaces on each of them.
“These pieces of meat are so small, but they have so much fat on them.”
“Yeah. That alone should already tell you how it’s an even more wonderful ingredient than skinless kimyuus or karon leg meat, right?”
Myme nodded, moving the single-handled pot off the stove. Apparently her intention was to cook them the rest of the way using the residual heat.
“Once they’re done, you can move them over to this fresh plate.”
“Right, thank you.”
After just ten more seconds, Myme swiftly transferred the meat out of the pan. They really did look exquisitely grilled.
“Well then, allow me to give them a taste,” Myme said with a serious expression as she started by bringing the sirloin to her mouth.
Though it was a single bite’s worth, she only bit off half of it before returning the rest to the plate.
Rather than offering any impressions, she moved on to the rib and thigh meat, eating just half of each of those too.
“This... This really is high-quality meat. And is it preserved with pico leaves rather than salt?”
“Yeah. We can pick as many pico leaves as we want from the forest’s edge, so there’s no need to use salt for that. We only use it when we’re making jerky.”
“Oh, really?”
As she meticulously chewed the thigh meat that she had gone for last, Myme then held out the plate toward Mikel. Mikel had been as still and silent as a statue, and now he shot his daughter a quizzical look.
“What is it? There’s no need for me to test it, is there?”
“There may not be, but you’re interested in giba meat too, aren’t you?”
At that, Mikel silently accepted the plate.
Then, as her father carefully sampled the meat, Myme turned toward me.
“It was delicious. And there really was a change in toughness and taste based on the parts used too.”
“Yup. Differences in the distribution of fat can have a big impact on taste and texture. The fat concentrates around the edges of thigh meat, so the meat packed in the middle is denser and tougher, while the meat and fat are arranged in layers around the chest, making that cut the most tender. Then with the back, the fat is spread moderately throughout the meat, making it chewy but not overly tough.”
“Right. It really was a surprise that it was this tasty just from grilling it,” Myme replied, and then she suddenly tilted her head. “Now that I think about it, you’ve bought charcoal from dad before, haven’t you, Asuta? Sprinkling salt on top and grilling it over a charcoal fire should be plenty tasty too, I assume.”
“Yeah. I do a lot of charcoal grilling back home myself. But we always have customers coming and going at the stalls, so we need to cook the meat all at once on trays to keep up.”
“I see,” Myme murmured, placing her hand on her slender chin and thinking. “It feels like if you weren’t careful, a dish could easily end up tasting worse than just grilling the meat. That certainly makes for quite a difficult challenge.”
“Should I have prepared some karon or kimyuus meat after all?”
“No. I feel very honored to have the chance to cook such delicious meat,” Myme said with a smile so reassuring it was hard to think it was coming from a ten-year-old. “I’ve decided. I’ll use giba leg meat for my dish.”
“Got it. What about vegetables and seasonings?”
“Just salt and fruit wine will be plenty for seasonings. I don’t have any experience using tau oil or sugar, after all. And for the vegetables, could I have you share a bit of aria, chatchi, nenon, and poitan with me?”
“No problem. Go ahead and pick what you want out of our pantry,” Mia Lea replied, then led the way to the pantry next to the kitchen.
And when she stepped inside, Myme’s eyes positively sparkled as she exclaimed, “Ooh! This is amazing! There are so many vegetables! I’ve never seen such a splendid pantry before!”
“Hmm? I never expected to have someone from town praise our pantry.”
“My father and I live alone, and the citizens of Turan are all poor to begin with, so we’d never have the chance to purchase so many vegetables. You have a lot of family here in the Ruu clan though, don’t you?”
“Yup, including the baby, there are thirteen of us. And lately we’ve had two freeloaders on top of that every other day.”
The main house and Shin Ruu’s family took turns preparing dinner for Jeeda and Bartha.
“I can’t believe it! It’s like a dream!” Myme excitedly proclaimed as she started closely examining the various vegetables around the pantry.
