Cooking with Wild Game (LN) - Volume 21 - Chapter 2.1

Chapter 2: The Day of the Sun’s Peak

1

It was now the twenty-fifth of the violet month, the day before the day of the sun’s peak, and just like with the day of dawn, we were swamped with prep work. At least we had our experience from last time to draw upon, which made the planning phase much less of a mental strain. Once all the tasks we needed to complete were divvied up, I just had to trust that the hardworking people of the forest’s edge would get it all done. And my expectations were fully met, with everyone taking care of their assignments in near silence. As a result, we were able to head to the Daleim lands a whole hour earlier than last time.

We had even more people who would be staying over than before, since Jiba Ruu would be joining us, along with three hunters to guard her. Yumi would also be joining us from the post town.

I was worried that our numbers would be enough to push Dora’s house past capacity, but he and Tara were the ones who had invited Granny Jiba to begin with. Dora had told us with a smile that he would make the dining and guest rooms work out.

Since the number of participants from the forest’s edge had increased to twelve, we had been forced to add another wagon to the equation. And as for the specific chefs we were bringing, Reina Ruu had been swapped in to replace Toor Deen, but the rest of our lineup remained the same. Yun Sudra had also managed to persuade her clan head to let her join us, but since Granny Jiba would be attending this time, she had yielded her spot to the members of the Ruu clan.

And so, the group heading to Dora’s house in the Daleim lands consisted of Rimee Ruu, Lala Ruu, Reina Ruu, Ai Fa, Ludo Ruu, Shin Ruu, Dan Rutim, and me, plus Granny Jiba and the additional guards protecting her, Jiza Ruu, Gazraan Rutim, and Giran Ririn.

Though the number of guards had been reduced by half from when we were in the post town, I could still sense Donda Ruu’s ardor to protect his grandmother in how he had included his eldest son, Jiza Ruu, in the list. Or perhaps it was simply that he wanted Jiza Ruu to experience more of the world, as the young man would one day succeed him as leading clan head. I suspected that the intent behind including Gazraan Rutim, who had always been an innovative thinker, and Giran Ririn, with his recently expanded interest in the outside world, was something along those lines as well.

“The town of Genos is surprisingly interesting. I’m really looking forward to tonight and tomorrow morning,” Giran Ririn remarked with a smile before getting into the wagon at the Ruu settlement. Until just recently, he apparently hadn’t visited the post town at any point in the past half-year, but these last few trips with us seemed to have given him something of a taste for it. In particular, the performances of the Gamley Troupe had really stoked his curiosity.

Once we were ready, we headed straight for the Daleim lands. Since we were visiting earlier in the day this time around, dusk hadn’t fallen yet. The sun was gently setting over the vast, idyllic fields of the Daleim lands.

I could still spy people working out there in the fields. One of them must have been Dora, since his shop would have closed for the day a while ago. Apparently, there would be no time to rest until the day before the day of the downfall finished out the year, at which point they would have harvested all the vegetables they could and the people of the Daleim lands would finally be able to take a break.

It would be important to make arrangements in advance for purchasing any vegetables we’d need during that period. Supposedly, things would quiet down a good bit after the festival finally wrapped up around halfway through the silver month, so that was when we would finally be able to catch our breath. Until then, though, we would be toiling like workhorses.

Because of our early arrival, the men weren’t present when we arrived at Dora’s house. Instead we were greeted by Tara, Yumi, and three women.

“We’ve been waiting for you, Asuta! I’m looking forward to joining in on your lessons later!” Yumi greeted us energetically, ignoring the residents of the house. Something was different about her today. Her normal attire was a skirt and a top that only covered the upper part of her chest, but now she was wearing an outfit that ran all the way down her body, and she had her long hair tied up in a ponytail. “Oh, my clothes? Since I’m visiting someone at their house, I figured I should dress a bit more modestly.”

The women of the forest’s edge also used semitransparent veils and shawls to partially conceal their skin when going into town. Yumi had probably changed her clothes for a similar reason. I had never really thought about it, but now I wondered if the way she usually showed so much skin was like some sort of punk fashion.

“We’re getting things ready now. Please, come in.”

The wives of Dora and his eldest son greeted us with smiles, just the same as last time. Also the same as last time was the way Dora’s mother regarded us with a displeased look on her face. Meanwhile, Granny Jiba had emerged from our wagon, supported by Reina and Ludo Ruu.

