Cooking with Wild Game (LN) - Volume 19 - Chapter 1.2

2

“Ah, welcome back, everybody!”

Once we were finished with our business in the post town, we headed back to the Ruu settlement, where we found a rather large crowd of women awaiting us in the kitchen. Since tomorrow was a day off, we didn’t need to handle preparations, so I wasn’t sure what this was all about. It was still bright out, but they seemed to already have their preparations for dinner mostly finished.

From among the group, it was once again Rimee Ruu who energetically greeted us with a smile.

“Since we haven’t been catching many giba lately, there hasn’t been much tanning to do. And with all the firewood chopped up, everyone decided to work on dinner!”

“I see,” I replied, satisfied with that answer.

There were two reasons they were catching fewer giba around the Ruu settlement. The first was that there were simply fewer of the beasts in the clan’s hunting grounds as their next break period was approaching, and the second was the fact that both Donda and Darmu Ruu were resting up from their injuries.

In the kitchen there were four Ruu women and two guests working away. Somewhat unusually, Sati Lea Ruu was there too, working alongside Vina, Reina, and Rimee Ruu.

Sati Lea Ruu was the wife of the eldest son of the main Ruu house, Jiza Ruu. She was a very wise and attentive woman, but she had to look after her young child Kota Ruu, so she tended to man the stove less often than the other women.

After giving her a brief greeting, I turned back to Rimee Ruu.

“I’m glad to see you here, Rimee Ruu. Could you participate in today’s study session?”

“Yeah, I will! What are we learning today?”

“Something that I’m sure you’ll enjoy.”

As we talked, the two women there as guests approached us.

“Asuta of the Fa clan, would it be all right if we also participated in today’s study session?”

“Yeah, of course.”

They were the Zaza women who were staying at the Ruu settlement.

Currently, they were on exchange with some women from under the Ruu so that the Zaza clan could learn how to make delicious meals. From the Ruu side, the youngest daughter of the main Rutim house, Morun Rutim, and a woman from a Ruu branch house had been dispatched, while these two had come from the Zaza clan.

One of them was an older woman by the name of Mei Jeen Zaza. She was the younger sister of the clan head of the Jeen, a clan that fell under the Zaza, and was married to the younger brother of the leading clan head Gulaf Zaza. She was moderately tall but had a sturdy build, and she had as much of a presence about her as Mia Lea Ruu.

The other was a sixteen-year-old unmarried woman named Sufira Zaza. She was the youngest daughter of the main Zaza house, making her Gulaf Zaza’s daughter. Slender and tall, her long blackish-brown hair was draped over her right shoulder in a large braid. Just from looking at her, it really was hard to believe that she was even younger than Reina Ruu.

Like Lem Dom, who also came from the north, they had giba bone accessories. These two also wore giba leather over their chests and waists on top of the usual attire with swirling patterns that were worn by f the people of the forest’s edge. Though they didn’t look especially wild, there was a sharp look in their eyes and the expressions on their faces were pretty intense, which gave them a strong presence. That seemed fitting for women from the northern settlement, who were known to be dauntless.

“Well then, could you show us your skills, Toor Deen?” I asked when the preparations for dinner were just about finished.

A bit timidly, Toor Deen replied, “Okay...” and started picking out ingredients.

Our town group added eight people to the six who were already there, making for quite the packed kitchen. With eyes that kept glancing at the crowd around her, Toor Deen silently got to work.

She started by dissolving poitan flour in karon milk, then she added milk fat and kimyuus egg. Next, she tossed in some sugar and checked the flavor, after which she grabbed the dried ramam.

Ramam had a yellow surface and red interior. They were shriveled like dried persimmons, and after chopping them up, she dropped them into the batter.

As poitan was less sticky than fuwano, the batter was in more of a gooey liquid state. Toor Deen whipped it with a wooden spatula, then dropped it onto a metal tray coated with milk fat in a round hotcake-like shape.

Since she had used kimyuus eggs, it had a bit of a yellow color to it. In terms of appearance, it wasn’t much different from the hotcakes I had prepared before.

“Mm, what a great smell! I’m sure it’ll be delicious!” Rimee Ruu said with great delight as she stared down at Toor Deen’s hands.

However, the young chef’s expression remained completely serious. She flipped her creation over, revealing a brown grilled color that was even more reminiscent of hotcakes.

“It’s ready.”

The poitan hotcake was around thirty centimeters in diameter, and Toor Deen skillfully transferred it to a plate without damaging it.

As she cut into it, I thought, Oh? for the first time. The knife passed through with shocking ease.

