Cooking with Wild Game (LN) - Volume 24 - Chapter 1.6

6

We were currently heading to the Ravitz settlement. On foot, it would have been a two hour journey to the north to get there from the Fa house, but with a wagon, it only took forty minutes. If you continued farther north from there, eventually you would find the Suun settlement, and past that, there were only the clans under the Zaza.

“The Ravitz, Naham, and Vin clans live in this area. The Suun never paid them much mind, as far as I know. The Deen and Liddo established blood ties with the Suun, but those three never did,” Fei Beim said.

I was focused on counting the number of side paths we were passing, following the instructions Ai Fa had given, and slowing down our pace as we went.

“I guess. Back when the Suun were the leading clan, the Ravitz and the clans under them were supposedly the ones who suffered most. I figured that meant they didn’t approve of our actions solely out of fear of the Suun, but since their opinion still hasn’t changed, there must be some other reason,” I mused.

“We in the Beim hold the same position, but since the Ravitz are located so far away from us, we don’t have any interaction with them. I’m kind of interested to hear what their reasons are for opposing the Fa clan.”

Naturally, I felt the same way.

There were three major clans who opposed our actions: the Zaza, the Beim, and the Ravitz. The other opposed clans were all subordinates of those three. Among them, I had already started building bridges between us and the Zaza and Beim, and had also taught them bloodletting and cooking techniques. They were still opposed to us doing business in the post town and interacting with townsfolk, but they had at least accepted the value of delicious food.

Currently, Ai Fa and some members of the Fou were teaching the Ravitz bloodletting and carving techniques, and they had agreed to allow us chefs to visit as well. This was a big job, and it would determine what sort of bond we could form with the people of the Ravitz.

“Ah, I think that’s the one that leads to the Ravitz settlement.”

I stopped the wagon and got down from the driver’s seat, with five women following behind me: Toor Deen, Yun Sudra, Fei Beim, and the Gaaz and Ratsu women.

We headed down a side path that extended to the east from the main route—which ran north to south—and before long we came upon a large plaza. Parent clans all tended to have cleared plazas like this one, as they were necessary for banquets and the like. This one was surprisingly large, though. It was almost as big as the Ruu clan’s, and a good deal bigger than the one at the Fou settlement. There looked to be seven houses encircling it.

“What an impressive settlement. Are the Ravitz really this big of a clan?” Yun Sudra whispered.

“No,” I replied with a shake of my head. “From what I’ve heard, they have fewer members than the Ratsu. But the Ratsu have absorbed two clans under them in the past year, which has made them about as large as the Ruu now.”

“I don’t sense many people around, so I guess you’re right. These houses may only be about half full.”

The houses all had their doors shut, and I didn’t catch so much as a glimpse of anyone working. It was possible they were all simply working behind their houses rather than out in the plaza, but the fact that there wasn’t even a single child out running around and playing reminded me of what the Suun settlement had been like back during the clan head meeting.

“For now, let’s head over to the largest house.”

I gave Gilulu’s reins a tug and started walking across the plaza. Then I entrusted the totos to Toor Deen when we arrived so I could knock on the door.

“Is anyone there? I’m Asuta of the Fa clan, here as we agreed.”

After a fair bit of silence, I heard the sound of a bolt being removed.

“The Ravitz clan welcomes you... I am the clan head’s wife, Lili Ravitz.” The woman who had appeared before us was very small and middle-aged. She had a plump, round build and a kind face. Her dark brown hair was pulled up at the top of her head, and she had slender, happy-looking eyes that reminded me of Jiza Ruu. My initial impression was that she kind of reminded me of a plump Jizo statue.

“Pleased to meet you. I’m Asuta of the Fa clan. I believe you should have already heard about our visit from the Fa and Fou clan heads. Is this going to be any issue?”

“Not at all. The women have already gathered in the kitchen. Thank you for your assistance today.” Lili Ravitz then closed the door behind her, and I heard it being bolted again almost immediately. “We didn’t want the children to feel frightened, so we gathered them all here in the main house. Please, come this way,” she said, walking off toward the rear of the house. She seemed to be a gentle woman. I didn’t sense any animosity from her...and yet, perhaps because her eyes were similar to Jiza Ruu’s, I couldn’t seem to get a read on what she was thinking.

“This is the kitchen.”

“Thank you. Is it all right if we tie up our totos around here?”

“Yes, of course.”

The totos and wagon Ai Fa’s group had come with were being kept nearby too. I released Gilulu from the wagon and tethered him there beside his buddy.

“Oh, and I’d like to use the knives that I brought along. Could I have your permission to bring them into the kitchen?”

“Go right ahead.”

