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“We give thanks for the blessings of the forest...” Donda Ruu stated.
Apparently even if it was a big banquet, they still kicked things off with the usual ritual rather than a special one.
“We offer our gratitude to Mia Lea, Vina, Reina, Ai Fa, and Asuta, who manned the flame and gave us our life for this night...”
Everyone chanted along, but I’m sure Dan Rutim must have been boiling on the inside. I couldn’t imagine that rage would dissipate so easily, no matter what was being said.
No, if I was going to have him acknowledge the value of this meal, it would have to be by having him actually taste it.
Today’s menu consisted of giba steak, giba stew, and baked poitan.
The steak came in three varieties: leg meat, ribs, and shoulder roast.
The soup was light on meat, but used three types of vegetables, including aria.
The poitan were served as they had been in the Ruu house for the past however many days, with a large serving meant for everyone piled up on three big plates. They actually looked more like lightly colored hotcakes than okonomiyaki. They must have each been made with the two poitan you needed to eat each day, and the men were eating between two and four of them.
Now then...
I was interested in everyone’s reactions, but first up I needed to check how it tasted myself.
I started off by picking up the spare rib.
I ran a metal skewer I had borrowed from the Ruu house through it then supported the bone with my other hand, and finally bit into the piping hot meat. It was well done, so there wasn’t a lot of meat juice and a good bit of the fat had cooked off, too. Ribs had a layer of fat overlapping them to start with, though, so it was still pretty juicy even after grilling it so thoroughly. And you could just bite into the familiar pork ribs rather than having to slice it into thin bits, which made for an explosive flavor.
The fatty parts were soft, while the meat itself was a little tough. When I filled my mouth with both at the same time, it made for a truly pleasing texture and chewiness.
And since I was a big fan of pork ribs in both the usual and the Okinawan style, I couldn’t get enough of the flavor.
Yup, this turned out well.
After giving my jaw a break with some baked poitan, I moved on to the shoulder roast. It looked like it had a good bit of fat to it, too. However, it was more of a cohesive lump than meat taken off the rib, giving it some serious chewiness. And it was 2.5 centimeters thick, too.
As I chewed away, a smooth, delicious flavor filled my mouth.
A good bit of the meat juices had flowed out while cooking this one too, but the fat was all still trapped inside, so it wasn’t dry in the least.
It made me want to scream out, “Meat! Yes, this is real meat!”
Heck, it was enough that it would probably make someone with a bit of a weak stomach wince.
I thought it was pretty darn delicious, though... But eating it made me feel a bit like my jaw was going to give out.
Next up I had my fill of giba soup, which Mia Lea Ruu poured for me. Following her suggestion, this batch had the tino and pula added to it. I had already given it a taste test, but tino was a vegetable that looked like a rose made out of lettuce. It was ever so slightly leafy but had hardly any flavor, with its main benefit being how enjoyable of a texture it provided. That texture was actually closer to cabbage than lettuce. It got mushier as it heated up, but in exchange the soup seeped into it, making for a pretty exquisite flavor. At the very least, it wouldn’t lose out to those pseudo-onions, the aria.
On the other hand, pula was a vegetable with a rather strong bitterness to it. It was shaped like a fleshy ginkgo leaf and was about the size of one, too. In terms of color, it was a deep green. At first I was a little uncertain about it, but now that I tasted the result, the unique bitterness added a rather nice accent to the dish. And even after being heated up, it didn’t get all that mushy. It was cut pretty thin, but it still had some real snap to it. It was a pretty fresh flavor for me, but if I had to compare it to a vegetable I was familiar with, I’d probably have to choose bell peppers.
At any rate, the flavor of the giba soup had clearly improved. It really gained a greater depth, after adding a variety of vegetables to the dish.
Still, this soup got its main flavor from the stock made out of giba meat, so if you added vegetables that didn’t pair well, it definitely would have wrecked the taste. The power of a mom sure was impressive, being able to manage all this despite being from a world that hardly paid attention to flavor. I mean, the success of the dish was all down to Mia Lea Ruu’s efforts.
Now then, with this, I had sampled most of the menu. All that was left was the leg meat.
It was a pretty formidable foe for me, but if I didn’t take a bite I would never get anywhere. I screwed up my courage, and then sunk my teeth into the lump of meat.
In that very moment, a shout filled the room.
“W-What is this?!” the voice called out, clearly from someone who had lost control of themselves. And that someone just happened to be Dan Rutim.
He had frozen in place, still holding the spare rib in his hands. There was fat smeared all around his big old mouth.
“Hey, you! Just what in the world is this meat?!”
His wide-open eyes were staring straight at me.
While thinking to myself, Well, guess he couldn’t wait till he finished eating to share his impressions... I went ahead and replied, “As I said, it’s giba rib meat.” Then I decided to tease him a bit and added, “Is there something up with it?”
“Ugh...” he let slip, his moist lips trembling. “...It’s delicious!” he yelled out, then took another emphatic bite of meat. It almost looked like he was going to bite all the way down to the bone. “It’s so good! This meat is amazing! But why? Why would giba ribs taste so fantastic...? They’re supposed to be nothing but mundt feed!”
“It’s not mundt feed. In my country there was an animal that greatly resembled a giba, and we used all parts of it when cooking.”
“B-But a giba’s torso is supposed to stink so bad you can’t eat it...!”
“That’s just because you didn’t know the proper technique for preparing it... Or perhaps I should say because you didn’t have the need to learn it. The people of the forest’s edge haven’t solely been hunting giba for food, after all.”
I hadn’t been planning on giving a lecture in the middle of dinner like this, but well, my jaw was feeling awful tired, so this worked out just fine.
