Cooking with Wild Game (LN) - Volume 19 - Chapter 2.4

4

The day went on like that until sunset at the lower sixth hour, at which point we held a welcome dinner for everyone at the Fa house.

The women from the other clans had returned to their own homes, leaving just our six guests, Rimee Ruu, and a late arrival, Ludo Ruu.

Ai Fa had said it was her first time welcoming so many guests. She didn’t look especially happy or anything, but she must have been able to relax at least a little with Rimee Ruu sitting next to her.

“Hey, can we hurry up and get the formalities out of the way? I’m starving here!” Ludo Ruu urged from his spot between Rimee Ruu and Tara.

Ai Fa shot him a somewhat annoyed look. “You mean the pre-meal chant? There are only the two of us here at the Fa house, so we each just take care of it on our own.”

“Oh, so that’s how you do it in the Fa house? But Rimee and I are here today, so it’s probably a good idea to follow tradition.”

“I see...” Ai Fa stated, straightening up her posture. “That may be true. Well then, you guests should follow your own traditions and begin eating. We people of the forest’s edge will be offering a prayer to the forest.” With that, Ai Fa began reciting the chant she usually just murmured under her breath. “We give thanks for the blessings of the forest and offer our gratitude to Asuta and Rimee Ruu, who manned the flame and gave us our life for this night...”

The two Ruu siblings and I repeated after her.

Myme and Mikel silently bowed their heads, while the other four guests simply said, “Thank you.”

“Still, this is quite the feast. I’m gonna enjoy bragging about it to the old ladies back at our place,” Dora said while looking from dish to dish as if hesitating over what to try first.

For today’s menu, I had wanted to be a bit more extravagant than usual. That meant five dishes: a main dish, a side dish, soup, a couple grain options, and dessert, all of them quite substantial.

For the main dish, I had gone for the obvious choice and prepared sirloin steaks. I figured the townsfolk wouldn’t have jaws and teeth as sturdy as the hunters of the forest’s edge, so I had decided on a thickness where I could just barely chew through them without effort.

To accompany that, I had made mashed potatoes...or perhaps it would be more accurate to call them mashed chatchi. It required quite a bit of chatchi to extract starch, so I came up with this dish to effectively use up all the leftovers. Once the starch had been extracted, I boiled the chatchi, then after mashing it, I folded in milk and milk fat. I figured this recipe was the best way to make use of lots of fine slices of chatchi.

Furthermore, I had prepared a sort of gravy made with meat juices, fruit wine, and myamuu to pour over the top. It was a sauce I had gotten plenty of use out of for a while, but I could get closer to the proper taste by using fuwano flour and karon milk, and it went wonderfully with the steak and mashed chatchi.

For the side dish, I had made a sauté of giba bacon, aria, nanaar, and the pseudo-brown beech mushroom. In order to let the taste of the milk fat stand out, I hadn’t used any sort of sauce. It was rather heavy for an intermezzo, but I wanted to show off the giba bacon while also providing plenty of vegetables, which was how I ended up selecting the dish.

The soup I had prepared was a creamy stew with sausages and rib meat. The other ingredients I had added were aria, chatchi, nenon, and the pseudo-common mushroom, and I’d been able to make a nice béchamel sauce using milk fat, fuwano flour, and karon milk, which reminded me a lot of the flavor from back home.

As for the grains, I was offering not just the usual baked poitan, but also a pasta with meat sauce. I’d used plenty of minced giba, tarapa, and aria in the sauce, and then sprinkled grated gyama dried milk over the top. I had tried out all sorts of flavoring with the pasta, so this was a recipe I had some confidence in, along with the cream sauce version I had made. I had spent a lot of effort on developing tarapa sauces and wanted to try making ketchup later, so tarapa had ended up being one of the key weapons in my arsenal.

Lastly, for dessert Rimee Ruu had helped out by making a steamed pudding that used karon milk. The dish could be called a sweet chawanmushi, but since it was outside of my field of expertise I couldn’t judge whether or not it was worthy of the name. Still, it was undeniably tasty. There was kimyuus egg dissolved into the karon milk, and sugar, honey, and milk fat added flavor. After it had been steamed until it solidified, Rimee Ruu had added arow sauce on top at my suggestion.

The soft texture combined splendidly with the flavor of the karon milk, and if she had served it at the tea party for those noble ladies, it surely would have been received just as well as her chatchi mochi. Rimee Ruu had also surpassed me when it came to handling berries like arow at this point.

While we were preparing this dinner, the women from the other clans visiting the Fa house for the first time were taken aback by how luxurious the meal was. Since other clans would have had trouble preparing such elaborate dishes that used this many ingredients, I told them I would start giving them more practical lessons from tomorrow onward. But for today, I wanted to give my all for our guests.

“So this is that pasta stuff, huh? It’s definitely way tastier than that dish with the black fuwano from this afternoon!” Yumi skillfully dug into the pasta with a three-pronged spork.

Beside her, Telia Mas took hold of a plate of creamy stew and gave a sigh. “The karon milk soup we serve at our place is a simpler version of this dish, isn’t it? That recipe is pretty good too, of course, but it doesn’t compare to this.”

