Cooking with Wild Game (LN) - Volume 20 - Chapter 4.3

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“Well then, let’s head on back to the forest’s edge.”

The whole roast giba had all been eaten by the townsfolk before the lower first hour arrived, without so much as a scrap remaining. Though I had wanted to enjoy the festive atmosphere a little longer, we would be visiting the post town again in the evening and needed to finish our preparations beforehand. Besides, we got to take in the celebratory ambience on our way back to The Kimyuus’s Tail.

Just as Dora’s older son had said, our part of the stall area really did seem to be the most lively, but all of the stalls spread out beside the street still had folks gathered around them. When we arrived at the inn area after getting past all that, we found that the streets there were even more packed.

Most of the inns had chairs and tables set up outside, where folks were making merry. Grilled kimyuus meat was being brought out to them constantly from the inns’ kitchens. I couldn’t even begin to hazard a guess as to how many kimyuus had been slaughtered for today.

A red flag which I didn’t usually see was being displayed on the fronts of the inns. Was that another one of the townsfolk’s customs for celebrating the sun god? At any rate, the aroma of grilled meat and fruit wine filled the streets, and it felt as if the whole town was intoxicated.

Thanks to the overwhelming commotion, we didn’t actually attract that much attention, pulling our three stalls and two wagons. But since we had seven hunters with blades accompanying us, it was only natural that we did get at least a few nervous looks. We even saw a couple people who stopped and stared in shock, looking like they were about to drop their fruit wine at any moment.

Amid all that, we did have a moment of tension when some kids running around through the crowd almost bumped into Jiza Ruu. The eldest Ruu son dodged out of their way before that could happen, of course, but one of the children was so surprised by the hunter’s agility that he got completely distracted and kind of just kept going on momentum until he tumbled to the ground.

Jiza Ruu looked down upon the child with narrowed eyes, seemingly still smiling even when he actually wasn’t. However, being over 180 centimeters tall with a muscular build and wearing a hunter’s cloak made from a giba pelt, he must have looked as intimidating to that child sitting there in the dirt as the strongman, Doga, did to me. I could see it on his face; the kid was clearly terrified. But just before he broke down sobbing, Ludo Ruu scooped him up from behind.

“You need to be careful to watch where you’re going when you’re running around like that. If a totos kicked you or something, you could have gotten seriously hurt.”

The boy’s teary eyes turned to focus on Ludo Ruu. The youngest son of the Ruu was grinning widely, as always, and rustled the child’s hair. “Boys shouldn’t cry over something like this. Are you hurt anywhere?”

“Ah, he scraped his knee. It’s bleeding a bit,” Lala Ruu remarked, having left her stall to lean over in front of the child.

Just then, a middle-aged woman came running on over after pushing her way through the crowd.

“U-U-Um, that’s my child, so...”

“I see. It looks like he hurt his knee, so you should treat it before it gets any worse,” Ludo Ruu said, smiling at the woman. Even if the young Ruu hunter was a man of the forest’s edge, his grin was always wonderfully charming. The woman ended up giving him a teary smile in return, her face still pale as she scooped up her son. “And you guys, if you want to play tag, you should pick a place that’s more open,” Ludo Ruu called out to the other children standing about, and they all broke out in bashful smiles.

As I breathed a sigh of relief, we resumed pushing the stalls. Ludo Ruu just strolled along with his hands together behind his head, while Jiza Ruu seemed to be staring at his younger brother.

“Wow, the Mas family’s inn is really busy too!” Rimee Ruu exclaimed as we approached The Kimyuus’s Tail. I wasn’t used to hearing them called the Mas family, but, well, she wasn’t wrong. To Rimee Ruu and the others, it was probably the westerners who didn’t have family names who were the strange ones.

At any rate, The Kimyuus’s Tail certainly did seem to be bustling. Various inns around the post town had been tasked with serving the kimyuus meat and fruit wine distributed by the castle, not including the ones with owners who were too lazy to bother with all that work. There were tables and chairs set up in front of the participating inns, where most of the customers were enjoying themselves while drinking wine.

“So, you all already gave away all your giba meat? Good work!” one familiar pot seller called out to us. Seated beside him was the cloth dealer. They were acquaintances of Dora’s whom I had been introduced to way back when I first opened my stall for business, making them some of my oldest regulars. “That whole roast giba really was incredibly delicious! I only had a single slice, since I didn’t want to cheat anyone else out of it, but I could have easily filled my belly completely with that stuff!”

“Thank you. I hope we’ll see you again on the day of the sun’s peak.”

“Of course you will! Ah, good work to you all from the Ruu clan too!”

Our regulars understood the fact that after a certain point, the Ruu clan had branched off from the Fa to open their own business. Reina Ruu and the rest of them answered the man’s greeting with smiles of their own.

“Ah, Asuta and Reina Ruu, good work,” Telia Mas chimed in with a smile as she carried food out of her family’s inn. Unsurprisingly, she had whole roast kimyuus atop a large wooden plate, and the salty-sweet aroma of tau oil and myamuu was wafting off it.