As I watched her hurry all about, a voice called out from behind, “It’s just like when you first visited the Ruu house, Asuta.” When I turned to look, I found Rimee Ruu standing there between her sisters.
“What’s up? Did you need some vegetables or something?”
“No. It just seemed more fun over here, so we came to watch. There’s not really much left to do with our work anyway.”
While we were having that exchange, Myme had gathered up the vegetables she needed in a basket and came back over our way. Just as she had said, she had taken just one each of aria, chatchi, nenon, and poitan.
“Are you fine with so little? Asuta will pay for everything regardless, so just use what you want.”
“No, if I use vegetables I’m not accustomed to, I’ll ruin the flavor,” Myme replied, shooting a regretful look back at the shelves.
When she saw that, Rimee Ruu declared, “You really are just like Asuta used to be!”
In the past, this place had been like a treasure trove full of unfamiliar ingredients. But it hadn’t been long since I’d come to the forest’s edge at that point, and the only vegetables or grains I had laid eyes on were aria and poitan, so that was only natural.
And it seemed that Myme wasn’t all that familiar with various ingredients thanks to the poverty she had been living in. Even if she was the daughter of a renowned chef, you couldn’t exactly go buying high-class foodstuffs without the coins to purchase them.
Now that I think about it, Ai Fa had also told me how the residents of Turan seemed to be living in poverty.
I still hadn’t set foot in the Turan lands that stretched out to the north of the castle town. But back when I’d been kidnapped by Lefreya, Ai Fa had apparently visited there as part of her search.
Though the house of Turan possessed a vast fortune, they had built it by using slaves from the north. The fuwano and mamaria fields in Turan were all worked by those slaves, and thanks to that, no jobs were left there for the residents, who lived in poverty as a result.
Myme said before that she had never handled tau oil or sugar. She may have around the same level of knowledge about ingredients as I did back when I took charge of the Rutim banquet.
But Myme would definitely be able to make better dishes than I could back then. While I knew it was wrong to get my expectations up so high, I still couldn’t help but think that way.
With such thoughts running through my head, we returned to the kitchen, where Reina Ruu’s group all turned at once from the various dishes they were working on to face us.
“Toor Deen, thanks for manning the flame. Now then, Myme, could you show us your cooking skills?”
“Right. I’ll give it my all!”
After placing the ingredients she had carried over onto the workstation, Myme reached for her leather case. After she released the metal latch, we finally got to see what was inside.
The case’s insides were lined with a thick, soft-looking cloth material. It held three varieties of cooking knives, spoons and cups for measuring, and even what looked like a whisk and a ladle. It was a complete set of cooking tools, inherited from Mikel from when he worked as a chef in the castle town.
“Oh, you use knives from Sym too, Myme?” I asked as I spied a familiar swirling pattern on the handles of the knives.
“Yes!” she excitedly replied. “These tools are all far too nice for someone like me. I also have a set of knives from Jagar back home, but I brought these today since it was a special occasion.”
“Ooh. So what’s that thinnest one for?”
“This is a knife for cutting fish, or so I’ve been told. Of course, the only fish around Genos are all poisonous, so I’ve never had a chance to use it.”
I had already heard as much from Polarth back when we asked about catching wild birds. That was supposedly why I didn’t see any sort of seafood about the post town.
Still, even here in Genos there were surely opportunities to prepare fish in the castle town. And so I stole a glance over at Mikel, but there was nothing to be gleaned from his expression.
“And, well...I’m terribly sorry to ask, but could I have you be the one to cut the meat? If I were to cut meat I’m handling for the first time, that would just damage the flavor.”
“Got it. You wanted to use thigh meat, right? What sort of shape should I cut it into?”
“All right, could I have you cut it into as thick of a block as you can manage, like you did for the prep work before? I’ll leave the amount up to you, though.”
There were a total of ten chefs in the kitchen including myself, and now we had an additional three spectators in the corner. Adding in Myme and Mikel, that made for fifteen people in total. With that number in mind, I cut the giba thigh meat into a block just under two kilos.
