Cooking with Wild Game (LN) - Volume 16 - Chapter 2.1

Chapter 2: A Worthwhile Day Off

1

It was now two days later, the twenty-ninth of the black month.

We were taking the day off from the stalls, so we invited Mikel and Myme to visit the forest’s edge around when the sun hit its peak. Naturally, the objective was to learn how to properly smoke meat.

The location was the Sudra house, and the members participating included me, Toor Deen, Lem Dom, Li and Yun Sudra, Reina and Sheera Ruu, and Saris Ran Fou, for eight in total.

“Let me start by saying that I only know about smoking karon and kimyuus... I’ve never handled giba meat before, so don’t go blaming me no matter how poorly it comes out, all right?” Mikel started off with his usual sour look as he took on the role of lecturer. As the representative for the students, I went ahead and gave him a bow.

“Of course. I’m sorry for asking so much of you, but please, teach us what you can.”

“Hmph,” Mikel snorted, then looked up at the house beside him.

It was an abandoned home that had been offered for our use by the Sudra. The house hadn’t been used for seven or eight years, and sat in the middle of a round cleared-out plot of land. We had chosen this one for the smokehouse just on the off chance of a fire, since it had the most open space around it.

“We blocked the existing windows like Asuta instructed and also made a new small one high up. Is that all right?” Li Sudra questioned with a gentle smile.

Mikel knocked on the boards over the windows with the back of his hand, then inspected the outside of the house. “It seems to be a pretty old house, so if the smoke leaks out from anywhere then you’ll need to repair it. When you do, you should squeeze clay into the gaps between the boards.”

“Just clay? Understood.”

“Is the meat ready?”

“Yes, this way.”

Under Li Sudra’s guidance, we all moved into the house.

Soon after passing through the entrance, we reached the main room, where a great deal of firewood and the necessary tools were prepared. There were three doors farther in, and there was an old stove alongside the right wall. In terms of scale, it looked to be just about the same size as the Fa house.

Li Sudra then led us to the rightmost room, and when she opened the door, we found a number of chunks of meat dangling from vines. That giba meat had come from the Sudra, Fa, Fou, Deen, and Ruu clans. Following Mikel’s instructions, we had already completed the preparations.

After first removing the moisture by pickling the meat in salt, we washed that salt off and then let it dry out. The steps weren’t much different from the method used to make jerky at the forest’s edge, but since we used pico leaves and herbs during the salting step, they had to be left to sit somewhat longer.

Since this was the initial test case, in addition to the usual thigh and rib meat, we also prepared shoulder and sirloin meat despite that not usually being used for jerky, and even a full hind leg. To top it all off, there was even a bunch of sausages dangling there, which I had finally found time to make this morning.

“Hmph... So you even prepared something like this, eh?” Mikel said in a grumpy voice as he looked up at the sausages.

“Yes. It took a lot of effort, but I’d say it came out about right.”

A few days prior, I had learned how to produce sausages from a traveler Nail introduced me to who had been born in Sym.

Ultimately, it was just packing thoroughly ground meat into intestines, but that was easier said than done. Since the ratio of meat to fat was four to one, the texture got softer the more that you kneaded it, but you just had to be careful to not ruin the meat with the warmth of your hands.

In Sym, the process supposedly involved adding a variety of herbs at this stage, but since I didn’t know anything about how to do that, I just went with salt and pico leaves. Then, once I was done kneading the minced meat, it was finally time to stuff the sausages. That involved opening a hole in a large cloth and then pushing the tip of a funnel through. The inside of the cloth was coated with giba fat so that the minced meat wouldn’t stick to it when you started squeezing.

Next, I set the intestines meant to be the casings for the sausages at the tip of the funnel. I used a giba’s small intestine, cutting them to a length of around one meter in advance. There was a bit of a trick required at this point too. That was to have the intestines rolled up compactly rather than stretched out.

After a gentle squeeze of the cloth to force out a bit of minced meat and any air trapped inside, I tugged on the far end of the intestine a bit and then tied it off. At that point, the preparations were finally complete.