I got the leather bag I had purchased in Dabagg out of the wagon and stepped into the kitchen. It was in every way the equal of the one at the Ruu house. There were four stoves inside and two outside, and the workstations were more than big enough. There were also a fair number of pots and cooking knives about.

Five women were waiting for us there. Four of them were older women, while the fifth was much younger, but they were all wearing one-piece outfits, indicating that they were married.

“For the time being, we have selected two women from each of the Ravitz, Naham, and Vin. All of the clan heads’ wives are gathered here, myself included.”

The oldest woman among them (who looked to be around fifty) was the Naham clan head’s wife, while the one who seemed to be around my age was married to the Vin clan head.

As was proper etiquette, the women of our group all introduced themselves as well. But once they had finished, Lili Ravitz interjected, “Hold on. I was told that the Fa, Fou, Ran, and Sudra would be working together on this task. But you only have a Sudra woman there with you.”

“Oh, right. These are all women who help out with our business in the post town. I asked for their assistance today because the Fou and Ran are short on women, so it’s difficult for them to spare any.”

“I see.” Lili Ravitz replied, her Jizo-like eyes looking the women over. “The Gaaz and Ratsu approve of the Fa clan’s actions, correct? But I believe the Beim were opposed... And do the Deen not fall under the leading Zaza clan?”

“We do,” Toor Deen replied in a surprisingly steady tone. “The Deen and Liddo men haven’t been allowed to be part of this, but I’ve been helping with work in town for a while now so we can see what changes the Fa clan’s actions are causing, and I was given special permission to join in this task.”

Then Fei Beim stepped up beside her. “As a member of the Beim clan, I am in the same position. I have been working alongside Asuta of the Fa clan in order to determine whether or not doing business in the post town and deepening bonds with the townsfolk are proper courses of action. Did you not accept this offer with similar intent?”

“I am not certain. We simply gathered here under our clan heads’ orders,” Lili Ravitz stated, the kindliness in her expression unwavering. “It is our clan heads who will determine whether what we are doing today is proper as well. If that is acceptable, then please begin your cooking lessons.”

“Understood. I look forward to working with you.” I couldn’t tell what they were thinking or feeling, but at least it didn’t seem like they were rejecting us out of hand. They felt a bit cold and distant, but that was likely because they were placing the position their clan had taken over any personal feelings.

That’s perfectly normal when it comes to the people of the forest’s edge. Fei Beim was originally way more hostile than she is now.

At any rate, the only thing I could do was carry out the work in front of me.

“Well then, let’s get started. Have you already confirmed for yourselves how much better bloodlet meat tastes?”

“Yes. Both the grilled and boiled meat we cooked were so delicious it was shocking. I can understand why our clan heads were so worked up after the clan head meeting.”

“All right. Then I’d like to teach you how to make it even more delicious. Do you use any ingredients besides aria and poitan in your homes?”

“No. At most, we might add some tarapa and tino for banquets.”

“Then what about herbs like myamuu?”

“We only use that for banquets as well.”

In that case, it seemed like they were a bit more frugal than the Dai, who would at least occasionally buy other ingredients even if they weren’t having a banquet. However, there had been clans who met their ruin here at the forest’s edge because they were unable to purchase even aria and poitan. The Sudra in particular had been getting close to that point before they got involved with the Fa.

Now that I think about it, the Vin’s subordinate clans died out, and they had to form blood ties with the Ravitz. Were their lives as harsh as the Sudra’s before then? While I was thinking about that, I looked over at the Vin clan head’s wife, but she hurriedly averted her eyes. It was possible that she was actually younger than me—her timid face still had some childlike aspects to it.

“Let’s start by teaching you how to bake poitan. Learning how to do this will improve the quality of your cooking tremendously by itself.”

And so, the lesson began. My top priority was indeed teaching them how to bake poitan, since getting rid of the need to eat muddy poitan soup was the first huge step on the road to an improved diet for them.

I heated up the poitan we had brought along, and after boiling them down as much as I could, I set the result out to dry in the sun. It would take roughly an hour for it to reach the point where we could pulverize it, so in the meantime, I added water to the poitan flour I had brought with me and taught them how to cook it. Once the poitan had been cooked to a light cream color, I split it up into pieces for them to try. The six women were hesitant to take their first bite, but when they did, they all ended up tilting their heads.

“I can’t tell if this tastes good. It’s an unusual flavor.”

“Yeah. It might not do much for you if you’re just eating the baked poitan alone, so let’s go ahead and prepare some soup without poitan next.”

This was also a pretty simple recipe, as it only used giba meat and aria. After teaching them how to properly cut the ingredients, both the meat and the vegetables went into a pot to slowly boil. Next, I taught them that they should add a pinch of salt, and showed them how to scoop the scum and manage the heat.

“I imagine all of you probably consider meat to be done as soon as it’s been heated through, but if you take your time boiling it, the delicious flavor of the meat will seep out into the broth. We call this ‘making a stock.’”