“Thank you. Also, could I have a bottle of fruit wine and just a bit of salt?”
Those were already on another workstation, so Rimee Ruu held them out with a, “Here.”
“Thank you,” Myme smiled back as she accepted them.
Myme started off by tenderizing the block of meat by beating it with a pole, then she began rubbing in the crushed rock salt. Once she had done that base seasoning of the meat, she started slicing all of the vegetables except the poitan.
“Please, use this stove. We’ll heat everything back up later, so it’s fine,” Sheera Ruu said and she and Reina Ruu took off their pot.
“Thank you,” Myme replied with a bow, then asked for a new pot.
After adding the block of meat to the large metal pot, she carefully grilled the surface over a strong flame, which made for a pleasant crackling sound.
Once it was nice and browned all over, she added the vegetables: a whole aria, two-thirds of a chatchi, and three-fourths of a nenon.
After that all heated through, she finally added the fruit wine, going quite heavy on it so that two-thirds of the thick meat ended up soaking in it.
At that point, she placed a wooden board on top as a lid, then pulled out around half of the firewood in the stove. Her plan must have been to let it simmer over a low flame.
“She didn’t use any particularly unusual techniques, huh...?” Reina Ruu whispered into my ear.
“Right,” I nodded back, only for Sheera Ruu to come in close from the other side.
“Still, her style somehow reminded me of yours, Asuta. I never got that feeling when watching the inn owners cook, though...”
It was true that there wasn’t any showiness to the process Myme used, and a lot of it employed the same cooking techniques I was familiar with. She must have grilled the surface of the meat so that the juices wouldn’t escape, and she let it simmer over a low heat in order to soften up the meat. Rubbing in salt gave the meat a base seasoning, and beating it broke down the connective tissue, which was why I also did the same. Honestly, the only difference was how she cut the vegetables.
Myme was now leaning forward in front of the stove, watching the state of the flame intently. With an incredibly serious look on her face, she would occasionally add more firewood, but she never checked the contents of the pot.
Since there didn’t seem to be anything significant happening, Reina Ruu and the others resumed preparing dinner. Twenty minutes or so passed like that, and then around when the tino rolls would be finished, Myme finally stood up.
After removing the wooden board, she then scooped up the broth with a wooden ladle. After checking the taste, she turned toward Mia Lea Ruu.
“I’m sorry, but could I borrow an outdoor stove again?”
“Yeah, no worries.”
As I wondered just what she was going to do, Myme started using my frying pan to sauté a small amount of chatchi and nenon. Then, she returned to the kitchen and added them into the pot.
While she stirred the boiling fruit wine soup, she tasted it and added more salt bit by bit. Then she replaced the lid and let it sit over a low flame for an additional ten minutes, at which point she got back up.
A good bit of the fruit wine had evaporated, as now around half of the block of meat was exposed. As for the vegetables that had sunk down around it, Myme started crushing them with a wooden spoon. She had sliced them as thin as she did precisely for this step.
Once the vegetables turned into a paste and dissolved into the soup, she turned to the poitan still atop the workstation and started cutting it into thin slices. She then added those to the pot while stirring, stopping after she put in the fourth slice.
The soup had thickened somewhat now, and the color had turned a sort of creamy red. This was also a method I employed when I wanted to simply thicken up a dish. With the karon milk soup offered at The Kimyuus’s Tail and The Westerly Wind, I added poitan to make it more of a stew.
After giving the soup yet another taste test, Myme went ahead and stabbed a bit of meat with a wooden skewer to confirm how tender it was, and then she finally turned my way with a smile.
“Thank you for waiting. It’s all done now.”
“Huh? You’re not going to taste test the meat?”
“No. It’s my first time handling giba meat, so I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to do anything further even if I did give it a try.”
I didn’t know if it was pure resolve or what, but there wasn’t any hesitation whatsoever behind her smile.
