Cooking with Wild Game (LN) - Volume 16 - Chapter 4.2

2

It was now sunset, at the lower sixth hour. In the room nearest to the kitchen, we were gathered to eat our dinner before the guests would be having theirs.

There were two large oblong tables, with fifteen of us seated around them: seven chefs from the post town and four from the castle town, as well as the four hunters guarding us now that the man from the Sauti clan had arrived. Though the majority of those present were people of the forest’s edge, Varkas’s group showed no signs of being intimidated.

The all-important food was waiting on a neighboring table for its time to shine. There was a huge variety of dishes, but many of them wouldn’t taste as good if they got cold, so quite a few were currently covered by lids and being kept warm over a charcoal heater.

“Since our faces were covered in the kitchen, allow me to at least introduce everyone by name,” Varkas stated in a calm tone, wearing some sort of vague expression on his face, like before. “This is Tatumai, who coordinates my cooking assistants.”

The tall older man with dark skin bowed his head. Around half of his long black hair had gone white, and he wore it tied off behind his head. He looked overly skinny, his eyes were black, and his deeply wrinkled face didn’t show any expression whatsoever. His skin was just as dark as the people of the forest’s edge, so maybe he really did have some Sym heritage.

“Next to him is Shilly Rou.”

This one was a short, slender woman.

She had her long dark-brown hair pulled up, her eyes were reddish brown, and her skin was the general shade I had seen from westerners. She was probably a pure-blooded citizen of Selva. Ah, and she looked to be around my age. The force of will I could see in her eyes was especially striking.

“Continuing down the line, you lastly have Bozl. They are all my pupils, who I will one day entrust with the kitchen of The Silver Star.”

That man who had spent nearly the whole day working in the smoking room was every bit as big as Dan Rutim. On top of that, he looked to be a southerner. He had stiff dark-brown hair and a mustache, large wide-open green eyes, and white skin that looked a bit sunburned. The stern look about his face reminded me of a former regular of mine, Aldas the construction worker. Though southerners tended to be short, you still sometimes saw really big guys from Jagar.

“Now then, let us go ahead and give this cooking a try before it gets cold. I hope that you will pardon us for being unable to provide a satisfactory amount.”

“Even just a single bite is enough for a taste test, so no worries.”

After the people of the forest’s edge said their pre-meal chant, we set about serving the dishes.

First up came the appetizer. When the wooden plate with the unusual dish atop it was placed in front of him, Dan Rutim loudly proclaimed, “Ooh! So this one uses raw fish, does it?! I never even imagined the day would come when I would eat something like this!”

“Right. I hope that it’s to your liking.”

What I had prepared was a carpaccio using that char-like fish. It was accompanied by parboiled ro’hyoi and raw aria, and had a dressing overtop. The dressing was something I had prepared specifically for this dish too. Its base was mamaria vinegar and reten oil, to which I added pico leaves, myamuu, juice from a lemon-like sheel, stingingly spicy chitt seeds, and an herb from Sym that was similar to a bay leaf.

Ro’hyoi was spicier and more bitter than the arugula I was familiar with, but parboiling it made it a lot easier to eat. I had sliced the fish into pieces thin enough to be about half a bite each.

Naturally, there was no custom of eating raw meat at the forest’s edge, so even though Ai Fa and the members of the Ruu clan didn’t complain when I had them try some test samples, they didn’t seem happy about it either.

The amount of food on the plate was just a meager serving, though.

“Hmm, it certainly has an unusual taste.”

The members of the guard group didn’t need to wait for the dish from Varkas’s side, and they all scarfed down the appetizer in a single bite. The hunter from the Sauti who had showed up around sunset alongside Dari Sauti was furrowing his brow as he chewed on the fish.

“Our appetizer is a fish-based recipe as well.”

Varkas had personally served up his dish, though solely to the chefs present.

When I saw it, my eyes opened wide. Atop the clay plate that was roughly the size of my palm sat a truly modest-looking dish.

“Normally, there would be nine of these per person. Since there are seven of you, I was only able to prepare one for each person.”

“I see. Well, that’s no issue at all.”

It really was a mysterious dish. It consisted of a thin one-square-centimeter chip, atop which sat a little dollop of an apricot-colored paste.