I had given this explanation many times before. The first was at the Fa house, and the second was when I gave it to the Ruu clan... Then at the clan head meeting, I had conveyed it to the Suun women, and after that, to the Fou, Ran, and Sudra women, followed by the Gaaz and Ratsu... I could remember them all, but it felt like it would go on forever if I went through the whole list.

Even when it came to clans I hadn’t been able to instruct directly, like the Sauti and Zaza, their lessons must have started pretty much exactly like this, with how to make baked poitan and prepare giba soup using nothing but aria and salt. No special ingredients were needed. All that was required was a big pile of firewood and time. Would baked poitan and giba soup be worth their time and effort? Getting them to make a decision about that would be the first turning point in this endeavor.

As the pots were boiling, I gave a lecture on the various ways meat could be cut and the differences between meat from various parts of the giba’s body. Fortunately, the Ravitz didn’t customarily discard the torsos of the beasts they hunted. Thigh meat was always their first pick, but apparently they would still eat torso meat too during periods when they weren’t hunting many giba. It seemed that the Ruu clan was in the minority in how they hunted way more than they needed to.

“You can eat a giba’s innards, brain, and eyeballs as well. If we get the chance, I’d like to teach you how to work with those as well.”

“Innards, brains, and eyeballs? I can’t say any of those sound particularly appealing to eat.”

“Maybe not. But some kinds of the innards go down pretty easily and don’t take much effort to prepare, so I’d like you all to decide for yourselves whether they’re worthwhile to eat.”

For clans who wanted to get involved with our business in the post town, even innards could serve as goods to be sold. Reina and Sheera Ruu’s giba offal stew was still on the menu, so the Ruu would sometimes buy innards off of other clans during break periods. The Dai clan was quite interested in learning how to handle innards for exactly that reason, but the Ravitz would have to decide whether they had any interest in eating offal themselves. Still, the heart, liver, diaphragm, and tongue could all be prepared without much effort.

An hour passed by in a flash, but just as I was thinking it was about time for us to get ready to leave, things got quite noisy out front. The hunters had returned from the forest.

“We’re back. Ah, you’re still in the middle of your lesson, eh?”

One of the hunters had opened the door to the kitchen and stepped inside. He had a medium build and a striking appearance. He had to be around forty and had a strong light shining in his eyes. There was nothing particularly noteworthy about his face, but he had a shiny bald head, had hardly any eyebrows, and lacked any sort of beard or mustache. In other words, the only real hair he had from his neck on up was his eyelashes. People with thin eyebrows always seemed to have a special sort of intensity about them. That was true of Bartha too. I didn’t sense any animosity in his expression, but he still felt frightening somehow.

“So you’re the Fa clan chef, huh? It’s been a good long while since the clan head meeting, but I still remember that pale face of yours. I’m the Ravitz clan head, Dei Ravitz.”

“I’m Asuta of the Fa clan, and I’m truly grateful that you and the other clan heads accepted my proposal.”

“You have no reason to thank me. I’m only interested in that tasty food stuff,” Dei Ravitz muttered as he stroked his hairless chin. “You lot are the ones putting in the extra effort, so what are you thanking me for? You sure are eccentric.”

“Uh, well...”

“Lili, how’re the lessons going?” he said, cutting me off as he glanced over at his wife.

With a polite bow, Lili Ravitz replied, “Well, we have learned how to make baked poitan, and currently, we are in the middle of preparing soup without poitan.”

“Hmph. Then you’re more or less done, eh? We’ve only got aria and poitan here, so it’s not like I was expecting the sort of stuff you fed us at the clan head meeting,” Dei Ravitz said, before his gleaming eyes turned in my direction. “Good work, Asuta of the Fa clan. I’ve got no intention of thanking you since you’re the ones who came barging in on us, but, well, I guess I’m at least grateful for the chance to eat some tasty food.”

“Ah, well, if it makes the lives of the Ravitz even a little happier, then...”

“If you’re done here, you should hurry up and leave. I’ve got skinning to do, so excuse me,” Dei Ravitz said, once again cutting me off before swiftly leaving the room.

Yun Sudra stood beside me, blinking in confusion. “What an impatient man. Did he even hear what you were saying, Asuta?”

I was pretty worried about that myself, so I figured I should ask Lili Ravitz for her opinion. But before I could say anything, she bowed deeply to me.

“Thank you for your efforts today. We can finish up the rest, so please leave.”

“Huh? But we haven’t even tried the soup yet.”

“We believe you have done enough. We will convey what we learned today to the other women, starting tomorrow.”

“But, well, it’s probably going to take a little more time for you to fully absorb these cooking techniques.”

“Is that so? The clan head said that one day should be all the cooking lessons we need.”