“The stew is delicious, right?! I love it!” Rimee Ruu happily chimed in, and Telia Mas smiled at her. It was clear from her tone just how much she had opened up to the older girl.

“This giba meat is grilled exquisitely too! You did a wonderful job drawing out the flavor of the ingredients!” Myme added, looking greatly satisfied. I really was honored to receive such praise from someone with a tongue as refined as hers. “You cooked it in a covered pan after grilling the surface, didn’t you? Even though it’s this thick, there aren’t any tough bits left at all, so you must have been quite thorough with your preparations.”

“Yeah. Nothing we have gets this tasty just from being grilled. It really is something else,” Yumi agreed with a smile. Though it was her first time meeting Myme, she was acting completely open around the girl. She was really showing off her social skills today. Yumi then turned toward Dora. “By the way, you sure have been awfully quiet. Are you enjoying what you’re eating that much?”

“Honestly, I was shocked by how delicious it is. Isn’t this bacon the same kind of thing as jerky?” Dora had been eating the bacon, vegetable, and mushroom sauté. “I don’t eat jerky all that often, but this is superb. Are folks who travel around always eating stuff that’s this delicious?”

“No, this was prepared in a way that prioritized taste over preservation. It might last about a month on the road, but it’s too expensive for that, so it’s not really something we can sell on its own,” I explained.

“I see. I don’t travel, myself, but I’d certainly like to see you use this in the food you sell at your stalls,” Dora said with a hearty chuckle.

Tara looked up from slurping his stew with a big smile of her own. “By the way, Kamyua and Leito still haven’t come back to Genos, have they?”

“Who are you talking about?” Yumi questioned, turning toward her.

“Huh? You don’t know him? You know, that tall blond guy who’s a bodyguard.”

“Oh, you mean that lanky old-timer who looks like a northerner? He helped Asuta out when he was in a real pinch, right?” I wondered which pinch she was talking about specifically for a moment, but then I remembered. When Tei Suun attacked me, Kamyua Yoshu had gotten between Ai Fa and Melfried at a critical moment. “So you know him too, Tara? Who’s this Leito, then?”

“Leito is a boy who lived at The Kimyuus’s Tail up until two years ago. He should have been eight or nine back then. Do you not remember him?” Telia Mas chimed in.

“Hmm...” Yumi pondered with a tilt of her head. “I didn’t go to the meetings two years ago, so I don’t think so.”

“I see. Anyway, Kamyua and Leito worked real hard to beat those bad nobles! Right, Asuta?” Tara said.

“Yeah. If Kamyua hadn’t worked with both the castle and the forest’s edge, it probably would have been real difficult to bring the crimes of the Suun clan and house of Turan to light.”

But rather than basking in the accolades for that accomplishment, Kamyua Yoshu had simply departed Genos after everything was settled. Thinking back, Marstein and Melfried worked for Genos, and the people of the forest’s edge did the same for their home, but it was an outsider like Kamyua Yoshu who had spurred them to action. It was a little late to be thinking it, but he truly was an unusual man.

“Speaking of traveling, that easterner will be coming back to Genos at some point too, right?” Mikel commented in an unusually heavy tone.

The only easterner he knew well enough to comment on was Shumiral, the leader of the merchant group known as the Silver Vase.

“Yeah,” I nodded. “He said he would return in half a year, so if things go smoothly, that should be in about two months.”

“Oh right, Shumiral was the one who introduced you to Asuta, wasn’t he?” Ludo Ruu said while stuffing his cheeks with mashed chatchi and steak. “And that was so you could help us expose the crimes of those nobles too. It’s strange to think about how that led to us eating dinner together now.”

It certainly was an unusual twist of fate.

Thinking about it, Yumi and Mikel didn’t know Kamyua Yoshu’s name, while Dora and Telia Mas hadn’t even known Shumiral existed. But along the way, our fates and the ties that bound us started getting entangled bit by bit, leading us here to the same place. Perhaps Kamyua Yoshu and Shumiral would form a connection with all of them eventually as well.

At least, that’s what I figured they were getting at. How it was so mysterious, the way people ended up coming together.

“You know, we’ve got people from all throughout Genos here,” Dora said to Mikel and Myme with an amused grin. “Tara and I are from the Daleim lands, you two are from the Turan lands, Yumi and Telia Mas come from the post town ruled by the house of Saturas, and everyone else is from the settlement at the forest’s edge. You’d just need somebody from the castle town to complete the set.”

“That’s true. Maybe someday we’ll be able to make that happen,” I said.

It would be hard to get a noble to come, but Yang and Roy lived in the castle town too. And they’d already broken with the way typical nobles would never show themselves in the post town, so maybe they’d eventually start to grow closer to the people around town if they kept it up. If that led to the societal borders separating us starting to crumble bit by bit, Genos would become an even nicer place to live.

“Hey Rimee Ruu, do you want to come to the Daleim lands again sometime?” Tara asked her young friend on the other side of Ludo Ruu, wearing a smile all the while.

