2
On that day, the thirteenth of the ashen month, Toor Deen once again visited the Fa house in the evening, pulling a board with a large pot and enough ingredients for three people behind her. However, when she got there she only found the clan head, Ai Fa.
“Ah, thank you for coming, Deen child.”
Ai Fa was on the side of the house, swinging her sword again and again. The Fa clan had entered into a break period yesterday just as the Deen had done, so she must have been getting in some training as a hunter. And as Ai Fa lowered her blade, she gently glanced at Toor Deen.
“Feel free to use the stove, firewood, and pots however you please. And I refilled the water jug this morning.”
“Th-Thank you. So Asuta still hasn’t returned from the post town yet...?”
“Indeed. He said he would not return today until just before the sun set.”
“Huh? Not until the sun’s setting?”
“Yes. Since he is leaving tonight’s dinner to you, he decided to spend as much time as possible giving cooking lessons in the Ruu settlement.”
Toor Deen was left at a loss for words.
And when she saw that, Ai Fa tilted her head.
“What is the matter? Could it perhaps be that you need Asuta’s assistance to prepare dinner?”
“N-No. If I asked for that, there wouldn’t be any point, so I intend to follow through on my own...”
Still, Toor Deen hadn’t ever talked much with Ai Fa before, which left her feeling more than a little daunted. But as the hunter sheathed her blade, she nodded to the young girl.
“Do not worry. If you need to carry anything heavy, I will lend you my aid. I manned the stove until Asuta joined my house, so I shouldn’t make any mistakes that would cause you trouble.”
“R-Right, thank you...”
“Will you be using the indoor stove or the outdoor one? I stocked both with firewood to be safe.”
“Oh, then I think I would like to use the outdoor stove.”
When Ai Fa guided her around behind the house, Toor Deen’s eyes widened a bit in shock.
There were two stoves behind the Fa house. A large leather roof stretched out above them, and next to them there were logs and wooden boards forming a workstation right up against the wall of the house.
Toor Deen had visited the Fa house just a few days prior to receive cooking lessons from Asuta, but there hadn’t been anything like this.
And when she noticed Toor Deen’s gaze, Ai Fa said, “Ah, right. For some time now Asuta and I have discussed the need to have a roof and workstation for the outdoor stoves. And since we finally entered this break period, we were able to make it happen.”
“B-But your break period only started yesterday, didn’t it? You were able to complete all this in just two days?”
“Indeed. I have not had much to keep me busy besides training,” Ai Fa replied as she knocked on the surface of the workstation. “It took a bit of time to join this stand together so that the logs were not slanted, but I do not believe aria or poitan will roll off of it. If you find it stable enough, feel free to use it.”
“R-Right, thank you.”
The height must have been adjusted to come up to around Asuta’s waist. That made it a bit high for Toor Deen, but it still seemed like it would make things easier than laying out a sheet on the ground to sit on while working.
“W-Well then, allow me to get started.”
As Ai Fa watched over her, Toor Deen placed the ingredients she had brought along with her onto the workstation. First up came the prep work for the soup dish.
“Hup,” she grunted as she lifted the pot to the stovetop.
Peering inside the pot, Ai Fa murmured, “Oh...? Are those giba entrails?”
“Yes. The Deen men took it down roughly two days ago. And it seems that entrails will last for around five days when preserved with pico leaves...”
“I see. You’re the one who taught Asuta how to handle entrails, aren’t you, Deen child?” Ai Fa remarked with a satisfied nod, her gaze remaining fixed on the pot. “Still, you seem to have quite the variety packed in here. Asuta separates the different types before grilling or boiling them, but for this dish you will be cooking them all together?”
“Y-Yes. I thought it would be best not to make the steps too complicated if I was planning on teaching them to the northern clans...”
Nearly all the edible innards was packed into the pot. From what Asuta had said, they would be the heart, liver, large and small intestines, stomach, rectum, uterus, lungs, kidneys, diaphragm, and so on. The Fa clan chef had been so kind as to teach her the name and purpose of each in the breaks during cooking lessons.
“To start with, I’ll use giba fat and lightly grill these...” Toor Deen explained as she worked, since Ai Fa seemed quite interested in what she was doing. It was rather embarrassing since it felt like she was imitating Asuta, but she also felt that as the Fa clan head, Ai Fa should also know the contents of the dish. “Then once it’s heated through to some degree, I’ll boil it in tarapa sauce.”
She had prepared that in advance back on her own stove. It had involved finely dicing aria and myamuu and then boiling those together with fruit wine and pico leaves to make the tarapa sauce. And now, Toor Deen transferred that into the pot from the leather bag Jas Deen had bought in the post town.
“Hmm... That seems to be the same way that Asuta makes boiled tarapa dishes.”
“R-Right... So, at this point I decided to try adding lilo leaves and chitt seeds.”
“Chitt seeds...?” Ai Fa’s eyes swiftly narrowed.
Seeing that, Toor Deen flinched and unwittingly stopped adding the lilo leaves and chitt seeds.
“S-Since many different giba innards have unique flavors to them, I wanted to add the strong aroma of lilo and chitt... Umm, is there some sort of concern with that?”
“No, of course not... But wouldn’t using too many unfamiliar ingredients in a dish meant for the simple folks up north be an issue? After all, those chitt seeds come from the Eastern Kingdom of Sym, do they not?”
“Y-Yes. But chitt seeds aren’t as rare or expensive as tau oil, so we use them regularly now in the Deen clan. I think the northern clans probably won’t be all that opposed to them...”