Meanwhile, with a bit of a nervous look on their faces, Reina Ruu and the others started gathering around the pot.
“So it’s finished? You really did only use salt and fruit wine for seasoning.”
“That’s right. However, the taste of pico leaves had already seeped into the meat, so I get the feeling that there will be more flavor to the broth than in the food I make at home.”
“In that case, why don’t you give my dish a taste first?” I offered, scooping up a tino roll out of the pot. Though I had stopped the flame for a bit, I had relit it so that the rolls were now hot enough to eat. After using a wooden skewer to undo the vine binding it, I poured some pale orange soup over the top, then placed a plate in front of both Myme and Mikel.
“If you don’t mind, could you give it a try too, Mikel? Since this is a dish offered to the inns, you haven’t had it before, right?”
“Yeah, since I don’t go around wasting coins on dinner.”
In that case, either Myme or Mikel must have hit upon the idea of using poitan to add thickness all on their own. After all, they would have no way of knowing I used that method without eating food from the inns.
“What a wonderful aroma!” Myme proclaimed, her eyes sparkling bright. Meanwhile, the tino rolls prepared by everyone else were carried over in front of us, so that I could confirm how they turned out.
“Well then, time to give it a taste test!”
Myme and Mikel both grabbed their metal skewers. And as I watched out of the corner of my eye, I picked up my own homemade chopsticks.
There were no issues whatsoever with the tino rolls Reina Ruu and everyone had prepared. When I bit into the tino wrapping that had grown sweeter through thorough boiling, my mouth was filled with still-warm meat juices. And the taste of those juices was just right too. There would be no problem just offering these starting tomorrow at The Kimyuus’s Tail.
Back home, I used to make cabbage rolls with a mixture of ground beef and pork, but just like with the hamburger steak, this recipe seemed just as good as the original. My tongue was thoroughly accustomed to giba meat at this point, and even if it wasn’t, giba was just such a high-quality ingredient anyway.
Just like Mia Lea Ruu had said, minced meat had a flavor all its own. And if Donda Ruu could find that delicious now, then I really was grateful for that fact.
“Aah... This dish is also truly amazing. Just eating it is enough to make me smile,” Myme exclaimed, her eyes closed in bliss. As for Mikel, he was just silently chewing away. “Still, I’m bad at putting what I feel into words. Isn’t it a fantastic dish, dad?”
“Yeah.”
Myme prodded him further. “Isn’t expressing yourself one of your specialties? Why don’t you go ahead and describe this feeling in my place?”
“Folks all have different tongues, so there’s no guarantee we’re perceiving things the same way. Besides, there’s not much point in saying how delicious a dish is.”
“Jeez! You’re always picking apart my cooking left and right, though!”
After that, we went ahead and finished taste testing the tino rolls.
Now, it was finally time for Myme’s dish.
“Hmm, now that I think about it, isn’t the order we went in odd? With my dish coming after Asuta’s, that’ll just make the gap between them stand out all the more.”
“Nah, I figure it’ll be fine. Not that I have any proof.”
“It’s hard for a statement like that to put me at ease...” Myme retorted, grinning, but with some seriously mixed emotions on her face as she picked up her meat-cutting knife.
The giba thigh meat sat there atop the unlit stove, giving off steam as she smoothly cut into it. Though that was the toughest cut of giba, it looked to have been boiled until it was really tender.
There was a faint pink at the center of the cross-section, but after that much cooking, no doubt it was perfectly heated through. After slicing off enough of the long and narrow block of meat for everyone present, Myme looked up and said, “Please, go ahead. I’m not especially confident, but give it a try. This is the best possible giba meat dish I can make at present.”
Reina Ruu stood in front of the pot, while Rimee Ruu slid in next to her holding a ton of wooden plates. Using a wooden spoon, they poured a bit of the broth over the cuts of meat, then passed them around.
The block of meat had been a bit over two kilos, but split among fifteen people, that worked out to around 130 grams each. Well, that wouldn’t be enough to ruin my appetite for dinner even after trying the tino rolls, but I wasn’t used to small servings like this.
