Cooking with Wild Game (LN) - Volume 26 - Chapter 1.1

Chapter 1: The Rain’s Blessings

1

I was now fully recovered from my brush with the terrible illness known as Amusehorn’s breath, thanks to all the help so many people had given me, Ai Fa foremost among them. Things had been peaceful since I had returned to work in the post town, but of course, that didn’t mean nothing had changed at all. No matter how peaceful your days might be, you would never experience the same one twice.

I had heard that the work to clear a path through the forest’s edge was progressing smoothly, and apparently, there was an incredible amount of lumber being produced in the process, which was being transported out of the forest to be used in the construction of a fence to protect the Daleim lands. Northern slaves were being used to handle that task as well, though they were a different group than the ones who were working on the new road.

Of course, the Daleim county was much, much larger than the Turan county, so it would be incredibly difficult to wall it all off. Therefore, the current plan was to only build the fence where the Daleim lands bordered the forest as a test.

The amount of damage giba were causing in the Daleim lands had already decreased quite a bit over the last few months. The Suun clan had resumed hunting after having neglected their duty for so long, but I couldn’t really attribute such a large change to that alone. There was also the fact that the smaller clans had been growing stronger thanks to all the money they were making from selling meat, which was allowing them to eat more appetizing meals than they used to. And if they were to eventually gain access to hunting dogs, which would make their hunts even more efficient, I had every reason to believe that the fields in Daleim would be getting even safer in the future.

At any rate, finishing the construction of the fence was a long-term goal. The plan for now was to see how much work the northerners could get done during this rainy season and then slowly continue with the project after they returned to the plantations.

More important, though, was the forest clearing work, which was advancing steadily every single day, making so much progress that even Dari Sauti was surprised. The path was already long enough that it would take around three hours or so to walk from one end to the other.

The forest at the base of Mount Morga was so large that it would take several days to cross it on foot, but the hope was that the new path would cut that down to only a single day if you started at the Sauti settlement and went east from there. That would eventually take you to a rocky section of the forest, at which point you simply had to keep going northeast until you were out of the Morga region.

By the way, when the planners said that it would take a single day to complete the journey, they meant it would take from sunrise to sunset. The way I figured it, that amounted to around thirteen to fourteen hours of travel. There were thirteen of this world’s hours between the rising and setting of the sun, so if the northerners had carved out enough of the path that it currently took three whole hours to walk it, that meant they were just under a quarter of the way done.

Considering the fact that we were already halfway through the brown month, it was possible that they were actually a bit behind schedule. The more work advanced, the harder it would be to carry the felled trees out of the forest, and since the rainy season only lasted for two months, it would be difficult to finish the job on time.

“But in the event that we do fall behind, we can simply bring more hands onboard. I imagine that the workers assigned to the fence construction will probably be transferred over to this project if the need arises,” Polarth had said when he had come out to observe the worksite.

Well, it was the nobles’ job to worry about the pace of the work. Ours was simply to watch over the workers and hope that the giba wouldn’t attack them.

On a related note, there had been a meeting held in the castle town recently between the house of Genos and the house of Turan—the latter of whom owned all of the slaves in the area—to determine how the northerners should be treated and handled.

Furthermore, a separate meeting between the nobles and the leading clan heads of the forest’s edge had also been held at the same time. The three leading clan heads had gone to the castle town and spent several hours exchanging words with the mediator, Melfried, and his aide, Polarth. The Fou and Beim clan heads had also been present, and they had informed us about what had been discussed the following day.

One of the topics of discussion was a decree officially ordering the people of the forest’s edge not to meddle on behalf of the northerners. The houses of Genos and Turan were in the midst of trying to figure out what the best policy for handling the slaves was, and while it was possible that the nobles would ask the people of the forest’s edge for advice at some point, we were expected to silently remain on the sidelines until that time came. That was what it all boiled down to. It was just the lord of the land officially stating what we had already been told at the Sauti settlement.

A particular emphasis had been placed on the danger posed by the observers that the capital periodically sent to Genos. The nobles in the capital constantly worried about the possibility that a remote region like Genos could be plotting rebellion or grasping at independence, so every once in a while they sent some people out to make sure nothing like that was going on. The nobles of Genos were basically telling the people of the forest’s edge to behave themselves so that we didn’t give those observers any reason to get suspicious of us.