As I squeezed the cloth, the intestine wriggled out and extended as they were packed with minced meat. Once the rolled up bit had all stretched out, I tied off the other end, and it was finished.

After that, I twisted the intestine and separated it off at fifteen-centimeter intervals, making the sort of sausage chain I was familiar with. To be honest, seeing it all come together kind of moved me a bit.

There were fifteen of those sausages I had so painstakingly made dangling here in this smokehouse. At around three centimeters thick, they were pretty big. They measured about fifteen meters altogether, and that was just the length of a single giba’s small intestine.

“Well then, time to get smoking. Do you have the firewood and herbs ready?”

“Yes. We have grigee wood, lilo leaves, fresh pico leaves, and charcoal.”

The boards had been removed from the room’s floor, so that the ground was exposed.

The fuel for the fire and the materials for smoking were arranged in a circle and then lit. White smoke started rising up, compounded with the refreshing and stimulating smell of lilo and pico filling the room.

“Seems like you’ve got a good bit of live grigee wood... The more you dry grigee out, the less extra smell it’ll add,” Mikel commented, his intense gaze checking the strength of the flames. “This flame is too strong. You’ll lose the aroma of the herbs at this rate, so remove a bit of firewood.”

“Got it,” I replied, following Mikel’s instructions using a long piece of wood in place of a fire iron.

“Keep the flames at this level for three hours. Every half hour, you should add the same amount of herbs. And with the level of charcoal you’ve got there, adding firewood every half hour too should be fine.”

“Understood. We should keep the door shut except for when we’re doing that, right?”

“Yeah,” Mikel nodded, swiftly exiting the room.

After drilling how to regulate the flame into everyone there, I went ahead and exited the room too. I had ended up dripping with sweat at some point, so I sighed as I wiped my forehead.

“Thank you. I look forward to seeing how it turns out in three hours.”

I placed a sundial in a nice sunny spot and adjusted it so it was pointing toward around noon. That would be plenty to tell how much time had passed.

“So, what do you all plan to do till then...? I can’t imagine you’re living such easygoing lives that you can let that time go to waste,” Mikel asked.

“Right. The plan is to split into two groups which will each handle their own work. One group will man the flames while tanning pelts, while the other will get in cooking practice.”

“Cooking practice...?”

“That’s right. That’s why I asked you to bring Myme along with you.”

Instantly, Myme’s eyes started sparkling as she stood there beside her father.

“So you’re planning on working with other dishes besides just making the smoked meat? I’m so excited!”

“I’m glad to hear it. Actually, I wanted to hear your opinions on the ingredients I brought back for the post town too, Mikel...”

“Hmph. I figured it would be something like that,” Mikel replied, shooting me a glare. “So, what ingredients did you pick up this time? Herbs from Sym? Vegetables from Jagar?”

“I’ve been checking the tastes and scents of the herbs and seasonings on my own, but I would like to ask your opinions on some vegetables and dried goods this time around. I’ve got some packed up in the wagon over there, so could you start by giving them a look?”

The two members of the Sudra clan would be working together with Saris Ran Fou and Lem Dom on tanning the pelts, so everyone else exited the house along with me.

The two wagons were parked there next to Gilulu and Jidura, who were getting along just fine as they munched on leaves. Since Reina Ruu’s group had gone to pick up Myme and Mikel, this was their first time seeing the ingredients loaded into the Fa clan’s wagon.

“I expect that I’ll be able to handle the banquet in the castle town pretty well with my own skills, but I did also want to hear your opinion on the ingredients that might end up selling in the post town,” I explained as I invited Mikel and Myme into the wagon. “What do you think? All of these came from the pantry in the Turan manor,” I asked, bringing out a bit of each of the ingredients.

The dried goods included some sort of seaweed that reminded me of kombu, plus others that resembled shrimp, shellfish, and octopus.