“All right, let’s give it a try.”
As I felt my heart pounding in my chest, I brought the broth-coated thigh meat to my mouth.
At first, I almost felt myself moan at how delicious the broth was, as the viscous liquid clung to my tongue. The base of the flavor came from the sweetness of fruit wine, which blended together in amazing synergy with the vegetables and fat.
Myme’s flavoring really was exquisite. The reason she went out of her way to add the chatchi and nenon must have been to perfect the taste. Those pasted vegetables helped bring forth a well-rounded flavor, and then everything was perfectly wrapped up with just the right amount of salt.
And then there was the giba meat. She had only boiled it for thirty minutes at most, so it wasn’t as if it was incredibly tender. Instead, just the fatty bits around the edges were all jiggly and soft, while the red meat portions had a firm chewiness left to them.
Ultimately, the texture seemed close to a roast. Even though the meat juices didn’t come gushing forth, it still had a nice pleasant chewiness to it. And the strong taste of the giba meat intermingled with the flavor of the sweet-smelling sauce as it rushed over the top of my tongue.
“Yup, this is yummy!” Rimee Ruu suddenly proclaimed loudly. There was a real look of joy shining away on her little face. “It’s really, really tasty! You’re so good at cooking, Myme!”
“Thank you,” the young chef replied with a smile. However, her expression looked somehow sad. “But the flaws in my dish really stand out after Asuta’s, right? I knew that going in, but it still makes me feel ashamed.”
“Huh, really? I just thought it was tasty.”
“But the taste from the pico leaves was really half-baked, and I wasn’t able to make full use of the delicious flavor from the giba fat. I really am sorry for having you all eat such a bungled dish.”
“Your standards certainly are high. Personally, I was shocked to find someone from town could cook such a delicious dish with giba meat,” Mia Lea Ruu retorted with a beaming smile.
At that, I glanced around to see what everyone else thought.
The majority were wearing seriously satisfied expressions. Setting aside folks who were hard to read like Yamiru Lea and Tsuvai, Bartha and Li Sudra were smiling, Vina Ruu wore a faint grin, and Lala Ruu looked a bit surprised.
Just three of the members of the group had their expressions frozen in place: Reina Ruu, Sheera Ruu, and Toor Deen.
“This is...” Sheera Ruu started to speak, only for Reina Ruu to interrupt.“It’s delicious. You’re still just ten years old, aren’t you, Myme of Turan? It really is worthy of praise, to be able to make such a delicious dish at such a young age.”
“Thank you,” Myme replied with another sad smile. “I really am grateful to hear that. And I’m sorry for taking up so much of your time today.”
Reina Ruu then averted her gaze away from Myme, firmly biting her lip. In likelihood, she...or rather, she, Toor Deen, and Sheera Ruu, had all realized just how amazing Myme was.
The young chef’s dish was delicious.
I didn’t believe the tino rolls we had eaten beforehand had been beaten definitively. And yet, today was the first time Myme had ever cooked with giba meat. On top of that, the only seasonings she used were salt and fruit wine. Aside from those, there was just the pico leaves left on the giba meat to add flavor.
As we were now, could we possibly make something that delicious with just salt and fruit wine?
Maybe the giba meat and tarapa stew I unveiled at the Rutim banquet could compete with it. But still, that dish used plenty of pico leaves, and it was made with full understanding of the flavor and quirks of giba meat. After all, I had come up with it when I had lived at the forest’s edge for around a month.
If this girl was able to use giba meat however she pleased for a month, just how grand of a dish would she end up making? And that went double for what would happen if she had free use of seasonings like tau oil, sugar, and pico leaves. Were Reina Ruu and the others thinking the same things I was?
At the very least, that was what was running through my head. And just imagining it was enough to cause blazing excitement to well up in me.
I couldn’t help but feel that Myme was even more amazing than I had previously thought.
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