Cooking with Wild Game (LN) - Volume 3 - Chapter 4.3

3

Two hours passed without incident after that, and the four pots were nice and cooked. Roughly half the moisture had evaporated too, which was perfect.

Now, it was time to add in the tarapa sauce.

The inside of the pot was ever so slightly pink from the fruit wine, but in an instant the sauce turned the whole thing a deep red.

The aria had softened it, but the tarapa still had a strongly acidic smell, which soon filled the kitchen.

“Alright, now let’s add the poitan, too. Make sure you get the right amount, okay?”

We were adding 10 poitan per pot. Any more than that, and it would become too floury and ruin the texture.

We made cuts into the potato-esque poitan, then added them in one after another. And even with a low flame like this, they soon broke down and dissolved.

It really was a strange ingredient. It bore a resemblance to wheat flour, but it wasn’t as close as boar and giba meat, onion and aria, or tomato and tarapa. In other words, it was an ingredient I would never have tasted without coming here to this world.

There wasn’t anything exactly like it, and because of that I struggled and struggled with how to prepare it, and somehow I ended up feeling attached to it in the process.

As that thought ran through my head, the 10 poitan in my pot all dissolved without leaving a trace.

It had started off as a tomato red, but now it had shifted to something midway between pink and orange.

As I carefully stirred it, I fine tuned the taste with rock salt and pico leaves, and it was finally done.

It had cooked for two hours, so the chatchi ended up soft and crumbly all the way to the center. The tino and aria were so soft that you didn’t even need to chew, as they just melted in your mouth. And the giba meat... I had made it bite sized, but it didn’t have any toughness to it at all. The shoulder meat melted in your mouth, while the thigh meat just had a pleasing bit of chewiness left to it.

After tasting those various bits out, I combined them with the rather sour tarapa and bit down... and an exquisite deliciousness filled my mouth.

It certainly needed some time and effort, but it came out so well that it really may have been the peak of my current giba dishes.

Still, this wasn’t home cooking. It was an extravagant dish for a banquet.

Banquets are when you can partake in such luxurious dishes. And wedding banquets should overflow with as much joy as possible.

And if they needed the money to pull off such extravagance, the hunters had to be throwing themselves into their work with even more zeal than usual, right? Or at least, that was the concept I was working off of.

If my own efforts made it across to Gazraan Rutim and his family, that would be great.

“Alright, heat it for just a little longer, and then cut the flame. And I ask that each of you stir it so that it doesn’t burn.”

Ai Fa, Reina Ruu, Lala Ruu, and I each stood in front of one of the four stoves. And having been left out, Rimee Ruu just stood there staring straight at me. She wasn’t saying a word, but her big eyes were positively sparkling.

“Do you want to—”

“Taste test?! Yeah!”

She stole away the back half of my sentence, there.

I scooped up just a bit of the stew with a wooden spoon and lowered it down, where the adorable little girl was waiting with her mouth wide open. It seriously felt reminiscent of that night when I first met her, as I went ahead and moved the spoon on into her mouth.

“So... good...!” she mumbled, the food still filling her mouth.

Then, she started staring at me again.

Now that I think of it, she begged me for two bites back then, too.

Surely Rimee Ruu wouldn’t be greedy enough to demand a third bite, right? As I thought that I scooped up some thigh meat and chatchi this time around, only to get hit on the head from behind with a, “Hey! Don’t go spoiling that runt! There won’t be enough left for the banquet!”

“I won’t eat that much! Lala, you man-woman...”

“There, there...” I said, inserting the spoon into her wide open mouth.

Rimee Ruu’s expression practically melted as she bit down on the spoon, while Lala Ruu furrowed her brows.

“What the heck?! No fair! I’ve been holding back all this time!”

“Huh? You have been? As long as it’s just a taste test, it’s no problem giving you some. That’s the special privilege of those who man the stove, after all.”

“Why didn’t you say so sooner?! Rimee, you runt, give me that spoon!”

“Hmm? What should I do, I wonder?”

As I watched over this little quarrel, actually finding it kind of adorable, there was a tug on the sleeve of my t-shirt. It was Reina Ruu, carefully stirring the pot next to mine, but also shooting me a bashful look.

“Ah, I mean... Go ahead?”

In an instant, Reina Ruu’s face was positively sparkling.

I was overcome by a cozy, homely feeling, somehow.

Still, we could only take it this easy for now. Once the sun hit its peak this place would become a battlefield, so surely it would be fine enjoying the pleasant atmosphere for the time being.