“I’m sorry for imposing upon you today. I’m just some old bag of bones from the Ruu clan who goes by the name Jiba Ruu...”

“My, thank you for coming all this way. Please feel free to rest for a while in one of our rooms until dinner.”

“No... If you do not mind, I would like to spend as much time talking with you as I can...” Granny Jiba replied, but the two wives would be holed up in the kitchen with us. That just left Dora’s mother, who hadn’t opened her heart to the people of the forest’s edge yet, and Tara.

At least the younger of the two was enthusiastic about the idea. Tara nodded and said, “Yeah! You can talk to us, Granny Jiba! Do you have to work, Rimee Ruu?”

“No, I don’t, since we’ve got Reina here today! Right...?” Rimee Ruu asked, and received a kind smile from her older sister.

“Lala’s here too, so we’ll be fine. You don’t mind, do you Jiza?”

“Hmm.” Jiza Ruu nodded with the intense expression of a hunter on his face as he glanced over our surroundings. “In that case, Ludo and I...and the two from the Rutim will remain in the same room.”

The plan was likely that there should always be three hunters with Granny Jiba and one for each of the other women. Even here in Daleim, where it was highly unlikely any outlaws would try anything, Jiza Ruu still wasn’t letting his guard down in the least.

“All right, we’ll be borrowing your stove now.”

The remaining members of our group walked across the main hall and headed to the kitchen. The reason we had come early was so we could teach the women of Dora’s house how to make condiments. We three chefs entered the kitchen with Ai Fa, while Shin Ruu stood outside the entrance and Giran Ririn kept watch around the house.

The two wives of the household and Yumi would be the ones getting taught. While Yumi could already produce a fair number of condiments, she still wanted to participate in order to reinforce what she had already learned, and hopefully pick up something new as well.

“Let’s start with the preparations for Worcestershire sauce and ketchup, since those take more time to make. Do we have aria, tarapa, and myamuu on hand?”

“Yes. These tarapa aren’t the prettiest, but they shouldn’t taste any different.”

The plan was that we would be using ingredients from Dora’s household where possible, and I would provide anything extra that was needed. This way, they wouldn’t be wasting their money if nothing turned out to be to their taste. It would also let us show our gratitude to them for inviting us over.

“Please start by mincing the aria and myamuu as finely as possible. Then cut up the tarapa coarsely and boil them.”

With each condiment, I used all sorts of ingredients to create the desired flavor, but considering I didn’t exactly have a notepad on hand, it was difficult to convey every detail with precision. As such, I had made an effort to simplify the recipes as much as I could manage.

“All right, now put some of the aria and tarapa in this small pot and the rest in that one, along with the myamuu, and let them both simmer. The one with the myamuu will become the ketchup, so give it more of the tarapa. For the ketchup, you’ll want to add salt, sugar, pico leaves, and chitt seeds. For those last two, you can take them from the stuff that we brought with us.”

Pico leaves cost money in town, and apparently Dora’s family didn’t buy them often, so we had brought some from the Fa house.

“Ooh, so those are chitt seeds? They smell like they’re really spicy.”

“Yeah, they definitely are, so you just want to use a pinch. They cost one red coin for twenty of them.”

A twenty-centimeter-long stalk of myamuu cost the same amount, so chitt seeds weren’t really all that expensive. Dora’s family would easily be able to purchase some for themselves.

“Then just let it simmer for a while. Don’t put a lid over it; we want the moisture to boil off. In the meantime, I’ll show you how to make mayonnaise.”

You didn’t need a stove to prepare this one. It just involved stirring kimyuus egg yolk and white mamaria vinegar together with salt and pico leaves, then adding some reten oil bit by bit.

Since white mamaria vinegar from Banarm was a bit pricey, I had tried making it with red mamaria vinegar instead, but since the red variety had more of a balsamic sort of flavor, I felt like it wouldn’t quite pair right with okonomiyaki or cutlets, though it would probably be good in salads and the like.

“My, even without cooking it over a flame, it’s still thickening and turning sticky.”

“Right. As soon as it gets thick enough, it’s done. Why don’t you give it a try?”