“Yeah!” Rimee Ruu nodded back with a smile of her own. Then she looked up at her older brother, who was greedily devouring mashed chatchi. “You should come along too, Ludo! There’re all sorts of vegetables there, and it’s really interesting!”

“What’s so exciting about staring at vegetables? Well, I guess Dan Rutim said he had a really great time...” Ludo Ruu replied after gulping down a mouthful of chatchi. “I suppose I can discuss it with our old man and see if we can head there during the break period.”

“Huh?! That’s almost here already, isn’t it?!” Rimee Ruu exclaimed, placing her hands on her brother’s crossed legs and leaning forward. Mirroring her, Tara also leaned in.

With their intense gazes boring into his cheeks from both sides, Ludo Ruu hurriedly replied, “That’s right.” And then he turned toward me, “Hey Asuta, you guys will be going into town during that revival festival thing, right?”

“Huh? Yeah, that’s our plan.”

“I see. Normally, the people of the forest’s edge don’t visit town when that’s going on. Since there are so many outsiders pouring in during the festival, we pretty much just try to buy all the produce we need in advance and stay away until the silver month.”

I had already heard similarly from Ai Fa. Even without looking at how things went in Dabagg, it was obvious that while folks from outside of Genos had less reason to take exception to the people of the forest’s edge, they would probably still get nervous. And since it was a festival, there would be a lot of people cutting loose and drinking during the day, which made caution all the more necessary.

“Anyway, the Ruu clan will be on our break period soon, so I figure we should be able to offer some men to guard you again during the festival... And in that case, why not stop by the Daleim lands on the way back?”

“Yay!” two voices cheered in unison, and Ludo Ruu received hugs from the small figures on either side of him.

However, the young hunter paid them no heed and just kept on eating at the same pace. “Let me just say, if our old man is against it then that’ll be the end of the matter. And we have to make sure it works out for Dora too.”

“Ah, if anyone from the forest’s edge wants to come over, I’ll make it work out. It’s true that we’ll be real busy with work in the near future, but we can at least entertain guests,” Dora replied with a bright smile. “Still, I think that’s the first time you’ve called me by name, Ludo Ruu. It makes me happy to hear, somehow.”

“Hmm? I’ve got it memorized, so why would I not use your name? And you’re, um...Miyu?”

“Yumi! I’m Yumi, and this is Telia Mas!”

“What’s it matter if it’s Yumi or Miyu?”

“It matters a whole lot! You’ve got a cute face, but you can be a real clod!”

“Yeah, and you’re real noisy despite how seductive you look.”

Dora broke out in hearty laughter at that, and Telia Mas giggled. Rimee Ruu and Tara remained clinging to Ludo Ruu as they exchanged smiles, and Mikel and Myme quietly discussed my cooking.

After looking over to check in on each of them, I turned toward my clan head, who had remained silent all this time.

“Hey, Ai Fa.”

“Yes, this is delicious.”

“No, that’s not what I was gonna say...”

“Are you asking about the guards, then? I, of course, intend to accompany you to town. After all, I won’t be able to work as a hunter for the time being anyway.”

“I’m glad to hear it. But that’s not what I was going to say either...” I set down my plate and brought my mouth close to Ai Fa’s ear. “I’ve been a little worried since you’ve been so quiet. After all, you don’t really like it when things are this lively, right?”

Staring back at me out of the corner of her eye for a moment, Ai Fa then similarly brought her mouth in close. “Such worries are unnecessary. It’s true that I’m not fond of lively events...but right now, I feel happy.”

“Happy? Really?”

“Of course. Our clan is striving to bring prosperity to the forest’s edge. And you yourself said deepening our bonds with the townsfolk is important so that giba meat can be exchanged for coins, did you not?” Ai Fa very calmly stated. “Though I am not the kind of person to go out and forge such bonds myself, I always feel confident that the path we’ve chosen is the right one when I look at the delight on their faces. So of course I’m happy...”

“I see,” I replied with a sigh. A deep joy was filling me up inside. “It makes me feel that much better when I know you think the same as me, Ai Fa.”

My clan head pulled back and stared at me with an incredibly gentle gaze. “Once that revival festival begins, you’ll be even busier. But if you believe you are following the correct path, then you simply need to carry out your work.”

“Got it. Let’s both give it our all, Ai Fa.”

My clan head didn’t seem to be able to restrain herself from smiling as she nodded back. “Right.”

After burning that expression into my memory, I turned back toward the others. “The food will be gone before much longer, so I’d say it’s time to get the post-meal sweet ready. Rimee Ruu, could you lend me a hand?”

“Yeah!” the young chef energetically replied as she rose to her feet.

Tara clapped her hands together and said, “Yay!” When I said the sweet would be something new, Tara was the most excited about it.

Everyone else’s eyes were also shining with anticipation, and they all wore smiles. Dinner would be over soon, but the connection between us would last much longer. And I was sure they would be invited here to the forest’s edge countless times in the future.

On top of that, the sun god’s revival festival would begin soon. If the men ended up going to town as guards, I was sure it would lead to even more new bonds being forged.

Today was the tenth of the violet month. The sun god’s revival festival would begin in the back half of the month, so it would soon be here.