At stalls like Yumi’s, they had just whole roast kimyuus pickled in salt, but it seemed the inns were all using their own particular tricks. Naturally, they had to pay for the ingredients used, but if it meant they stood out more, it was sure to attract additional business. The fruit wine they were handing out in cups seemed to be cut with fruit juice.

“We just had a customer from Jagar ask if we were serving any giba meat. Apparently, they’re offering both kimyuus and giba at The Great Southern Tree.”

“Huh? They’re serving the giba without charge, right?”

“That’s correct. Apparently, things are really bustling over there, thanks to that.”

By serving giba meat for free like we had done, The Great Southern Tree must have been planning to draw attention to itself. Naudis really was a step ahead of everyone else when it came to business dealings.

“My apologies, but could you just leave the stalls out in front of the storehouse? We’ll handle them when we get a chance,” Telia Mas directed us.

“Got it. Well then, we’ll see you again in the evening.”

After that, we returned the stalls, then headed straight for the settlement at the forest’s edge.

We made it back just a little before the lower first hour rolled around, but our long day was only just beginning. From now until night fell, we had to focus entirely on handling the prep work for the meals we would be selling from our stalls and delivering to the inns.

For the duration of the revival festival, we would be splitting up and rotating who handled the cooking for the inns. Today, the Fa clan was taking care of The Sledgehammer, while the Ruu were in charge of The Kimyuus’s Tail and The Great Southern Tree. We had planned things out so that our groups would alternate between being in charge of one inn or two. It took a fair bit of effort to handle all three together, so my plan was to keep up this rotation until the revival festival ended.

At any rate, we quickly got to work.

For The Sledgehammer, that meant preparing 60 servings of the giba sauté arrabbiata, then for the stalls we would be making 160 poitan wraps, 200 giba and nanaar carbonara, and 120 of the daily special, tarapa stew. Then, in whatever time we had left over, we needed to work on making more curry base and pasta too.

But, well, among those dishes, the poitan wraps and giba and nanaar carbonara were prepared on-site, so it would all work out. Baking the poitan was left to the chefs who had remained here, and we had already made the sauce for the poitan wraps yesterday. Since pasta took some time to prepare, we were keeping those dishes at the usual number, while raising the poitan wraps and daily specials by twenty meals each.

Also, the tarapa stew was an Italian-styled dish. The Ruu clan were preparing giba hot pot stew and myamuu giba for today, so there was no worry about overloading our menu with tarapa. With that in mind, I wanted to go with a dish that really centered around the stuff.

For the base, I used a revision of the tarapa sauce recipe we had been making for a long time, with aria and myamuu finely chopped and sautéed in reten oil, which was then stewed together with tarapa and fruit wine, and finally the taste was adjusted with salt and pico leaves. For a bit of subtle seasoning, I added tau oil and sugar, as well as an herb from Sym that seemed rather close to basil.

As for the meat, I used rib meat and thigh meat, sixty grams each, cut into large chunks. After adding salt and pico leaves for a base seasoning, I grilled just the surfaces, then boiled them fully in the sauce afterward.

For vegetables, I went with aria, tino, nenon, ro’hyoi, ma pula, and chan, a variety just as lavish as the teriyaki meat stew. Also, once it was served up on a plate, we would add grated gyama dried milk on top.

I had been diligently building up experience with tarapa-based dishes ever since I had prepared that stew for the Rutim banquet way back when and first opened my stall serving giba burgers. It was the vegetable I was most familiar with, in all my experience using unfamiliar tools and ingredients, and all the trial and error I’d gone through.

Reina and Sheera Ruu had come up with a wonderful dish using tarapa sauce as a base—their teriyaki meat stew. That had spurred me on with a craving to create the absolute best tarapa dish I could prepare at the moment too.

I figured that even if some customers had stew or giba burgers from the Ruu clan the following day, it would still be completely satisfying for them, so I held nothing back in making a dish I could feel proud of.

Personally, I felt that Reina and Sheera Ruu were just as important as Myme and Varkas for me to keep an eye on. I hoped that we could all have a friendly rivalry, spurring one another forward to make the greatest dishes we could. With that wish firmly in mind, I once again gave my all to handling the day’s work.

“You look like you’re enjoying yourself, Asuta...” Ai Fa said as I boiled the contents of a pot. As she didn’t have anything to do but help carry stuff, she had been seated next to the stove for a while now, just staring at me as I worked.

“Yeah, of course I am. Why do you bring it up?”

“No particular reason. Just giving voice to a thought that crossed my mind.”

I figured she might have been lamenting her inability to work as a hunter right now, but her eyes seemed surprisingly gentle. I couldn’t help but notice my heart had started pounding just from looking at her.

“You sort of look like you’re enjoying yourself too, Ai Fa.”

“Hmm? If my clan member is happy, then so am I. That much should go without saying at this point.”

As the sunlight shone down on her, filtered through the trees, her golden hair sparkled. I seemed like Ai Fa’s charms had grown even stronger since last night, and I was starting to get worked up. However, it was a blissful, warm sensation causing me to feel that way inside.