I chopped up the leftover aria and tino in order to prepare an improvised vegetable salad. After adding a bit of mayonnaise, I had everyone take a bite, at which point I heard someone remark in surprise, “My, even though raw tino is generally lacking in flavor, this is quite delicious.”

“Yeah. I find that fresh vegetables complement meat dishes rather well. But when I’m just eating raw vegetables, I usually have them with a light dressing instead.”

Considering the occasion, I decided to have them try that too. By blending tau oil, mamaria vinegar, and reten oil, then adding salt and pico leaves for taste, I could put together a pretty decent dressing. I added the reten oil bit by bit while stirring until it emulsified, which would be easy to remember, as it was the same process as with the mayonnaise.

If you added sugar or myamuu, you could create wildly different flavors to enjoy. Since Dora’s family adored vegetables so much, I figured that showing them techniques to make raw vegetables even tastier would make them really happy.

“Now then, how about I show you an interesting way to use mayonnaise?” I said. I boiled a kimyuus egg, then added finely chopped aria and mayonnaise in order to make a tartar sauce. “This goes well with meat dishes and should be tasty if you spread it on baked poitan as well.”

Yumi was greatly pleased by this one. “Hey, doesn’t it seem like adding a thin slice of giba meat on top of baked poitan and spreading this on top would make a nice little meal?”

“Yeah, that does sound pretty good. And you wouldn’t have to spend much on ingredients if you used only a single slice of meat.”

“Uh-huh! That would be a great dish to sell at our place! After all, we sometimes have people come in who are so poor they can’t even afford our okonomiyaki.”

“It’s a wonderful way to use kimyuus eggs as well, isn’t it?” Dora’s wife remarked, sounding impressed.

Then, his son’s wife leaned forward from beside her. “The only ways to use kimyuus eggs that I’ve heard about before this were cooking them to use in place of meat or boiling them in a pot. It feels kind of extravagant, using them to enhance other dishes.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard something like that from a couple of the innkeepers I know. Still, as an ingredient in mayonnaise and tartar sauce, it’s not half bad, right?” I said.

“I certainly can’t think of anything to complain about. In fact, it’s making me want to raise more kimyuus so we can get some extra eggs.”

The two wives looked even happier than usual, and I was so relieved that this condiment lesson didn’t end up just being a waste of their time.

After that, I prepared a tau oil-based sauce for grilled meats, which concluded the first half of the proceedings.

“All right, how about we work on dinner until the pots are done simmering over there? You’ll be making okonomiyaki, right, Yumi?”

“Yeah! It’ll be my gift to everyone here!”

Since there were already two pots on the stove, I used some charcoal to light the braziers I had brought along myself. Reina Ruu and the others heated up the white mamaria wine stew they had prepared on one of them, while I placed a steel plate on top of another and entrusted it to Yumi. Then I placed a wire mesh over the last one so I could grill some meat directly.

Hopefully, they wouldn’t think of this as me cutting corners, but the only thing I had prepared for today was giba meat seasoned with salt and pico leaves. The reason was that I wanted them to try it with the condiments we had prepared today. I had brought a variety of cuts, such as sirloin, tenderloin, thigh meat, and the spare ribs that Dan Rutim had unsurprisingly requested.

As we worked, it steadily grew darker outside the window. The ketchup and Worcestershire sauce finished simmering when we were about eighty percent done with our cooking, and Dora and the other men finally returned home.

“What a delicious smell! I’m glad I got good and hungry before coming home!” Dora called out from the entrance, and I could also hear Dan Rutim giving a hearty chuckle. There were some clattering sounds too, which must have been additional chairs being brought in. “Hey, Asuta, I’m sorry, but could you make enough for one more?”

“Hey, Dora. Sounds like you were working hard out there. I planned on making extra to begin with, so it shouldn’t be any issue, but who exactly will be joining us?”

“Well, I happened to be talking to Granny Mishil, asking her to bring over some chatchi and gigo, and I ended up inviting her to come over.”

Granny Mishil was a woman who sold us vegetables that Dora’s shop didn’t have. We had known her for quite some time. Naturally, I didn’t have any objections.

“We’ll be ready soon, so please hold on for just a moment... Lala Ruu, how are the pots looking?”