The chip was likely made by stretching fuwano dough out thin and then baking it. It looked to only be around one or two millimeters thick. Since he had called this a fish recipe, that paste must have been minced fish...but at a glance, it just looked like a transparent, glistening jam to me. I thought I could see some kind of tiny seeds mixed into it too.

“Well then, let’s dig in.”

It might have been bad manners, but I went ahead and picked the appetizer up with my hand and took a bite. Even though it was only a small portion, a truly complex flavor and aroma spread throughout my mouth.

“So, you used raw fish for your appetizer too, huh?”

“Yes. I finely diced a rillione fish and then kneaded it together with tau oil, reten oil, arow fruit, and sarfaal herbs. The fuwano bread below it contains karon milk fat and panam honey.”

Rillione must have been that char-like fish I had also used. As for sarfaal, it was undoubtedly an herb that was similar to mustard. It wasn’t all that spicy, so he must have used it without adding any additional liquid. Still, that mustard-like scent was clearly at the core of the aroma. Then he mixed in the saltiness from the tau oil and the sourness from the arow, as well as reten oil to give it a smooth texture.

I thought that the crispy fuwano chip was perfectly fine too. There were no issues with the taste from the milk fat or honey, and it was a similar taste and texture to a sweet pie crust.

However, what sat atop it was a fish paste. Though it was a much simpler taste than the dish using herbs and karon milk that I had tried out before, it was still definitely a combination I never would have personally considered.

“I decided on this dish when I heard you were using raw rillione for your appetizer, Sir Asuta,” Varkas calmly stated. “Fish are not eaten in Banarm either, so such cuisine should likely seem quite novel to them. Still, even if they have a custom of eating raw karon, they may well avoid the thought of doing the same with raw fish. Normally, I would think a cooked fish would be most fitting for the appetizer.”

“Huh? Then why did you go with this recipe, Varkas?”

“As I said, it was because I heard you had chosen a raw fish offering, Sir Asuta. But if two chefs were to present similar-looking dishes simultaneously, the guests from Banarm could end up mistaking that for the custom in Genos.”

After being taken aback for a moment, I bowed my head and said, “Sorry for that.”

“You have nothing to apologize for. I made the decision to do so myself.”

He didn’t criticize my thoughtlessness or try to console me. He just kept things vague instead. It really was impossible to tell exactly what he was thinking deep down.

Still, what would he think of the taste of the carpaccio I had prepared? After all, Varkas’s group had all cleared their plates at some point, it seemed.

“It was very delicious. I felt the pico and the spiciness of the chitt clashed ever so slightly, but I don’t imagine any other chefs here in Genos could flavor a raw fish with such precision.”

Naturally, Varkas and his three cooking assistants remained expressionless.

Meanwhile, the chefs on our side didn’t have much interest in raw fish, so they seemed to have difficulty figuring out how to appraise Varkas’s dish. Since it didn’t seem like either side would be saying anything further, we hurriedly went ahead and served up the next dishes.

“Hey Asuta, you can’t expect us to eat these little portions one by one all the way till the end, right?” Dan Rutim asked in a concerned voice.

“Right, after this I plan on bringing out a number of dishes at once. Is that all right with you, Varkas?”

“Of course. I leave the format of the meal to our guests from the forest’s edge.”

We went ahead and started off with the soup and poitan dishes. After removing the lids from both pots, all sorts of aromas started filling the room.

Nobody was surprised by our soup dish. However, when the poitan dish was set before him, Dan Rutim loudly questioned, “What is this stuff? Is it really poitan? It doesn’t look like it at all, Asuta!”

“Well, it was made by mixing poitan and fuwano, then kneading in kimyuus egg and reten oil.”

It was no surprise that Dan Rutim was so taken off guard. After all, everyone who saw the dish for the first time, be it Ai Fa, the members of the Ruu clan, and even chefs like Reina and Sheera Ruu, all stared at it in wonder.

The dish in question was the poitan and fuwano pasta that I had finally completed after nearly a month of working on it.

Both poitan and fuwano were similar to wheat flour, but neither matched the ingredient exactly. In particular, the amount of gluten and the resulting viscosity, and how much they expanded differed a bit from the flour I was familiar with.

Poitan flour got all dried out if you just baked it as is, while it solidified if only mixed with water. As for fuwano flour, while it could be baked up nice and springy, it was overly viscous. It had me seriously scratching my head for a long time now over whether it was possible to blend the two pseudo-wheat flours properly to end up with something suitable for making noodles.