Well, nobody had said that to me. It sounded like Dei Ravitz and Ai Fa’s group hadn’t quite managed to get on the same page with each other. In fact, that seemed quite likely, considering how the Ravitz clan head had been acting.

“I-I’d like to make sure of a few things with Dei Ravitz. Could you take me to him?”

“Yes. Come this way.”

I told Toor Deen and the others to take care of things here in the kitchen before stepping out behind Lili Ravitz, only to find some familiar faces gathered there.

“Oh, so you’re all back too, Ai Fa?”

“Indeed.” My clan head nodded with a blank expression that bordered on being a pout, while next to her, Baadu Fou seemed to be suppressing a strained smile. It seemed the Fa and Fou clan heads had been trying to work together to teach the head of the Ravitz clan bloodletting and carving techniques.

“Their other men have already left to return to the Naham and Vin settlements. Are you done with your work too, Asuta?”

“No. There’s something I need to confirm with Dei Ravitz,” I said before telling them what had happened.

After hearing my explanation, Baadu Fou sighed heavily. “It’s true that we didn’t decide on a specific number of days, but Dei Ravitz really jumped to a hasty conclusion there, limiting it to only today. If he’d just given it a little thought, surely he would’ve realized that there’s no way that could be enough time.”

“Maybe he thinks one day of lessons should be all the women need because he assumes we were able to teach the Suun women what to do in only a single day before we prepared the meal for the clan head meeting. Whatever the reason, do you think you can convince him to allow us to come here for a few more days?”

“Of course. We’ll get this taken care of right now.”

Baadu Fou then started to lead us to the giba carving room. As we followed along behind him, I whispered to Ai Fa, “By the way, why didn’t you two follow him when he left to go carve up the giba? That’s part of the lessons, you know.”

“He insisted he had already seen enough. Apparently, the Ravitz have always eaten torso meat. And we already dealt with the innards out in the forest... He sliced the giba’s stomach open right then and there, cut the organs out all on his own, and discarded them.”

“Huh? But I was hoping to show them how to work with innards sometime.”

“The hunters failed at bloodletting today, so we returned the organs to the forest since they wouldn’t have been edible anyway,” Ai Fa replied. Then she brought her face close to mine. “It seems the Ravitz men are poor learners. I’m not saying they act like fools, but their behavior is rough and crude.”

That must have been another source of stress for Ai Fa.

At any rate, we soon reached the carving room, and Baadu Fou knocked on the door.

“Sorry to bother you when you’re busy, Dei Ravitz, but there’s something we’d like to discuss.”

The door quickly opened and Dei Ravitz’s bald head poked out. “What, you’re still here? Today’s lessons are over.”

“Never mind that. It seems we didn’t explain about the cooking lessons well enough, so we’d like to go over that again with you,” Baadu Fou started to explain, but unsurprisingly, he was cut off midway.

“One day is plenty for cooking lessons. I prefer to avoid having folks we don’t share blood ties with in my house.”

“But—”

“If that bothers you, then why not simply form blood ties with us? The Fa clan head over there is a real beauty, and plenty of our men would love to have her as a wife. If you become a clan under the Ravitz, you can come and go as much as you please.”

“I told you on the first day that I have no intention of becoming anyone’s wife.” Ai Fa replied, holding back all emotion.

“That’s a shame,” Dei Ravitz said with a shrug. “In that case, you should leave and go back to your own house now. We’ve already learned everything we need to know about that bloodletting stuff too.”

“You haven’t succeeded at bloodletting a giba on your own even once yet, so how can you possibly say that you’ve learned everything you need to know?”

“You’ve just got to learn through trying again and again with stuff like this. Now that we know how it’s done, the rest is up to us.”

His logic was as slippery as an eel. He was neither accepting nor rejecting our involvement outright; he was simply brushing us aside. It was very unusual for a person of the forest’s edge.

“Can I chime in too, Dei Ravitz? A single day is definitely not enough time to teach your clan members how to prepare delicious meals. There’s still a whole lot I would like to teach them, so is there any chance that you’d be willing to allow me to come to your kitchen for another four or five days?” I proposed.

Dei Ravitz’s nearly hairless brow wrinkled a tiny bit. “I’ll permit you to come to my house for two more days. Any more than that is unnecessary.”

“Two more days? Understood. In that case, I’ll be absolutely sure to make the most—” I started to say, only for my words to be cut off when the door slammed shut in our faces.

Ai Fa scratched her head, while Baadu Fou sighed once again and said, “Dei Ravitz is such an odd man. Even after all the time we’ve spent together for the last couple days, I can’t seem to figure him out.”

Lili Ravitz just stood there beside us as if nothing strange had happened. It seemed she was as quiet and detached as a Jizo statue too.