“The giba population won’t be impacted even if you kill fifty of them a day, making them a terrifying pest. The people of the forest’s edge have continued to hunt them at the risk of their lives, to protect the fields of the western kingdom. And as a result, you ended up with a surplus of meat, right? And so your people just discard the giba torso into the forest for the mundt, as it’s a pain to prepare and more easily retains a giba’s stench. Those actions may be completely natural, but... Every part of the giba is delicious. I prepared this meal so that all of you would understand that fact.”
Dan Rutim’s face looked like that of a sleepwalker as he listened to my words while tearing away at the meat. Meanwhile, Donda Ruu sat silently by his side, just chewing his meat as if he couldn’t hear a word I was saying.
Everyone else reacted in their own way, too.
Rimee Ruu was chewing away and satisfying her appetite as she watched me, while Jiza Ruu was probably quietly looking back and forth between me and the clan heads. I just couldn’t tell for sure, because his eyes were so narrow.
Reina Ruu was staring at me intently while helping Granny Jiba, sure enough, the wives were happily eating away while pretending not to notice Dan Rutim’s astonishment.
Gazraan Rutim and Ama Min merited special mention from amongst the group. They were also eating in silence, but occasionally they would glance at each other and quietly share a little smile. Ah, they sure looked happy.
And as for Ai Fa... She was staring pointedly at Donda Ruu while chewing away at her meat.
“Head of the Rutim clan, Dan Rutim... How about trying some of the leg meat?” I threw out there, feeling like an idiot being the only one talking while everyone else remained silent.
“I’ll give it a try. Ooh, this is great, too!” Dan Rutim said with a nod.
I secretly thought to myself that with his shiny head and round belly, he looked sort of like a big baby.
“That leg meat doesn’t stink for the same reason. With giba meat, if you perform something called bloodletting, you can get rid of most of the stench. So it’s possible to make a delicious meal with just leg meat, but I hope that today will teach you how delicious other parts of the giba can be.”
“It’s good! It’s really, really good! This stuff with the bone is my favorite! But the leg meat’s fantastic too!”
He was like a completely different person compared to how he was before eating. I mean, he was just being so earnest that it was actually making me feel a bit embarrassed.
“It also makes sense to just bring back the legs with you if you lack the manpower to carry back a giba’s massive frame whole. But at least to me, when a big family like the Ruu here bring back a whole giba each time to skin and then throw away everything but the legs, it feels like a real waste.”
“My clan brings them back, too! We... We’ve been just giving something this delicious to the mundt...?!”
Hmm... It really was tough dealing with someone being this earnest.
“Anyway, as long as they perform bloodletting when they capture it and then dissect it appropriately after peeling the pelt, anyone can prepare meat this delicious. It certainly isn’t anything difficult. I mean, if a rookie can manage this much, then anyone should be able to, if they put their mind—”
“What need is there to go through all that extra effort?” Donda Ruu finally interrupted. Amazingly, he had apparently finished eating all his meat in this brief period of time. I’d still just taken a bite or two out of the ribs and roast... “Such things are pointless to the act of partaking in a giba’s life force. Us hunters have no use for such things,” he continued in a frighteningly calm voice.
I was shocked to see that man was able to speak in a quiet tone... Actually, looking around, his whole family looked surprised, too. Rimee and Ludo Ruu kept passionately chowing away even so, but pretty much everyone else had stopped in their tracks.
That was just how unusual the situation was.
And so... we’d finally reached the critical junction.
“...That may be so, for the sake of just living.”
I could feel the moist sweat clinging to my back.
This time around, the taste of my cooking alone wouldn’t be enough. No, to satisfy this man, I needed to use words, too.
To be honest, it was a real heavy burden for a mere chef in training. But even so, I needed to do it, for the sake of the girl sitting beside me with a fire in her eyes, too.
“A life of just eating and sleeping would make you no different from a wild animal... But that’s not how you people live. No, the people of the forest’s edge work for the sake of living, and support their family, and find happiness in that. That lifestyle is completely different from how people lived back in my old country, but at their core... I don’t think there’s all that great of a difference.”
“Hmph. What are you prattling on about, kid? Are you trying to deceive not just my family but me as well with that tongue of yours, which is even more skilled than your hands?”
“I’m not that skilled at all, actually. In fact, to be honest, I still have a long way to go. And I had no intention of deceiving your family, either.”
I looked around at everyone present. At the twelve members of the Ruu clan, the two of the Rutim, and the one Min clan girl. And at Ai Fa.
Everyone but Ai Fa looked worried about what was about to happen.
What was coming next was a fight. Then, an apology, followed by mutual understanding. At least, that’s what I thought.
“I didn’t trick your family. I just wanted them to experience the joy of eating something delicious. At first it was just about Jiba Ruu, but Rimee Ruu praised my cooking and called it tasty, so I wanted to feed all of you something good... I grew conceited, I think.”
Donda Ruu didn’t say a word.
“As a result, I received a great number of blessings. For that, I’m truly grateful. But... on the other hand, I ended up resenting those of you who didn’t praise me. I especially hated you, Donda Ruu, for ridiculing my cooking like you did. So to be honest, I had made that request to man the stove again in order to get back at you.”
“I was already plenty aware of that. You don’t need to go on about it at length.”
“Please allow me to do so anyway. The words are nearly the same, but this time I can speak them from the heart.”
With that, I uncrossed my legs and got into the same deep bow I had made three days prior.
“As an inexperienced chef, I served you, the head of the Ruu clan, food that may well have ate away at your hunter’s soul. For that, I would like to once again offer my apologies.”
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