Honestly though, I was trying to make something more like soba or udon.

However, that ended in failure. I had actually managed to make something similar to udon before the pasta, but it wasn’t suitable for the people of the forest’s edge. Not because of the taste, or anything. Actually, it was because they weren’t able to slurp noodles. Ai Fa had looked so sad when she asked me, “What in the world is this dish, and how do you eat it?”

When I thought about it, I remembered one person back in my home country who couldn’t slurp noodles either: a classmate in middle school who had returned from living abroad.

He had lived somewhere in South America up till then, and had no experience with eating noodles using chopsticks. The first time we visited a ramen shop, the look on his face was just like Ai Fa’s, and he said pretty much the same thing she did.

The guy was able to get the hang of slurping noodles after a bit of practice, but the people of the forest’s edge were even worse off, because bottom line, they didn’t use chopsticks at all.

Well, at least Ai Fa had eventually learned to handle them in her own unique style, so while she struggled, she managed to eat her food that night. Still, it would be quite an undertaking to teach everyone at the forest’s edge how to both use chopsticks and slurp noodles. I could just see Donda Ruu tossing his chopsticks aside halfway through the meal and just drinking it all down in one go, broth and all.

I didn’t exactly know much about cuisine in the castle town yet, but at the very least I’d never seen noodles in the post town either, so even though I had developed a way to make udon, it just didn’t seem suitable for selling. In light of that, I decided the first style of pasta I made should be some sort of spaghetti instead.

With spaghetti, you could eat it without having to slurp noodles. Though I had never seen anything resembling a fork outside the castle town, I was able to prepare a utensil that would work well enough by cutting notches into a wooden spoon. I came up with the idea figuring it might work as a stepping stone toward learning to slurp noodles.

Once I figured out the ratio of poitan and fuwano, making the pasta itself wasn’t all that tricky at all. However, it did require a good bit of time. First I mixed in egg and a bit of reten oil and salt with the two types of flour, kneaded it till it got soft, then let it sit for several hours to remove the moisture. Next, I sprinkled a bit of flour over it and flattened it out, and after a bit more moisture had seeped out, I cut it into noodles. If it was sticky on the ends, I added a bit more flour at this stage too. That was enough to make a perfectly serviceable raw pasta, after which I just needed to let it dry out completely.

This time around, I served my pasta with a cream sauce. The dish also included the spinach-like nanaar, the cabbage-like tino, and the brown beech-like mushroom from Jagar. Lastly, I added some thick slices of giba rib bacon made using the smoking techniques I had learned from Mikel.

As for the cream sauce, I had seasoned a broth made from seaweed with salt and pico leaves, along with a nutmeg-like herb for flavor. After that, I sprinkled it with some gyama dried milk I had reduced to a powder. Since I had heard that the people of Banarm used karon dairy goods, I had ultimately chosen this creamy pasta out of my repertoire.

Then for the soup, I went with minestrone. Tomato-like tarapa served as the base for a soup with a ton of vegetables in it. The ingredients included aria, chatchi, nenon, tino, zucchini-like chan, paprika-like ma pula, the common mushroom-like thing I still didn’t know the name of, and giba sausage.

In place of bouillon, I used the broth I had made from dried fish, then added salt and pico leaves, that herb that was like bay leaf, mamaria fruit wine, and finally tau oil and sugar for a bit of subtle flavoring. Since I had made tarapa-based soup plenty of times in the past, Ai Fa had no issues accepting the dish.

The real issue was the cream sauce pasta. The Ruu men didn’t seem to enjoy it all that much, so I stole a glance wondering what the guards thought of it...just in time for Dan Rutim to loudly proclaim, “Hrmm! This meat is delicious! It’s rich in flavor like the dried meat I received from the Ruu clan before, and it’s even tastier than ordinary meat!”

“I’m glad to hear it. What about the poitan?”

“Hmm, I’m finding it just a little hard to eat. I’ve got no issues with how it tastes, but it’s all slippery and keeps sliding off my spoon.”

Morun Rutim was sitting next to him and had seemingly taught him how to eat it, but he appeared to have trouble getting the knack of it in such a short period of time. Was the frustration the main reason why the men weren’t too fond of it?

“So that’s still an issue, huh? Well then, how about eating it like this?”