“As an example, you invited that chef Shilly Rou to the Ruu settlement, correct? Her bloodline traces its roots back to the independent settlers who originally lived here rather than to the kingdom. The first lord of Genos used his discretion to grant such individuals the right to retain their family names when they became citizens of Selva, when normally they would have been required to give their names up. That is the kind of thing that tends to rub folks from the capital the wrong way,” Polarth had explained at the meeting. At the time, the lord of the land had been a frontier count rather than a duke, and he had taken that step in order to ensure a peaceful coexistence with the people who had already been living there. People who had last names, like Shilly Rou and Milano Mas did, were all descended from the independent settlers of that era. “It’s ancient history now, but the observers still sometimes refer to us as wild hinterlanders and the like because of it. If they thought we were acting unusually kind toward northerners, it could cause a great deal of trouble.”

Thanks to Polarth’s explanation, I had learned that nobles of Genos were seen as backwater nobles in the eyes of the kingdom as a whole. While Duke Marstein Genos and his son Melfried might have seemed like beings who lived above the clouds to the common townsfolk, from the perspective of the nobility in the capital, they were little more than crude barbarians from the far-off frontier. That being that case, what would those capital nobles think of the people of the forest’s edge, who lived on the fringes even within Genos? I really hoped we would never have to deal with those elites.

At any rate, the leading clan heads had accepted Melfried’s words. They’d had bigger concerns that needed to be discussed anyway, such as the poitan shortage. But since it had been decided that the house of Turan would shoulder the costs, we had no grounds to get involved in the matter any further.

“I don’t believe it was wrong of us to request to pay for the poitan. You should keep in mind that we have our own way of doing things,” Donda Ruu had reportedly said at the end of the meeting.

And so, with all of that going on behind the scenes, we arrived at the twenty-first of the brown month. It had been five days since I had returned to work, but this was one of our days off. The rainy season vegetables had finally hit the market the day before, and now, with the sun close to its highest point in the sky, we were gathering together in the Ruu settlement to hold our first study session in around a month and a half.

“Thanks for coming out, everyone! It’s been so long I’m feeling a bit nervous, honestly,” I said to kick things off in the kitchen of the main Ruu house. Aside from one rather unsociable member of the group, everyone’s eyes were sparkling with anticipation.

There were nine people in total who would be participating in the study session. From the Ruu clan, we had Reina, Sheera, Rimee, and Mia Lea Ruu. Then from the small clans, there was Toor Deen, Yun Sudra, and me. Lastly, Myme and Mikel, who were guests of the Ruu, were also attending.

A light rain was falling, and it was as chilly outside as always, but the heated enthusiasm in the kitchen was more than enough to overcome that. As I was enjoying the atmosphere in the room, I turned and shot a smile at the one unhappy-looking member of the group, Mikel.

“This will be my first time working with these vegetables, so I’m going to need everyone to contribute their knowledge and experience. I’m especially going to be relying on you, Mikel, since you’ve worked with them before as a chef in the castle town.”

“I’m just repaying the debt I owe all of you for letting us stay here. If you expect an old man like me to be of any help to you, you’re kidding yourself.”

“Jeez! You don’t have to act so mean all the time!” Myme said with a smile, smacking her father’s bulky chest. She looked really happy that we were relying on Mikel’s skills.

Mikel’s right leg still hadn’t fully healed from its fracture, so he was sitting on a wooden box and was the only person to be doing so. He was capable of walking now, as long as he used a cane, but naturally it was difficult for him to stand for long periods. Still, aside from the bandages wrapped around his shin, it looked like he was mostly back to his old self.

Around the time when I became bedridden with illness, the Ruu clan members had asked Mikel to teach them about making jerky. They had first learned the technique from me, and now they had a chance to study it under Mikel directly. Myme had been quite happy when she’d told me that he would be heading around to the subordinate clans to teach them too once his injuries healed up a bit more.

“I’ve mentioned this before, but most of the rainy season vegetables are quite difficult to work with. It’s not that they taste bad, but you can’t simply boil them in a pot and call it good. If you know how we can use them like we do with tarapa, tino, and pula, then I’d definitely like to hear what you have to say,” Mia Lea Ruu said, speaking for the Ruu.

Standing beside her mother, Rimee Ruu nodded along. “Traip still tastes like traip no matter what you do to it, and onda hardly has any taste at all. Oh, and I don’t like reggi too much either.”

“I know what you mean. We hardly ever use reggi in our house,” Sheera Ruu added.

“Yeah, a lot of people are fond of traip, but I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who likes reggi,” Reina Ruu agreed.

Toor Deen and Yun Sudra were listening to their words with great interest. Toor Deen used to belong to the Suun clan, where they mostly ate the fruits of the forest, while the Sudra were very poor, so neither of the girls had ever tasted the rainy season vegetables.