Now that I thought about it, the hotcake had risen quite a bit, from an original thickness of about one centimeter to around three times that. Perhaps whipping it had even more of an impact than I had expected.

“Please, go ahead and try some...” Toor Deen said, stepping back with a deeply worried expression.

We all reached out for the small plates the hotcake had been divided among.

Milk fat was akin to a fine butter and had a wonderful aroma. From what I could see of the cross section of the hotcake, the inside looked soft and moist, with bits of red ramam fruit here and there throughout.

Each of us only had a very small portion, so I went ahead and popped the whole thing into my mouth. I instantly felt a gentle aroma waft up through my nose. Sure enough, the taste was similar to that of a hotcake. However, the texture differed. It was moist and seemed to melt lightly in my mouth. It had to have a lot more air mixed in than the hotcakes I made. With the light smoothness, it definitely had a pleasant texture to it.

The ramam added a perfect accent to the dish. The bits of fruit were springy when heated through, and their tart sweetness seeped into the dish, blending splendidly with the pure sweetness from the sugar and the milk fat. In terms of both taste and texture, the ramam was making the whole dish much more enjoyable.

“Yeah, this is great,” I said as I glanced around, only to freeze in place. A number of the women were breathing heavily and looking enraptured.

Foremost among them were Rimee Ruu, Yun Sudra, Sati Lea Ruu, and Sufira Zaza. Everyone else seemed generally satisfied, but those four wore expressions of supreme bliss. Meanwhile, Reina and Sheera Ruu looked pretty serious as they carefully sampled the taste, and Vina Ruu was glancing around with just as much bewilderment as I was.

“What’s going on with all of you? Something just changed in your eyes...” the eldest sister said.

“You have to ask?! This is super tasty!” Rimee Ruu exclaimed as she tossed aside her plate and clung to Toor Deen’s arm. “This is the first time I’ve ever had such delicious poitan! Did you think up this dish all on your own, Toor Deen?!”

“Huh? Ah, yes, well...” Toor Deen answered with a flustered smile.

Then Yun Sudra grabbed onto the young chef’s other arm. “I agree! I thought I knew how skilled of a chef you are...but this leaves me at a loss for words!”

Thinking about it, I could remember Yun Sudra saying she had been warned not to use too much sugar back at her house. She must have had a sweet tooth just like Rimee Ruu.

Sati Lea Ruu stood calmly right in front of poor Toor Deen. “This is certainly an unusual texture. It’s as if the okonomiyaki Asuta taught us how to prepare before was made sweeter, yet it also has an entirely different sort of deliciousness to it.”

I recalled then that Sati Lea Ruu was exceedingly fond of carbs. Though she was smiling gently as usual, her eyes were shining just as brightly as Rimee Ruu’s or Yun Sudra’s.

Sufira Zaza, who I wasn’t all that familiar with, also crowded in close, leaving Toor Deen surrounded. Her eyes were narrowed in bliss as she tasted the hotcake-style poitan.

As she looked over those four, Vina Ruu gave a shrug of her seductive shoulders. “I thought it was plenty good too, but it seems to have had much more of an impact on them... Is it the same sort of dish Asuta prepared before with fuwano, sugar, and herbs?”

“Yeah, that’s right. There are certainly big differences between them, but I’d say they’re in the same family.”

She was referring to back when I was still developing the giba curry. In order to explain the importance of herbs, I’d combined one that was similar to cinnamon with sugar and fuwano. Toor Deen might have gotten the idea to use kimyuus eggs from the way I used it in okonomiyaki and pasta, but aside from that, she had come up with everything on her own.

Wondering what Reina and Sheera Ruu were thinking, I glanced over their way. “I’m sure everyone who went to the castle town can tell, but I believe this should be treated as a sweet to be eaten after dinner rather than as an ordinary dish. So keeping that in mind, what are your thoughts?” I asked.

Reina Ruu gave her opinion first. “Well, I think it’s very tasty. Varkas didn’t seem to have put much effort into his dessert, but this... I think it’s every bit as good as the sweets you and he made, Asuta.”

I nodded. “Yeah, sweets are outside of my field of expertise. And Varkas seemed to think the dessert shouldn’t stand out too much as the conclusion of a six-course meal, but it may be a bit different when you’re making one all on its own. At any rate, I’m a little surprised that Toor Deen could make one this delicious without any proper knowledge of the subject.”

Toor Deen looked moved to the point of tears as she stood there with Rimee Ruu and Yun Sudra holding her arms. Naturally, these tears were an entirely different sort from the ones she had wept earlier in the day, though.