Then there were the varieties of mushrooms. One was like an orange shiitake, then there was what looked like a yellow cloud ear mushroom, and one that made me think of a pure red sea anemone, all of which were dried out. And planted in some compost, we had the ones that were like raw common mushrooms and brown beech mushrooms too.

Finally, there were five types of vegetables, the names of which I had at least asked about while in the castle town.

The green spinach-like one was ro’hyoi.

Next, the one that looked like a purple sponge gourd was sheema.

Following that was what seemed to be a great burdock in the shape of a mosquito coil, called ma gigo.

The bright red one shaped like a ginkgo leaf was ma pula.

Then finally there was chan, which looked like a pitch-black ping pong ball.

That was all of them.

After giving a rough glance over those ingredients, Mikel gave a deep sigh. “I never had any dried goods like these in my shop. Can you really eat such a bizarre-looking dried-out creature?”

“Supposedly it was ordered from the capital of Selva, Algrad. It looks a lot like a creature called an octopus back in my home country...though it smells closer to dried squid.”

“I was invited to that extravagant pantry just the once. But I turned down the job, so obviously I had no way of trying any ingredients that didn’t make it to market. The only ones I know about are the vegetables and some of the mushrooms.” As he spoke, Mikel’s expression was growing more and more displeased. “So you’re saying all of these could become available in the post town?”

“Yeah. At least as long as Yang or I can figure out how to show people they’re tasty.”

“You just keep on increasing the number of ingredients again and again. It’s like there’s no end to it...” Mikel grumbled, but Myme was looking more and more excited.

“What’s wrong with that?! The more ingredients you have, the more different dishes you can make! I’d love to handle more and more kinds of ingredients too.”

“Like I’ve said, learn to handle tau oil, sugar, and mamaria vinegar properly first. You can bring in more vegetables after that.”

“Hmph!” Myme childishly sulked, but then she realized I was looking and her face went red. “Ah, I’m sorry! That was really improper of me... This vegetable looks just like nanaar, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, but supposedly it comes from the western portion of Selva.”

Nanaar looked and tasted just like spinach, but what sort of ingredient would this ro’hyoi turn out to be?

“Out of what you’ve got here, you can eat the ro’hyoi and sheema without cooking them.”

“Ooh,” Myme exclaimed, her eyes opening wide as she listened to her father’s words. “You can’t eat nanaar raw since it’s so bitter... I guess this really is something different even though they look the same, huh?”

“Yeah. Okay, how about we give it a taste test?”

After roughly washing off the ro’hyoi in some water from a container, I tore off a bit and handed it to Myme. As I was chewing my own portion, I went to hand some out to the rest of the women in the group...only for a powerful spiciness and bitterness to spread through my mouth before I could do so.

“That’s hot! And bitter too!”

“Y-Yeah. Seems like it’s closer to an herb than a vegetable, doesn’t it?”

Both Myme and I turned to look at Mikel, who shrugged his shoulders with a frown and the look of an ill-tempered instructor.

“When you heat it through, that spice and bitterness disappear. It’s not that you can’t eat it raw, but normally you boil it first in a pot.”

“Then say that from the start!”

Both Myme and I seemed to feel the same way, but there was something else that surprised me. In addition to the spiciness and bitterness, I also got a flavor like sesame seeds drifting up through my nose. And if the spiciness and bitterness vanished when you heated it up, then perhaps it was a vegetable that was closer to arugula than spinach.

“How interesting. So, you can eat this sheema vegetable raw too? I’ve heard it’s used a lot in stews, though.”

“It’s a vegetable from Jagar, so it’s generally boiled with tau oil. Still, plenty of folks out there eat it raw.”

In that case, it made sense to give it a taste test.

However, the sheema had the appearance of a purple sponge gourd, and seemed to have rather tough, bumpy skin.

“Whether you’re eating it raw or boiling it, you generally have to peel the skin.”

“I see. Got it.”

After retrieving my vegetable knife and cutting board from farther inside the wagon, I cut the sheema into slices five centimeters thick or so. Surprisingly, the inside was pure white and juicy. And it didn’t seem to have seeds inside either.