“They’ve both boiled down to just about half their original volume. I’ll grill the rest of the meat, so why don’t you finish things up over there, Asuta?” Lala Ruu said, then with a deadly serious look in her eyes she added, “I swear I won’t burn it.” She must have been steeling herself for the upcoming trip to the castle town. Feeling grateful to her and acknowledging her enthusiasm, I set about finalizing the ketchup and Worcestershire sauce.

“For the ketchup, we’ll finish it up by adding mamaria vinegar and boiling it until it’s back to this volume. If the taste feels lacking, you can adjust it with salt and pico leaves.”

“I see. It looks like that tarapa should be wonderfully viscous and delicious now. Also, it smells the same as that Napolitan dish you made before.”

“For the Worcestershire sauce, now we add tau oil and mamaria vinegar. You only need half as much vinegar as tau oil for this one. This sauce has a strong flavor, so fine-tuning it is tricky, but there shouldn’t be much need to.”

“Hmm. It certainly has a powerful aroma. It’s even making me feel a touch dizzy.”

“Yeah. But once it’s cooled down, that scent should ease up too.”

With both of those sauces finished, I put aside enough of each for the night’s dinner, then sealed the rest in containers. Filtering it would make it feel smoother on the tongue, but the type of cloth needed for that would be fairly expensive, so I omitted that step this time.

“Okay, let’s carry the food out. And please make sure to give the condiments a try during dinner.”

With that, we all got to work carrying the dishes out to the two large tables in the main hall, which now had a number of extra chairs set up in the space between them. Around one of the tables sat the people who had remained in the hall earlier, plus Granny Mishil, while the men who had been working the fields sat around the other. The members of Dora’s household and the people of the forest’s edge were mostly sitting separately from each other.

Though I hesitated to choose, I ended up sitting at the table with Granny Jiba. Ai Fa automatically took the seat next to me, and then the two wives of the household joined us to fill the rest of the seats.

It was an unusual experience, being seated at the same table as Jiza Ruu. Still, he had a peaceful expression on his face, and nothing seemed out of place with him.

Reina Ruu and Yumi, meanwhile, sat at Dora’s table, bringing the total number of people currently seated around the room up to twenty-one. For those of us seated in the chairs between the tables like Ai Fa and myself, it felt like our backs would bump up against the folks from the other table. The hall was filled with heat from the people and dishes present.

“Thanks for your hard work, everyone. And Mishil, it’s been a while,” I said with a smile, but only got an unfriendly grunt back. Despite that, nowadays Granny Mishil always gave our orders top priority, just like Dora did. That meant she was someone I owed a great debt to.

She looked to be a bit older than Dora’s mother, around seventy or so. She was a short and rather slender old woman, but she seemed just as hale and hearty as always. As stubborn as always too. She had treated the people of the forest’s edge pretty harshly in the beginning, but as someone who had been raised never knowing his own grandmother, I was secretly quite fond of her.

With Granny Mishil and Granny Jiba present, alongside Dora’s mother, the average age at this table had to be pretty high. Even after counting the youngest members of the group, Rimee Ruu and Tara, the number would still be way up there.

“Anyway, let’s dig in before all this food gets cold! Good work today, everyone!” Dora energetically called out, and the people of the forest’s edge began their premeal chant.

Spread out across the two tables, we had an even more elaborate meal than last time. We had prepared charcoal-grilled giba, fresh salad, and the various condiments. The Ruu clan had made their stew that used white mamaria wine, Yumi had her okonomiyaki, and Dora’s family had also made soup and some side dishes. With this much food, we had a real feast on our hands.

“Wow. It’s like a mountain of raw vegetables. What should we put on it?”

“I don’t think there are any wrong choices here, but my recommendation would be to go for the dressing in that small bottle or the mayonnaise on that wooden plate first. The sauce and ketchup wouldn’t be bad either, though, so please feel free to try all of them and see how they compare to one another,” I said.

The raw vegetable salad contained not only tino, but also shredded aria and nenon. It was a dish that had become a standard fixture at the Fa house.

“This sauce here should pair best with the grilled meat. But I like the Worcestershire sauce too, myself.”

“Oh, for the okonomiyaki you should go with Worcestershire sauce and mayonnaise! But ketchup isn’t half bad either!” Yumi chimed in.

“The okonomiyaki is this poitan with tino and meat, isn’t it? Mmm. We’ve only ever cooked our poitan with aria.”

