Cooking with Wild Game (LN) - Volume 3 - Chapter 4.4

4

And then, the battle began.

The sun had passed its peak at last.

“Well then, we’ll be following the plan I discussed yesterday, so Tito Min Ruu’s group will be cutting meat, Reina Ruu’s group will be dicing aria, and Mia Lea Ruu’s group will be baking poitan.”

There were 11 women gathered in the main Ruu house, roughly half of the total women in the Ruu settlement. I asked those 11 women to split into three groups and each carry out their own tasks.

The group of five including Granny Tito Min and Vina Ruu were to cut the meat meant for the steak and hamburgers.

The group of four including Reina and Rimee Ruu were to dice the aria for the hamburgers.

Mia Lea and Lala Ruu were to just keep on baking poitan using the outdoor stoves.

Sati Lea Ruu was meeting with other women from the branch families with young children, to take turns watching them while baking poitan as well.

After all, there were going to be 100 people attending. Plus, many of the men ate double what the women did.

By my basic calculations, that meant we needed to prepare 150 people’s worth of meat and poitan.

There would be a reasonable amount of soup to eat too, but I didn’t know how the meat would end up getting divided, and I couldn’t allocate out the poitan in halves, either. And besides, I heard it was customary to put out so much food that it couldn’t all be eaten when it came to such banquets, so I decided not to count the amount used for the stew.

Even though the people of the forest’s edge lived poor yet honorable lives, banquets were still special occasions. In that case, I had to prepare as much as I could. That’s how I arrived at the figure of 150 people’s worth of food.

It would be 500 grams of meat for one person, so 75 kilos.

Poitan were two per person, so 300.

That was how much I decided to prepare.

Furthermore, I tasked the second biggest house after the main house with making a more modest new dish: stir-fried vegetables. And even disregarding the stew, this needed three aria per person, meaning it would use up 450.

The aria had shrunk quite a bit after being heated and then fried, and it sure didn’t seem like it would be all that appetizing all on its own. And so I chose some other vegetables that would fry up well, the cabbage-esque tino and bell pepper-like pula, and made up some stir-fried vegetables to accompany the steak and hamburgers.

But still, even if three aria of stir-fried vegetables per person was plenty, I was nervous about having the stew as the only dish of that sort, so I went ahead and added a soup using those same three vegetables and giba meat. For that, I just used around one aria per serving.

Of course, the soup used giba meat, and so did the meat dishes and stew, so all told I had to be using over 120 kilos.

By some basic calculations, that meant each woman would get 800 grams, while each man would have 1.6 kilograms of meat, which should be plenty, I thought.

And so, this was the complete menu:

–Giba steak (thigh, roast, spare rib)

–Giba hamburgers

–Tarapa and giba meat stew, with abundant vegetable blend

–Baked poitan with gigo mixed in

–Three-vegetable stir fry

–Giba soup with three vegetable varieties

That was what I ultimately settled on, having been entrusted with the stove for this wedding banquet.

The menu was already filled with rather heavy dishes, so I was thinking of adding cold giba shabu-shabu or something. But I somehow got the feeling that it may not be suited to a banquet for hunters, and when I asked the members of the Rutim clan about it, they said they preferred warm stuff to cold, so I figured this was good enough.

As a digression, I also proposed removing the rib meat from the bones, but Dan Rutim firmly stated, “You can’t!” in a full-force refusal. “Isn’t it tastier biting it right off the bone?!”

I was thinking it would be a real issue if anyone threw as much of a fit as Dan Rutim did on that night, but then he added, “If there’s any left over, I’ll eat it all!” so apparently that was an unnecessary concern.

Still, over these past five days, the people of the Ruu settlement had already come around to seeing giba torso as such fine meat that it would be a shame to just throw it away. The women from the branch families who studied under me and helped with my research all happily took the spare meat back to their families, where they succeeded in shattering the men’s preconceived notions.

And of course as representative of the reformists, Gazraan Rutim was doing much the same with the giba he caught, so there was no need to worry about the Rutim.

Plus, from the way that Ai Fa had no concept of torso meat being “mundt feed,” that must have been an opinion unique to powerful families like the Ruu and Rutim.

There were 100 people amongst the seven clans under the Ruu, but the only one on the same scale as the Ruu and Rutim was the Lea clan, while the Min and Maam had fallen quite a bit, and the Ririn and Muufa were smaller still. And so, I didn’t think there should be any problem there.

“If those Lea folks won’t eat it, then I will!” Dan Rutim shouted.

In other words, one per person may turn out not to be enough.

So as a result, I went with 150 spare ribs. That was the least I could do out of consideration for my client’s father.

Well, at any rate, by the time the sun hit its peak, the Ruu settlement was already shifting into a battlefield.

◇

“Asuta! We’re done dicing the aria!”

“Ooh, that was quick! Then this time, I’m counting on you to mince!”

“Mince! Got it!”

Rimee Ruu cut through the meat, her knife-handling in no way falling short of that of her mother and elder sisters.