Then, I sliced off the tail end and started making a spiral cut so I could remove the bumpy skin in a single strip...and suddenly, a voice exclaimed, “Wow! What wonderful handling of your knife, Asuta. How do you get so good at that?”

That comment had come from Reina Ruu. However, Sheera Ruu and Toor Deen were wearing the same looks of surprise and admiration.

It was then that I had a realization: Every last one of the vegetables I had encountered in this world could be eaten along with the skin. The only exceptions were the aria and chatchi, but the skin could be easily peeled off by hand for those rather than needing a knife. So at least when it came to the forest’s edge, the very notion of using a knife to skin vegetables simply didn’t exist.

“Oh, that’s right. That was a real blind spot on my part. In my home country, you needed to skin vegetables like chatchi and nenon with a knife too.”

“How amazing. It’s almost like magic,” Reina Ruu exclaimed. It had been a while since I’d seen her like this, with a look in her eyes like a lovestruck maiden.

“With a bit of practice, you should be able to do it too. The skin you have to peel off this sheema isn’t too terribly thick.”

“I’d definitely like to learn, then!”

After nodding to her, I sliced the pure-white peeled sheema further into slices about a centimeter thick.

“Well then, how about we all give it a try?”

Everyone present aside from Mikel grabbed a thin slice of sheema from atop the cutting board.

When I bit into it, it tasted a bit sweet, and was super moist. There was no striking spiciness to it like with the ro’hyoi. Instead, it had a very refreshing, crisp flavor.

“Ah, this may be something similar to a vegetable I know called a daikon. It seems like it would go well in boiled dishes.”

Cubed giba meat stew and giba soup prepared with tau oil seemed like good candidates to start with. I figured that made sense for a vegetable from Jagar. If it ended up circulating in the post town, then that was sure to make Naudis happy.

“So that leaves the ma gigo, ma pula, and chan. Apparently ma gigo is a subspecies of gigo, and the same is true for ma pula and pula. So these are all suitable for boiled dishes?”

“That’s right. Actually, grilling vegetables isn’t all that popular in Genos to begin with... Normally you either boil them, steam them, or smoke them.”

“Then how about we try boiling all of them?”

Taking the five varieties of vegetables and a pot to boil them along with a single sheet of dried seaweed with us as we went, we returned to the smokehouse. The group of women who had remained behind had already gotten to tanning pelts.

“We’ll be borrowing the stove for a bit.”

We had prepared a water jug, in case of fire. And borrowing a bit of that water, I started by adding the dried seaweed to the pot. I had already given that a try last night, and found it was good for making a high-quality stock.

The taste really was similar to kombu. On top of that, it had plenty of salt, so I could really sense the nourishment provided by the ocean in it. Just adding it to an ordinary giba stew was enough to give it abundant flavor.

“This has to steep in the water for half an hour first, so we’ll have to wait around for a bit.”

Still, it was definitely easier than stewing giba meat for an hour while taking care not to let it boil in order to extract a stock.

I had no idea just how much would be delivered from Algrad from here on out, but in terms of price, it would be completely reasonable to distribute it throughout the post town. Actually, if it got out that you could use it to so easily make a high-quality stock, it was possible that the castle town would buy it all up first.

“By the way Asuta, what was that Varkas chef from the castle town like?” Myme innocently asked during our break time. “My dad rarely ever praises anyone, but he said so much about that man that he must be an amazing chef, right?”

“Yeah. I don’t really have a firm grasp on his personality, but I’d say he was amazingly skilled at cooking.”

That was no lie.

I had difficulty comprehending the taste, but just thinking about how much experience he must have built up to create that flavor got me a little excited. I really couldn’t help but feel like he was some sort of magician, with how he so casually put together such finely tuned and complex flavoring, which seemed like it could so easily fall apart if the balance was even slightly off.

It seemed that Reina Ruu and Toor Deen felt the same way, as their expressions stiffened up a bit when Varkas’s name was mentioned.