“Dora, this is giba rib meat! Even you old folks should learn how delicious giba meat is!” Dan Rutim called out.

As one might expect from having twenty-one people present, it really was incredibly noisy. And so, after giving the bare minimum explanation necessary, I just went ahead and enjoyed the dishes.

At the same time, I stole a glance over in Granny Jiba’s direction, and found Rimee Ruu smiling as she cut up the meat and vegetables in the stew. I had offered in advance to prepare some hamburger steak, but the elder had declined, saying, “I want to eat the same thing as everyone else.”

Well, Granny Jiba was able to eat Yumi’s okonomiyaki without needing it to be softened up by soaking it in something, so she would surely be able to handle everything aside from the grilled meat and salad I had prepared. And considering the occasion, I hoped she would fill her stomach with as much of the food prepared by Dora’s wives as possible.

Dora’s family had prepared a soup using karon milk; a sauté of kimyuus meat, aria, and nenon in milk fat; finely diced boiled vegetables; and the tino cores pickled in salt that they had served last time around.

The boiled vegetables were the most novel of those to me. The dish used finely cut aria, tino, and nenon, which were then boiled until soft. Then they were coated in a sauce made from dried kiki, which reminded me of umeboshi.

“We added just a tiny bit of tau oil to that one. It didn’t seem to make much of a difference, though.”

“No, I would say it helped to draw out the flavor a bit. It’s very delicious.”

Dried kiki sauce on its own would be too sour, but just adding water would dull the flavor. Their dish had the perfect balance of tau oil to water, and it was even tastier after eating the strongly fatty giba meat.

The karon milk soup also used a ton of vegetables, with just a bit of karon leg meat to accompany it. Despite the fact that they only got a minimal amount of broth from those ingredients, and even though the only seasonings they used were salt and sugar, I didn’t see any real glaring issues with the dish. If this was the average level for home cooking, Milano and Telia Mas really must have struggled to provide food worth selling at their inn with their skill level.

“Are you not going to eat any giba meat?” I heard Granny Mishil ask over the noise of the crowd.

Dora’s mother was seated next to her. Granny Mishil was probably around ten years her senior, but the two of them seemed kind of similar to each other.

“You certainly seem to be gulping it down without a care in the world.”

“Of course I am. Giba meat goes for even more than kimyuus and karon nowadays, so it would be a waste not to eat it,” Granny Mishil replied as she coated some skewered giba sirloin with ketchup, then bit into it with some effort. “Well, it’s not like I don’t understand where you’re coming from. Back at the start, I wondered if the stuff was even edible.”

“But now you look like you’re really enjoying it...”

“That’s because I learned how tasty it was, thanks to that granddaughter of yours,” Granny Mishil stated bluntly, at which point Tara turned their way with a smile from over in her seat beside Rimee Ruu.

“Yeah, you looked really scared to try it at first, Granny Mishil! But you were happy when you found out your veggies were being used to make something so good, right?”

Granny Mishil snorted, “Hmph,” but she didn’t say anything to refute that fact. However, she did shoot a glare at me instead.

“You know, you don’t need to trouble yourself over old folks like us.”

“Huh? Why do you say that?”

“We’ve lived for decades fearing and hating giba and you people of the forest’s edge. So there’s no need for you to act all respectful toward us.”

“Hey, what are you going on about now, Granny Mishil?” Dora interjected from the neighboring table.

Granny Mishil took a slurp of white mamaria wine stew, then continued, “Just leave us be and we’ll kick the bucket before long. In another ten or twenty years, all of our souls will have been summoned to the western god’s side. In my case, it’d be a real feat to make it another five years. So what do you care if old-timers like us hate you?”

“I don’t agree,” I replied, sitting up straight as Granny Mishil frowned at me in displeasure.

“Well, you should. If all the old-timers who hate you people of the forest’s edge die off, then nobody will stand in your way, right? As long as everything’s as you’ve been saying and nobody else causes any trouble, no more folks will come to hate or fear you. What more could you want?”

“What I want is for the citizens of Genos and the people of the forest’s edge to be good neighbors.”

I wasn’t a leading clan head or anything, so it was presumptuous of me to say so. But still, she was staring intently right at me, so I had to offer my personal response as Asuta of the Fa clan to Granny Mishil, a vegetable seller from the Daleim lands.