“Reggi, huh? That one takes some prep work before you can eat it,” Mikel replied while sitting atop his box, pointing at the leftmost vegetable on the table in front of me. There were three vegetables that were only grown and harvested during the rainy season: traip, onda, and reggi. Among the three, onda was the only one that seemed in any way familiar to me. Still, it seemed we were tackling reggi first, as it had become the topic of discussion.

The vegetable looked like a bright red stick. It was almost perfectly straight, and it had hairs growing out of it here and there. It was fifty centimeters long, with one end narrowing to a point, while the other was about three centimeters thick, and had a black cross section.

“Is this a root vegetable? It’s quite brightly colored for one.”

“Yeah. They grow in a flash when you plant them in soil that has a lot of moisture. Tino, on the other hand, goes bad with too much water, so a lot of folks swap them out during the rainy season,” Mikel stated with a sour look. “The simplest preparation method is to peel off their skin and soak them in water mixed with mamaria vinegar. If you leave them like that for a quarter of an hour, the earthy smell and the bitterness will go away.”

“You need mamaria vinegar? So then, that means it would have been impossible to prepare it properly in either the settlement at the forest’s edge or the post town before now,” Reina Ruu commented, sounding impressed. Mamaria vinegar had been sold exclusively in the castle town up until a few months ago.

As for me, Mikel’s explanation had suddenly dredged up a thought in my mind.

“Hold on a moment, please. Do you absolutely need to peel off the skin? I’m sure the people of the forest’s edge have been eating it without doing that.”

“The skin is removed because it’s bitter and has a bad odor, though I’m sure it has lots of nutrients in it too.”

“I thought so... But in that case, what is the vinegar for? Do you actually need it if you want to get rid of the bad parts of the flavor and smell?”

“The vinegar is to prevent it from turning black. If it both stinks and has a bad color, that makes it a lot less appealing to eat. And if you boil it without steeping it in water first, that black color will spread.”

“Right, soups made with reggi always turn pitch black. And eating them feels like slurping muddy water,” Sheera Ruu said. Then she turned toward me. “But Asuta, you’re talking like you know something about this vegetable. Is it similar to one back in your homeland too?”

“Yes, that’s exactly right. I’ve heard that preparation method before, so it finally clicked for me.”

Peeling its skin off and steeping it in vinegar water—that was exactly how you prepared a great burdock. The bright red coloring had thrown me off, but honestly, its shape was quite similar too. I had been looking at gigo as something like a massive burdock before, but reggi was a lot closer in size.

“If the skin is also nutritious, I think most people of the forest’s edge would prefer to leave it on. Besides, the Ruu clan uses all sorts of seasonings nowadays. Or is the smell and bitterness of reggi so bad that you can’t cover it up even with seasonings?”

“What I meant was that if you peel the skin off and steep it in vinegar water, that should be good enough to allow anyone to eat as much of it as they need to. But if a chef is clever enough, there are ways to keep the nutrition without hurting either the flavor or appearance.”

“If such a method exists, we would love to learn it,” Reina Ruu replied while leaning forward, a deadly serious look shining in her blue eyes.

After staring back at her silently for a bit, Mikel gave a little shrug. “If you want to avoid having it turn black inside, then you just have to finish cooking it before that happens. If the earthy smell bothers you, then you can choose ingredients that reduce it. If you don’t want a black broth, then you can add another color. That’s all I’ve got to say.”

“Finish cooking it before it turns black inside...? Why does reggi turn black in the first place, anyway? This one’s already starting to turn black on one end where it was cut,” Reina Ruu asked.

“But if you boil it, the reggi won’t turn as black as it did here at the cut, so when I handle reggi at home, I add it to the pot whole rather than finely slicing it up,” Sheera Ruu chimed in, starting a passionate discussion between her and Reina Ruu.

“Ah, I think we did that too. But when you don’t cut it up finely, the earthy smell and bitterness are much stronger, so my approach was to cut it in lots of different ways to see what would happen.”

I wanted to interject and add that perhaps the blackening came from oxidation, and that certain flavorings might go well with the reggi, but then I noticed the look in Mikel’s eyes and restrained myself. He was staring at the two of them as if he were searching for something.

“If we want a flavor to blunt the smell and bitterness of reggi...why not just boil it together with herbs that have even stronger smells?”

“But if you do that, you’d probably ruin the flavor of the reggi in the dish. Like, pula is bitter too, but that’s part of what makes it delicious.”