“Does this finish up the work for the morning?” Ai Fa asked, speaking up for the first time in a while.

“That’s right,” I replied with a nod, and then she waved over Rimee Ruu.

“Well then, I shall return home temporarily. Rimee Ruu, could I ask you to take my place?”

“Yeah! But what are you heading back for?”

“I need to stir up the meat in the pantry. If I leave it for even a day, the pico leaves will go bad.”

I see. She still had to stir things back home too, huh?

“Hold on. I’m going to be open after this too, so I’ll join you.”

“Why?” Ai Fa asked, tilting her head a bit. “I should be perfectly capable of handling the task on my own. You should rest up.”

After saying that, Ai Fa wasted no time leaving the kitchen.

“Hmm... Does Ai Fa hate us?” Lala Ruu suddenly asked.

“Of course not,” I replied, denying the notion. “It certainly doesn’t look that way to me. Ai Fa just takes some time to open up to people, I think.”

“But I’ve never seen Ai Fa have a real conversation with anyone but Rimee or Granny Jiba. Even if she doesn’t hate us, she sure doesn’t seem to have any interest in us, right?” said Lala Ruu, sulking a bit. Maybe she actually wanted to get along with Ai Fa.

“Well, but... You all know about the incident where she was invited to marry into your family two years ago, right? Thanks to that, her relationship with Donda Ruu got really awkward, and she made a habit of keeping her distance from the Ruu clan, so maybe she just can’t break that?”

“But you talk to us like normal.”

“Right, but I’m just an idiot.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Apparently that was an accepted fact.

“But still, papa Donda won’t be asking her to marry into the family at this point, right? And she’s already getting along with Rimee and Granny Jiba, so she shouldn’t have any reason to avoid us. So she really just must not have any interest in us.”

“No, I’m telling you... It just takes her time to warm up to people.”

“Did it take time for you? No wait, do you actually get along?”

“Hmm, that’s a tough one!”

Putting aside the matter of whether or not we got along well, I couldn’t recall ever having much trouble knowing how to deal with Ai Fa. It felt like from real early on, we started talking to each other without any need to hold back.

But even if we were living together now like it was only natural, the idea was supposed to be that she was just looking after me for a while to make sure I didn’t cause any trouble. And yet, after about a week of living with her, I declared that I wanted to take down Donda Ruu and leave him speechless. For Ai Fa, that should have been a massive pain. And yet, she possessed the same level of enmity I had towards Donda Ruu, or perhaps even more, due to the frustration born of the man insulting my cooking.

Despite appearances, Ai Fa’s emotions had some serious swings, so I hadn’t found it to be all that strange, but now that I thought of it, she never showed any proper emotions in front of most others.

And... Ai Fa said she didn’t want me to go away.

Hmm... Yeah, this is no good...

I was getting the feeling that my relationship with Ai Fa wasn’t something that could be explained to others. And besides, I would just feel like I was betraying Ai Fa if I talked about stuff like that while she wasn’t around.

And so, I bowed my head and told Lala Ruu, “Sorry. I really don’t know after all.”

Lala Ruu gave a “Tch!” and turned to face her elder sister, who was still standing at a stove diagonal from the young girl.

“What do you think, Reina? You’ve hardly talked to Ai Fa too, right?”

I thought she would be troubled being asked such a question, but she rather quickly responded, “I still think that it would be best for Ai Fa to marry into our clan, even now.”

She just smiled when Lala Ruu asked “Why?” to the unexpected response, then she turned and looked at me.

“I mean, Rimee and Granny Jiba adore her so much, so I’m sure she must be a splendid person... And besides, if that happens, the Fa clan will become part of the Ruu clan, right?”

Hmm... Yeah, I was left feeling bewildered again.

I was glad that she was opening up, but since she was my age, unlike Rimee and Lala Ruu, Reina Ruu may have actually been kind of tricky to deal with.

At the very least, I couldn’t just earnestly say “thanks” to that.

“I’m fine either way,” Rimee Ruu said cheerfully while trying her hardest to stir the contents of the pot with the stick entrusted to her by Ai Fa. “Even if they’re not family or under us, I still love Ai Fa and Asuta! It would be even nicer if their house was at least a little closer, though!”

This was why I adored Rimee Ruu.

I hoped that she could keep on smiling around Ai Fa forever.

“If you can get along with someone, then you’re bound to naturally do so eventually,” I said to Lala Ruu, cutting the conversation off in a neutral and inoffensive manner.