Cooking with Wild Game (LN) - Volume 8 - Chapter 4.1

Chapter 4: The Journeying Friend and the Thrifty Girl

1

I officially entered into my contract with The Sledgehammer three days later, on the 22nd of the blue month.

After work, I met with Kamyua Yoshu to once again discuss the matter of totos ownership, after which I went ahead and asked about the culinary lifestyle of travelers, which I had been interested in for a while now.

“Hmm. Honestly, we keep things pretty plain when it comes to food. After all, whenever it takes more than a day to travel between towns, you’ve got to fill your stomach with portable rations. And I may have mentioned this before, but the jerky sold in the post town is the prime example of that sort of stuff.”

We were currently in the restaurant portion of The Kimyuus’s Tail.

Ludo Ruu stood beside me as a bodyguard, while Kamyua Yoshu was accompanied by his apprentice, Leito.

“The most common and cheap way to handle things is to boil poitan in water, then mix in dried aria and jerky. Folks with a bit more to spend will add in rock salt and herbs, but well, you can probably still guess at how that tastes. Even the cheapest meals here in the post town are better than that.”

“Huh, boiled poitan, aria, and jerky, is it...? If that aria and meat were fresh, that’d be the exact same as the giba stew eaten at the forest’s edge,” Ludo Ruu chimed in as he leaned against the wall rather than sitting in a chair. Kamyua Yoshu turned and shot him his usual smile.

“I’m sure that’s because your ancestors learned how to make that from the townsfolk. Otherwise, I doubt the people of the forest’s edge would have any way of knowing how much of which vegetable to eat in order to live healthy lives. After all, they didn’t ever have a chance to buy such things before coming to live here.”

“I see. And so, aria and poitan became staple foods at the forest’s edge because they were the cheapest and most nutritious. Now that you mention it, that makes sense,” I said.

With a joyful nod, Kamyua Yoshu replied, “Right? If people eat the proper amount of aria, poitan, and meat, then they’ll be healthy. And since they’re cheaper than other veggies, there’s no reason to argue. It’s not just travelers who eat dried aria and jerky mixed into poitan broth regularly, though. Soldiers do, too.”

“Soldiers?”

“Yeah, not the town guards, but the soldiers who go out and fight on battlefields. Of course, the noble officers likely all stay safe and sound in their fortresses gobbling down delicious food.”

I just let Kamyua Yoshu’s joking around wash over me and muttered, “I see...”

“Still, why are you interested in how travelers eat, Asuta? You’re not planning on leaving Genos and heading off for Jagar or Sym, are you?”

“Of course not. It’s just that some Sym merchants are going to be purchasing giba jerky from me soon, and I was wondering how it would be eaten.”

“Hmm? Then why not ask them directly? Folks from the east and south may treat portable rations differently, after all.”

“Ah, no, they won’t be eating it personally. They’re planning on selling it as they travel. And so, the ones actually buying and eating it will be westerners, which is why I wanted to hear your opinion.”

With that, Kamyua Yoshu clapped his hands together and said, “Oh, I see! So it’s a case of resale, is it? It’s true that the further you get from Genos the less prejudice you’ll find against giba meat, so they may well be able to do good business like that.”

“Is that so? But now that I think about it, they’ll be buying it for the same price as karon jerky. So if they’re selling it elsewhere, they’ll of course have to do it for a higher price. Will that really sell?”

“I don’t think you need to worry about that. Both karon and kimyuus are cheap here in Genos. In towns without big farms, meat costs go way up.”

I see, I thought to myself.

It was a bit frustrating to admit, but the more I asked, the more useful information I heard. Apparently Kamyua Yoshu was a good bit more informed than most, seeing how he spent over half of each year traveling around.

“Karon and kimyuus are raised on farms, aren’t they? Is that why the price stays so stable?”

“That’s right. Though the neighboring town of Dabaag is the one that’s famous for its big karon farms. Still, it’s close enough that you can get there in half a day by totos, so a massive amount of meat shows up here in Genos every day... Though all you can get here in the post town is karon leg meat.”