I definitely couldn’t say it was a dish I had felt was truly delicious. And I didn’t want to share that flavor with my family or customers either. Yet in spite of that, Varkas was still someone I couldn’t turn a blind eye toward.

“How should I put it...? He makes really perplexing dishes. I could never copy his flavoring...and I wouldn’t want to either, but I have to admit, I felt like my confidence took a hit on that front,” I replied to Myme, and then I glanced over at Mikel. “Well, I’ve already got an idea, but there’s a question I wanted to ask... Mikel, for people in the castle town, is the food Varkas makes considered the ideal of proper cuisine?”

“Why are you asking me something like that...?”

“Well, I found it to be a perplexing dish, but I also sensed that at its core it resembled the cooking I was familiar with from other chefs in the castle town. Using a great variety of ingredients to aim for an incredibly complex flavor... That was what Roy had once told me it meant to be a first-rate chef.”

“Hmph, and...?”

“Well, if I had to say, I was taught that the basics of cooking were to bring out the flavor of each ingredient as much as possible, so in a way, my thinking on the matter is the complete opposite. It feels a little strange to me that folks from the castle town still appreciate my cooking in spite of that.”

On top of that, I believed that Mikel’s cooking methods were similar to my own. The initial source of the doubt I was having now was the fact that both Mikel and Varkas had been similarly praised around the same time.

His eyes narrowing suspiciously, Mikel grumbled, “Asuta, you seem to be under some sort of misconception.”

“A misconception?”

“That’s right. Only a hundred years or so at most have passed since this town of Genos gained its current level of prosperity. Up until then, it was just like any other poor town where folks were just fending off starvation with aria and kimyuus eggs. Only folks in the castle town ever ate tarapa or tino, and naturally nobody had the funds needed to purchase ingredients from Jagar or Sym.” Mikel leaned forward as he talked while sitting there cross-legged. “On top of that, greedily buying up different ingredients from other countries wasn’t a thing until the previous head of the house of Turan obtained as much power and wealth as he did. Do you really think it’s possible to talk about cooking being ideal or proper cuisine with such a short history?”

“I see... In other words, the cuisine in Genos has undergone rapid changes in recent years, huh?”

“Yeah, that’s right. So even in the castle town, the chefs are just pretending to have the skills needed to handle the majority of those ingredients pouring into the region. There’s only a handful of exceptions like Varkas.”

I figured Mikel had to be included in that handful too.

With that thought in mind, I nodded back. “Right. I think I get the reason why the nobles’ tastes haven’t clearly solidified, more or less. By the way, is the neighboring town of Banarm the same way too?”

“The history of Banarm is a bit longer than Genos’s. But as far as I know they don’t have much interaction with Sym or Genos at all, and the soil is poor, so they can only grow a very limited variety of vegetables there,” Mikel bluntly replied. “Banarm is famous for its fuwano and mamaria. They grow a bit of aria and reten there too, and they have ranches for raising karon. Because of that, I’ve heard their cooking primarily uses karon milk fat and dried milk. Karon dried milk hat bake was a local specialty of Banarm, originally.”

“Karon milk fat and dried milk, right? Thank you. That’s a real help to know.”

“Hmph,” Mikel snorted back. His tone and expression remained just as blunt as always, but he had figured out what I wanted to ask and jumped ahead to tell me. And I really did feel incredibly grateful for that consideration.

“Varkas said that you were his greatest rival. I’m sure that even though you were aiming for completely different goals, you must have had a great relationship.”

“We didn’t have any sort of relationship at all. Heck, I don’t even know what the guy’s face looks like.”

“Huh? But Varkas said...”

“We visited one another’s restaurants and tried the other’s cooking. But that’s as far as our relationship went.”

Before I realized it, I had let a strained chuckle slip out.

“But you still acknowledged one another’s skills. So I think that was a good relationship, even if that’s all it amounted to.”

Mikel stayed silent as he scratched his head of hair, which definitely had some gray coming in. And there was a very warm light in Myme’s eyes as she stared proudly up at her father.