“I see. It seems you’ve thought this through carefully. My apologies for interrupting your work. Please, go ahead and resume,” Ai Fa replied, yet her brow still remained furrowed.
“Umm...are you perhaps not fond of chitt seeds, Ai Fa...?”
“That is not the case. However, when I first had them, it proved quite painful for me,” Ai Fa answered in a sulking tone. “Ever since, when I hear their name or smell them, I recall that experience. But do not worry, it’s not as if I hate dishes that use chitt seeds.”
“I-I see... That certainly sounds tough...”
The small red chitt seeds were a powerfully spicy ingredient. Still, as long as you didn’t mess up the amount, they could give a dish a suitable punch, just like with pico leaves. Nobody in the Deen clan disliked them at all, so it seemed quite unusual to Toor Deen that Ai Fa was making such a pained expression.
I certainly don’t think Asuta would mess up with the amounts... What in the world could have happened? the girl wondered as she stirred the contents of the pot.
The lilo leaves she added along with the chitt seeds were an herb used when making jerky. Asuta said it should be used when you want to suppress the taste of the meat, which was why Toor Deen decided to use it in her offal soup dish.
And as for the myamuu, she used more of it in the tarapa sauce than she did with other dishes. She figured that by adding such a thoroughly strong aroma to the dish, that should make it easier to handle for people eating giba innards for the first time.
“Then I just need to let it boil slowly over a low heat, and finally adjust the flavor with salt and pico leaves. In the meantime, I’d like to prepare the other dishes...”
“Right.”
“First up is the meatballs and the stir-fried vegetables.”
“So, meatballs rather than hamburger steak?”
“Yes. They take less effort than hamburger steak, so we make a lot of meatballs in the Deen clan.”
After mincing the organ meat, she then thoroughly kneaded it with salt and pico leaves. It was also possible to make them with poitan or fuwano flour, or even kimyuus egg, but this time around she didn’t add anything. If you kneaded them till they were nice and sticky at this stage, there wasn’t much risk of them crumbling.
“The stir-fried vegetable dish uses aria, tino, pula, and nenon.”
“Hmm, that certainly sounds luxurious.”
“Right. Since it’s a wedding banquet, such extravagance should be acceptable.”
Asuta had said that color was important too when it came to cooking. When you used ingredients like dark green pula and pale vermilion nenon, just frying them was enough to make for a gorgeous dish.
When Toor Deen started making the sauce to drizzle over the meatballs, Ai Fa called out to her again. “Deen child, now that I think about it, I have yet to learn your name. If you do not mind, could you tell me?”
“Huh...? I-I’m Toor Deen...”
“Toor Deen, is it? It’s a fine, gentle-sounding name.” As Ai Fa made that uncharacteristic statement, she walked over closer to the young chef. “Toor Deen, though you must not have had as much time to form a bond with Asuta as the Ruu women, you still seem to think highly of him.”
“Eh..?” Toor Deen almost tried to shrink away. But since she was boiling down the fruit wine sauce at the moment, she couldn’t do so. “I-It’s true that I respect Asuta... B-But those are my earnest feelings, and I don’t believe they’re anything to be ashamed of...”
“That’s true, of course. And that is precisely why I wanted to tell you this,” Ai Fa stated with a serious look, moving even closer. Toor Deen felt like her legs were on the verge of trembling.
However, the expression that then crossed Ai Fa’s face was a rather awkward smile.
“I’m proud to hear that Asuta is so precious to you. I would like to thank you for those kind feelings.”
“Huh...? What exactly are you talking about...?” Toor Deen asked, now utterly perplexed as she moved the sauce over to the plate of meatballs before it burned.
And as she looked at the girl, Ai Fa’s eyes just narrowed further as she smiled. “When Asuta was safely rescued from that noble manor and returned to the settlement, you shed tears of joy, did you not? It truly moved me to see that you were so earnestly worried about him.”
“Th-That was, I mean... My emotions just came bubbling up...”
The day after Asuta was saved from the noble manor, he was staying at the Ruu settlement, and he let Toor Deen and everyone else see he was okay. The young girl had broken down crying.
After Asuta was kidnapped by those fiends, nobody knew where he was for five whole days, which caused Toor Deen to worry so much that it seemed like it would tear her apart. And so, when she saw he was okay, she was so full of joy and relief that she clung to his chest and wept. Just remembering that was enough to cause Toor Deen to blush so hard she felt like her whole body was ablaze.
“It is nothing to be ashamed of. It’s Asuta’s fault for worrying you so much. So please, allow me to offer both an apology and thanks on behalf of my bungling clan member.”
“N-No, that’s...”
“And on top of that, your heartfelt wish to receive lessons from Asuta moved Gulaf Zaza’s heart in turn. Perhaps it is all thanks to the forest’s guidance,” Ai Fa stated, looking up at the sky as it steadily turned scarlet. “Well then, it seems the sun will be setting soon. I believe it would be best to finish up the rest of the cooking inside the house, but what do you say?”
“Y-Yes, I’ll go ahead and do just that,” Toor Deen replied, feeling more than a little surprised. She had never even dreamed that Ai Fa possessed such a warm, kind heart.
Of course, it wasn’t as if Toor Deen had believed Ai Fa was heartless either. Still, she had ignored the objections of everyone around her and chosen to live as a hunter despite being a woman. And so Toor Deen had expected her to be just as stoic as any man, with a heart that wouldn’t be easily moved.
And yet, she smiled like that at me of all people... That makes me really happy, somehow, Toor Deen thought to herself as she carried the completed dishes and the rest of the ingredients into the house.
Just then, she heard the sound of a wagon rolling closer.
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