Based on a conversation with Reina Ruu from earlier in the day, I had brought along plenty of extra poitan flour and used it to prepare some thin baked poitan, out of a concern that pasta alone wouldn’t provide enough carbohydrate intake. Once Dan Rutim tried sandwiching the pasta and the other ingredients in the middle, his face lit right back up again.

“Ooh, this is good! I like this slippery poitan much better this way!”

“Really? I think it’s tastier the normal way, though,” Morun Rutim retorted.

“The taste may not be any different, but I don’t care for eating stuff bit by bit! Isn’t food so much more enjoyable when you stuff your cheeks full?”

“That’s just how you like things, dad. Ah, but it may be good to try dipping baked poitan in this soup, actually...”

The father and daughter pair from the Rutim really seemed to be enjoying a nice, friendly meal together.

As for the members of Varkas’s group...half of them were actually showing a reaction now: the girl from the west, Shilly Rou, and the large man from the south, Bozl.

“This...is tasty. And it’s my first time eating such a dish too,” Bozl stated in a deep, throaty voice. His rugged face wore a look of intense surprise.

Next to him, Shilly Rou sat there silently. If I had to describe her expression, I’d say it had grown stern.

“This meat especially! So this is the giba meat I’ve heard so much about, is it? You smoked it over herbs, didn’t you?”

“That’s right. It’s smoked meat made to emphasize taste rather than preservation.”

“Well, it’s delicious. And the sausage used in the soup dish is just as good too. To think such a high-class ingredient was overlooked for decades... It really is something else.”

I was a bit concerned by Shilly Rou’s silence, but Bozl seemed a lot like the other folks from Jagar I was familiar with, not putting on airs at all.

“You are Sir Asuta of the Fa clan, correct? Was this dish truly made from poitan?” the tall old man Tatumai asked. Varkas’s group seemed to be having no issues whirling the pasta around their three-pronged utensils and eating it.

“It was. Or to be precise, it’s a mix of around seven parts fuwano to three parts poitan. And then I added kimyuus egg and reten oil too.”

“I see. This dish is almost like shaska.”

“Shaska?”

“It is a grain gathered from the mountains and central plains of Sym. It’s eaten in long and thin strips like this.”

“Is that so? Then do folks from Sym have a custom of slurping dishes like this?”

“Yes, when it’s served along with hot broth. But when shaska is baked or boiled, it’s eaten by wrapping it around like this.”

So this old man really did have blood from Sym, then? In that case, Varkas had assistants from the west, south, and east all working under him.

Does that mean Varkas is well versed in the cuisine of Sym and Jagar too? I think I might be a bit jealous if he is, I thought to myself as I turned to look at the other chef, only for an unwitting “Huh?” to slip out of my mouth. The plates of pasta and minestrone sitting in front of him were both completely empty.

“Y-You already ate all of it, Varkas?”

“Yes. It was very good.” With scrutinizing eyes that were the same green color as Bozl’s, he stared back at me. “If you do not mind, I would appreciate you eating my dishes before they get cold, Sir Asuta.”

“Ah, right. Sorry about that.”

While I was distracted by Dan Rutim, the women had all finished their portions. Though Reina Ruu and Toor Deen had worn indistinct expressions before, they now looked just as serious as they had during the previous taste test with Varkas. Seeing their reaction, I hurried up and gave the soup and fuwano dishes a taste myself.

The soup was a familiar creamy white dish. It used both karon milk and a bunch of herbs, making for a truly complex aroma.

As for the fuwano dish, it had the appearance of a bread twist. However, it was ever so slightly pink. It had a clear sauce over it, giving it a glistening shine too.

I went ahead and started with the karon milk soup.

I thought I had steeled myself properly...but I was still left awestruck.

Varkas’s true nature had been restrained with the appetizer, but here it was on full display. It really was an incredibly complex taste. Just how many different herbs had he used here? I could taste spiciness, bitterness, and sourness in the dish. But above all else, it was sweet, and there was plenty of umami in it too.

The sweetness likely came from karon milk, milk fat, and sugar. And the umami, of course, was from the meat, vegetables, and countless seasonings. When I tried feeling around in the soup with my wooden spoon, I was able to come across karon meat and chamcham.

The karon meat was shockingly tender. It definitely had to be torso rather than leg meat. It was even softer than the karon meat in the dish Naudis had served me the other day, to the point that I didn’t even need to chew it to break it down.