This time around, I decided to go with 200 gram-sized hamburgers.

That made them plenty big enough to be eaten alongside steak, and besides, some of the men may avoid them. Right now the only sample I had to go on was the main Ruu house, and two of the four men there rejected it, so I had to be prepared for half of the men total to do the same.

And so, I came up with a new plan.

If someone didn’t like the soft meat of the hamburger, I hoped to win them back by giving them the suggestion to steep the grilled meat in soup.

That was one of the discoveries my experimentation led to.

On the second day of my experiments, I was firmly resolved to make hamburgers for dinner in order to fulfill my promise to Ai Fa, but I just didn’t feel right with the idea of splitting the menu between the men and the women.

Experimentation is experimentation, and dinner is dinner. And with dinner, I figured you really should have the whole family eating the same food.

What I came up with then was soup and hamburger.

Everyone was free to add their hamburger to their soup. Then I explained that if they did, it would crumble and they could eat it like that.

Even if they said they preferred tough meat, that only applied when they ate it on its own, as they had always eaten such crumbly meat that had been overcooked over a strong flame in their giba stew.

It was definitely something of a desperation measure, but none of the men of the main house raised any complaints.

When I gave it a try myself, I found the savoriness of the hamburger meat contributed to the soup, making for a rather nice flavor. And so, I decided using this method for the banquet made sense, too.

For the sake of the folks who wanted to eat the hamburger as is, I had prepared the fruit wine sauce to be added afterwards. I would be providing that during the banquet as well.

In this way, my menu for the banquet was steadily perfected through the dinners at the Ruu house.

Now then, let’s get back to the story at hand.

At the Fa house, I had to mix in a large amount of diced aria, but at the Ruu settlement there were plenty of pots, so I didn’t need to worry about where the aria went. And so, for the 200 gram hamburgers, I went with 1/4th of an aria per each. That was about the ratio that we used back at the Tsurumi Restaurant.

Now then, I was making 200 gram sized hamburgers for 100 people, and wanted to make 20 extra to account for screw ups in the cooking process, so that meant 30 diced aria.

“We’ll fry the aria here. Ai Fa, light up one of the stoves.”

Ai Fa nodded, then lit a fire in the nearest stove using lana leaves.

Ai Fa’s presence had become rather inconspicuous once the women had gathered, but she was still offering some serious support from the background. She couldn’t wield a kitchen knife as skillfully as the women I had taught, so she was mostly helping out with assorted tasks like this and carrying goods. Transporting massive amounts of food from the pantry, returning things there once they were prepared, carrying heavy pots, refilling water jugs... That was the sort of tiresome work Ai Fa was carrying out all on her own.

“Thank you. You’ve seriously been a huge help,” I stealthily whispered into her ear. Ai Fa tilted her head a bit, and then drew close to my ear, too.

“I believe that if food is to be served for a Rutim banquet, it should be created by those related to the clan. In that case, this role suits me best.”

I cocked my head a bit, then whispered into her ear once again, “That may be so, but I’m not related to them, right?”

With that Ai Fa tilted her head again, then drew closer once more.

“You’re just carrying out a job for which you were paid, are you not? Do not confuse your position for my own.”

As we repeated that back and forth, Rimee Ruu stopped enthusiastically preparing meat and turned to ask, “What are you guys whispering about?”

“Ah, it was a secret strategy meeting.”

“Huh?! No fair! I want to do it, too!”

“That was a lie. We were just chatting. The only reason we were whispering was so that we wouldn’t pester everyone else,” I said with a smile. Then, I met eyes with Reina Ruu, who was staring at me from the side.

Something really did seem off with her. I mean, she shouldn’t have any reason to be looking so miserable just because Ai Fa and I were talking a bit in secret.

I couldn’t help but feel a little gloomy as I spun some fat around the heated pot and then added the diced aria.

Reina Ruu really was a fine girl all around. She wasn’t two-faced. She was simply innocent, and kind, and a good learner. On top of that, she was blessed with stunning looks. To be honest, having such a charming, wonderful girl have such feelings of affection towards me was even harder than dealing with Vina Ruu coming on to me.

I had no intention of searching for a lover in this world, and if someone were to steal my heart even so... It wouldn’t be Reina or Vina Ruu. I was sure of that much.

“...Are you not adding any fruit wine?” Ai Fa asked, snapping me back to my senses.

“Gah, right! Sorry, Ai Fa, but—” I started, only for a container of fruit wine to be thrust in front of my face.

“That was the first time I saw you look like you were going to mess up cooking something,” Ai Fa whispered into my ear with a laugh as I hurriedly poured the fruit wine over the already golden brown aria.

Just what sort of face had I been making to get that sort of reaction?!

Before I could confirm that, Lala Ruu shouted, “Ai Fa, could I get some more poitan?!” and Ai Fa disappeared from view.

Damn! I must have looked lame there! I thought to myself as I transferred the fried aria to a bowl with a handmade flat spoon.

Then, when I looked up... I found Reina Ruu still shooting me a melancholy look as she continued to carefully prepare meat.