“Yes, I see. And reggi and pula are about equally tough, so if you make the dish too spicy as well, it would be pretty difficult to eat.”

Reina Ruu talked with Sheera Ruu as freely as she did with members of her own household. In a strange way, it made her look even younger than she actually was.

As my thoughts were wandering off on that tangent, Rimee Ruu energetically added, “That’s it! Reggi’s shaped a lot like gigo, isn’t it?! So why not use it like gigo, then?”

“Like gigo? You mean, you think we should try grating it?”

“No, reggi’s real tough, so it probably wouldn’t feel good to eat it if it was all grated up. Besides, it’d probably turn black while you were doing that!”

“Then what were you suggesting, Rimee Ruu?”

“I love gigo in tau oil soup! And tau oil’s already brown to start with, so that should cover up the broth getting all black, right?”

“Tau oil...? But if you try to soften the earthy stench and bitterness of reggi using nothing but tau oil, it’ll probably end up incredibly salty,” Reina Ruu said, but then she suddenly looked up. “But it may be good as a boiled dish like the cubed giba meat stew or meat and chatchi dish Asuta makes rather than a soup. And we could add some sweetness with fruit wine or sugar too, which would counteract the bitterness even more.”

“Right, using sweetness rather than spiciness to soften the bitterness might allow more of the reggi’s flavor to shine through.”

The three members of the Ruu shared a look, and then together they all turned toward Mikel, who simply stared back at them, looking as sour as always.

“The flavor of tau oil and the sweetness of sugar would pair well with the flavor of the reggi. Adding spice would only layer one harsh flavor on top of another,” he said.

“Is that so? Then I’d like to try boiling it with the skin still on in tau oil and fruit wine!”

Reina, Sheera, and Rimee Ruu were all wearing happy smiles. Meanwhile, Myme was still standing in the same spot beside her father, looking a touch embarrassed as she watched them. Perhaps Mikel had taught her how to use reggi like that in the past. That was ultimately just a guess on my part, but I figured that if he had simply told us all the steps, those three definitely wouldn’t be enjoying themselves as much as they were now. As for Toor Deen and Yun Sudra, they looked a bit jealous as they watched the three Ruu clan chefs smiling at each other.

“So, why don’t we go ahead and give the other ingredients a look too? Er, you said the Ruu clan hasn’t had any issues with using onda?” I asked.

“That’s right. Onda doesn’t have a strong flavor to it, so we’ve always just tossed it into a pot. It has a bit of a unique texture to it, but I would say most people don’t feel strongly enough to either love it or hate it,” Reina Ruu told me.

Onda looked very similar to a vegetable I already knew. They were white, skinny, and long, with each one being quite small, and they appeared to be sprouting from a faintly yellowish little bean. In other words, they looked exactly like bean sprouts.

“Apparently, onda were brought here from Jagar in the distant past. It should be possible to grow them outside of the rainy season as well, but people only really use them during this time of year in order to fill the space left by the absence of tarapa and tino,” Mikel explained.

“I see. Is this perhaps a vegetable that’s grown in a shed rather than a field?” I asked.

“Yeah. They need a lot of water to grow, so the rainy season is good for them.”

If the taste was also like the bean sprouts I was familiar with, then I knew that I would want to be able to buy them anytime, not just during the rainy season. I could use them in all sorts of dishes.

I turned to speak to Reina Ruu. “You’ve only used them in soups in the Ruu clan, right? Back in my home country, we used a vegetable that looked a lot like these in stir-fries too.”

“Huh? But won’t they burn right away if you try to cook them like that?”

“If that’s what happened when you tried it before, it’s probably because you weren’t using oil back then. All vegetables cook better at high temperatures if you use oil, not just onda.”

Since stir-frying some onda was easy enough for us to try right away, we went ahead and did so using a pan that we oiled with giba fat. We only used salt and pico leaves to flavor them, but it turned out that onda were indeed as juicy as bean sprouts were, so that was all we needed to do to make them taste good. The bean-like part of their flavor was quite subdued, and when we bit into them, they crunched in a very satisfying way.

“Mmm, it seems to me that we could use these to make stir-fries delicious in a totally new way,” Toor Deen remarked.

“I suppose their juiciness wouldn’t stand out very much in a soup, but it’s kind of interesting how they’ve still got this much moisture after they’ve been fried,” Yun Sudra added.

“Yeah. They’d probably be even tastier if we stir-fried them with other vegetables too.”

The two girls wore satisfied smiles as they talked. I was sure they’d be able to make use of these onda back home right away in both soup dishes and stir-fries.