On top of that, the texture of the bamboo shoot-like chamcham was quite pleasant. The fibers from the meat and the chamcham intertwined, until it almost felt like you could mistake the vegetable for the actual meat.

Beyond that, there were three varieties of mushrooms and two different vegetables in the soup. Pseudo-shiitake, cloud ear, and common mushroom; daikon-like sheema; and potato-like chatchi were all there in the dish.

Every last one of those ingredients had wonderful textures. That shiitake-like mushroom had been rehydrated and had the same chewiness as any high-class meat. And the cloud ear and common mushroom equivalents were nice and springy too... As for the sheema and chatchi steeped in flavor, they were quite soft from being boiled right to the brink of breaking down, and soon combined with the rest of the soup in my mouth.

I could sense intuitively that the amount of time he heated each ingredient for must have differed. Though he had boiled the meat and vegetables to the point that they nearly broke down, he had carefully adjusted the flames to emphasize the texture of the mushrooms and chamcham. It had to be the result of carefully examining each ingredient one by one and experimenting to determine how long each needed to be cooked.

And of course, the strange flavoring was worthy of special mention. Though there was even some bitterness in the mix this time around, it was still all in perfect equilibrium. If the bitterness were to be removed, the remaining sweetness, spiciness, and sourness would run wild and ruin everything...or at least, that was how it felt to me.

Aah... What a seriously strange flavor.

I had had numerous opportunities to try dishes that emphasized karon milk and herbs before now. Yang had served me one just the other day, and then there was Roy and Timalo’s cooking too. In all likelihood, karon milk soup was seen as a tried and true dish here in the castle town.

Also...this taste was probably what they were all aiming for.

This dish had what their cooking lacked, and it lacked what was excessive in their dishes too. I couldn’t help but think so, even though I still wouldn’t say it was perfectly delicious without any reservations.

“I created the stock for this soup using kimyuus bones, seaweed, and six varieties of herbs...and I marinated the karon breast meat in a combination of mamaria vinegar and fruit wine.”

“So you pickled it, huh? I didn’t sense any sourness from the meat itself, though.”

“I used significantly more fruit wine than vinegar. The sour flavor should have dissolved in the stock.”

It was definitely not a dish I ever could have come up with. I felt an uncontrollable stirring in my chest as I reached out for the fuwano dish.

It was like a pink twist roll. As I thought to myself how strange its shape was, I observed it carefully and found he hadn’t merely twisted fuwano dough, but rather combined a number of different strands together to make a braid of sorts. Since it was coated in a clear sauce, I went ahead and used utensils similar to a fork and knife rather than grabbing it with my hands.

Spread rather densely throughout the inside of the roll were these translucent milky white chips. Steeling my resolve, I took a bite, only for an unexpected taste to spread through my mouth. It was the scent of the ocean that had drifted up to my nose, and it felt similar to shrimp. Had he dried and sliced up some sort of sweet shrimp-like crustacean, then?

“I combined the fuwano dough with ground maroll meat and shells, which I then mixed with dried fish broth and baked it. There is minmi fruit kneaded into the dish as well.”

“Minmi? You mean that expensive fruit from Jagar?”

“Yes. Unripened minmi that hasn’t yet grown sweet.”

Minmi was a very expensive fruit akin to a peach. I had thought for sure those chips were made from that maroll crustacean, but I had been completely off the mark. Instead, it seemed he had actually flavored the fuwano dough itself here. The minmi fruit was just there to give it a bit of texture. And it was then that I finally realized that the dish had a finer texture to it than ordinary baked fuwano. It was so soft that you could mash it up in your mouth without even using your teeth.

If this dish didn’t include the minmi fruit, eating it might have been like eating a ball of flour. However, the texture didn’t stand out enough to draw your attention. And then there was that clear sauce... In all likelihood it had been made by combining milk fat with a variety of different oils, and it served to counteract the flouriness of the dish and allow it to slide smoothly down the throat.

As for the taste, aside from the slight saltiness from the dried fish stock, it actually wasn’t all that strong. Still, the scent from the crustacean sure did fill my nose. This one had a gentle, delicate flavor to it, completely unlike the soup dish.

“You didn’t use any herbs in this dish, did you?”

“I did not. If I were to use herbs in all my dishes, it would give the tongue no time to rest,” Varkas replied as he slowly rose to his feet. “There are three dishes remaining. We should finish up this taste test before too much time passes.”