“I’m sure this won’t sound very convincing coming from someone as young as me, but...the way I see it, the future is made by adding up everything in the present. I don’t believe you can just ignore the present we’re living in now while hoping for a bright future and expect it to actually come.”

“You sure know how to pompously run your mouth...”

“Sorry. But that’s how I truly feel... And I can’t say where I’ll be in ten or twenty years, myself.”

“That’s right! We hunters don’t know when we may perish out in the forest, so we can never take tomorrow for granted,” Dan Rutim heartily declared while holding up a container of fruit wine. “Besides, it’s not even all that much trouble when you’re right here in front of us now! No matter how much we may wish for it, we can’t form bonds with people who haven’t been born yet! Whatever happens a decade or two from now, we’ll just have to let our children and grandchildren take care of it!”

“You’re so loud. It hurts my ears.”

“Sorry about that! If you dislike me because of it, though, then that’s my fault alone! I don’t mind if you do, but don’t go hating all of us people of the forest’s edge, all right?” Dan Rutim said with a hearty chuckle, leaning forward over the table. “But without actually exchanging words like this, you can’t truly come to like or hate me, right? And it’s the same with giba meat! If it’s tasty, you can eat it, and if it’s bad, you can avoid it. But I don’t see how it can be proper to say you won’t ever eat something without even giving it a try first. And I believe people should try their hardest to follow the proper path through life!”

It was a fitting way of putting things for Dan Rutim, and it also aligned surprisingly well with my own feelings. At any rate, I just wanted everyone to have a good understanding of what sort of folks the people of the forest’s edge really were. If we reached that point and the townsfolk still feared or hated them, well, there was nothing I could do about that. I mean, if neither side was able to see eye to eye, there was no way anyone could just force things to work out. But I was always thinking about how to get the townsfolk to know the people of the forest’s edge better and vice versa, so that we could eventually arrive at the most accurate conclusion possible.

“I also once thought I didn’t care what happened to me...” Granny Jiba now quietly joined in. “I felt it was my children, grandchildren, and so on who would determine the future of the forest’s edge, and regardless of how much I thought about things, it would never have any impact... But a precious friend of mine made me realize that even an old bag of bones like myself is still one of the many people living in this world right now...”

Without even thinking, I glanced over at Ai Fa. If my memory wasn’t mistaken, she had told Granny Jiba something to that effect several months back.

My clan head was pursing her lips and staring straight at Granny Jiba’s face.

“I couldn’t stand the fact that I was living here in this land... I felt that our home was the black forest, and when it was destroyed, we should have gone along with it... To be even more blunt, I hated the lord of Genos for forcing this harsh lifestyle on our people...”

Not a single person present said a word.

With a terribly clear gaze, Granny Jiba looked out over everyone and smiled.

“Still, the lord and people of Genos must have hated us too, as we were nothing but a problem foisted upon them... Letting that hatred drag on for eighty long years... Well, do you really think it’s acceptable to push that onto our children and grandchildren?”

Her words were met with no response.

“Of course, all I can do is watch over those children and grandchildren of mine as they strive their hardest... Still, I too want to try just as hard as they are as I watch over them, until the moment my soul returns to the forest...”

“Hmph. Well, you can certainly gab about it for long enough,” Granny Mishil cut in. Her eyes had narrowed quite a bit, but then they turned toward Tara and Rimee Ruu, who were huddled together. “These little girls are so close they’re practically sisters...so I suppose we’re not that different in terms of wanting something more.”

Granny Jiba smiled silently.

Meanwhile, at the neighboring table, Dora’s mother and uncle were unsurprisingly glaring at the giba dishes in front of them.

“Well, just go ahead and live as you please. That’s what I’ll be doing.” With that, Granny Mishil bit into Yumi’s okonomiyaki. Though she spoke abusively, she was eating nothing but giba dishes, and she always tried to make it as convenient as possible for us to do business with her. That was the path that she had chosen of her own volition.

Ultimately, Dora’s mother and uncle gave our giba dishes little more than the odd nibble here and there, but I wasn’t particularly upset about that. I just felt that next time I came to Dora’s house, I wanted to prepare dishes that they would enjoy a whole lot more.