“Huh? Really?”

“Yup. The softer and tastier torso meat pretty much all gets bought up by the castle town. And so, the karon meat you can buy in the post town is pretty darn cheap.”

I couldn’t exactly just ignore that statement.

“Sorry, but in that case, does that mean all the karon jerky sold in the post town is made with leg meat, too?”

“Yeah, I’d say so. After all, only travelers and soldiers eat the stuff. So I’m pretty sure they just use the front legs, too, which are even cheaper and worse tasting than the hind legs. Why are you asking, though...? You’ve got a really serious look on your face for some reason.”

“Ah, no, it’s just that I’ve been using giba rib meat at the stalls lately... In other words, I’ve been making the jerky from meat that comes from around the chest. Leg and shoulder meat has a lot less fat, so I figured that’d taste way worse when it was made into jerky.”

So why was it still selling poorly, then?

Perhaps seeing how much I was brooding over the matter, Kamyua Yoshu started stroking his chin.

“It’s true that the giba jerky you gave us before tasted a whole lot better than the stuff sold in the post town. However, the travelers who buy jerky aren’t really thinking about taste, y’know? After all, they’re just going to soak it in poitan broth when they eat anyway, so that’ll completely override any fine differences in terms of taste.”

“Then what about keeping poitan that’s been made into a flour on hand? Then they would be able to eat baked poitan wherever they went. And then they could boil up jerky and dried aria in plain water and it’d taste much better, wouldn’t you say?”

“Yeah, that’s a wonderful idea. But the people of the forest’s edge are the only ones who know how to make poitan into flour and then bake it up like fuwano, right?”

“Ah, that’s true. Then if we spread that technique throughout the post town...”

“Ah, I don’t know that that’s such a good idea, Asuta,” Kamyua Yoshu chimed in, his tone shifting just a bit as his usual aloof smile gave way to an incredibly calm, mature-looking grin. “Currently, you sell giba meat in the post town. And if you move 100 or 200 meals, that much less karon and kimyuus meat sells as a result. So why do you think you’ve been able to keep on doing business without anyone interfering?”

“Why...? Isn’t it because the townsfolk are afraid of the people of the forest’s edge?”

“I don’t think that’s it. Like I said before, the ones selling meat in town are the folks from Dabaag. People selling meals from stalls may well get annoyed if their sales dropped, too, but most of the folks running those are inn proprietresses and the like, trying to earn a bit extra for their families. And so, even if they had to close up shop, they wouldn’t exactly be left out on the street.”

“Right...”

“Similarly, the folks from Dabaag shouldn’t be suffering serious enough losses to raise a fuss. After all, they don’t just do business with Genos, and sell dozens of the animals each and every day. Plus, it’s just been the cheaper leg meat that’s selling less. However... I’d say you should be a bit more careful when it comes to poitan.”

My eyes must have been saying, “Why’s that?” as Kamyua Yoshu placed one elbow on the wooden table and gently smiled.

“That’s because the ones who cultivate fuwano are the folks from the castle town. The townsfolk of the post town raise the cheaper poitan, while they handle the more expensive fuwano. And if folks around town learn how delicious poitan can be and stop eating fuwano entirely, some nobles with farms to the north will end up suffering heavy losses. You can imagine how dangerous that could be, right?”

“Well, it’s not as if I don’t get that, but...”

“Ah, it’s not like I’m saying you absolutely can’t. I’m just saying that it’d be dangerous to try something like that now, when you’re trying to reforge your bonds with the folks from the castle. At the very least, though, I’d like you to keep in mind that that delicious way of preparing poitan could act as a blade pointed towards the nobles.”

I didn’t know what I should think about that.

“In order to keep on living, sometimes you need a blade. But if you make a mistake about when to use it, you can end up wounding your allies, too. So you should be careful when it comes to handling it,” Kamyua Yoshu stated, once more breaking out in a wide grin.