As for the final ingredient, it was a strange vegetable known as traip. With this one, I couldn’t even begin to guess what sort of vegetable it was. The skin was tough and pitch-black, it had netlike patterns of lines running all over it like a muskmelon, and it was round in shape. It looked to have a diameter of around twenty centimeters, and it felt quite heavy in my hands. Honestly, I thought it resembled nothing more than a small bowling ball.

“These are tough to cut through, so we’ve always simply tossed them into our stews whole,” Mia Lei Ruu commented.

“Huh?” I said in surprise. “You can cook them all the way through just like that? But the skin looks so tough.”

“Yeah. As it boils, the skin starts to crack. Then it breaks into pieces and the contents mix into the stew. The skin becomes soft and limp by the time it’s done too, so you can eat it as well.”

“I love traip! But Papa Donda doesn’t really seem to care for it,” Rimee Ruu chimed in.

“When you use it in a dish, everything ends up tasting like it. If you want to know if it pairs well with giba meat, I’m not sure how to answer that. But, I suppose we were still using meat that wasn’t bloodlet last year, so that definitely impacted things,” Mia Lea Ruu concluded.

I was becoming more and more intrigued by the second. When I glanced over at Mikel, I found him indifferently stroking his stubbly cheek.

“That’s because traip has such a strong flavor,” he said. “In the castle town, you generally have to make it the core of your dish if you use it. That’s why you see it more in side dishes than in entrées.”

“Side dishes, huh? So it isn’t very well suited to being used in combination with meat, then?” I asked.

“That’s right. Of course, there are some folks out there who do pair it with meat for an entrée, but I’d say it’s more often used in sweets.”

As soon as he said that, both Toor Deen and Rimee Ruu reacted in an obvious and pretty adorable way. It was like watching the ears of a pair of kittens perk up.

“Now that you mention it, traip is the sweetest vegetable I know! Traip sweets, huh? That sounds really tasty to me!” Rimee Ruu said.

“Yeah. I didn’t know there were vegetables that tasted sweet too. I’m really interested,” Toor Deen agreed.

“You should start by just boiling one for a bit... If you’re not careful, you could damage your knife when you cut it, so it’s much easier to work with once it’s been softened up,” Mikel advised, so we went ahead and put an entire traip in some water and started heating it. Then, once the water started to boil, we put a lid on top. A quarter of an hour of boiling, or fifteen to twenty minutes, was apparently plenty, so we used the hourglass I had bought from the castle town to keep track of the time as we chatted about cooking.

When we removed the lid, the traip had split wide open, revealing its brilliantly yellowish-orange insides. Between the color and the smell, I finally realized what the identity of the vegetable was; it appeared to be something very similar to a pumpkin.

“If you want to use it in a soup, you can just keep on boiling it as is, but if you want to use it in a different kind of dish, you should take it out now,” Mikel said.

After Mia Lea Ruu thought it over, we left half of the split traip in the pot and scooped the other half up onto a plate.

“I’ve never eaten a traip in this state. We’ve always simply let it dissolve into our soup until now,” Mia Lea Ruu said.

We each proceeded to give the traip a taste test using wooden spoons. Sure enough, the flavor was similar to that of pumpkin. A soft and crumbly texture and a sweet taste filled my mouth. The skin was still hard since we hadn’t boiled it for too long, and the flesh of the vegetable was a bit fibrous.

“If you continue to slowly simmer it at a low temperature, you can draw out even more sweetness. And if you want to use it in a boiled dish, you should cut it up and season it before you put it back in the pot.”

“I see... This definitely seems like it would be better on its own than with giba meat,” Yun Sudra commented. When it came to both dinners and products to sell, we always needed to consider an ingredient’s compatibility with giba meat.

“Maybe, but I wouldn’t say that they’re totally incompatible. If we season this to make it sweet and salty, and then boil it with minced meat, it could work as an entrée.” In the back of my mind, I was thinking of simmered pumpkin and minced meat. If the traip was already this good with only a little bit of seasoning, I was sure it wouldn’t be too hard to come up with a delicious dish that used it.

At any rate, if traip, onda, and reggi corresponded to pumpkin, bean sprouts, and burdock respectively, then I would definitely be able to get plenty of use out of them. Plus, we had a group of excellent chefs present, Mikel foremost among them. We didn’t have to rely on my knowledge from my old world alone; all of us were capable of helping the rest improve.

The first study session at the Ruu settlement with Myme and Mikel in attendance was off to a great start.