Cooking with Wild Game (LN) - Volume 26 - Chapter 1.2

2

After that, around two hours passed by in a flash, and now the results of our trial-and-error research were sitting on top of a table in the kitchen.

The four from the Ruu had prioritized ways to use the three seasonal vegetables in cooking for the stalls, while everyone else focused on dinners. Myme and Mikel were already familiar with the vegetables, so they served as assistants and backed us up as we cooked.

“For now, I’d say stir-fried onda would pair very well with the herb-grilled dish we serve at the stalls. I think it would be good with nanaar too.”

Just a few days ago, an herb-grilled giba meat dish with a wonderful aroma had been added to the menu at the stalls. Giba meat marinated in herbs from Sym and tau oil was grilled on a metal tray, then wrapped in fuwano bread. Since we could no longer use shredded tino, we added the spinachlike nanaar instead, and now Reina Ruu and the others seemed to have decided to add the bean-sprout-like onda as well.

“I was also thinking of marinating onda together with the meat and aria. That should help the flavors to harmonize.”

“Ah, this is nice. It counteracts the strong flavor of the herbs, but in a good way.”

The thoroughly boiled nanaar alone retained its original texture, while the onda added a satisfying crispness. Personally, I thought it was a great idea.

“As for the reggi, it seems like it would work okay in the offal hot pot if we just peel off a bit of the skin like you said, Asuta. The bitterness and the earthy smell of the skin really is quite strong.”

“Right. I went ahead and tried to prepare the skin like we discussed.”

Yun Sudra and I had used the burdock-like reggi and carrot-like nenon to make chopped reggi in tau oil and sugar. We boiled those two ingredients together with tau oil, sugar, and fruit wine, then finished by adding a small amount of sesame-seedlike hoboi seeds on top. It would work just fine as a side dish, but adding some minced meat would also probably be okay too.

“The flavor would, of course, be unbalanced if we tried to use the skin by itself, so we added the inner part of another reggi too. I’d imagine it would go pretty well with wine.”

“Yeah, since we didn’t make it too sweet. Neither the earthy stench nor the bitterness are very noticeable, and it’s delicious too.”

“Yup, it’s tasty! And the black color doesn’t bother me at all!” Rimee Ruu said.

Honestly, the reggi’s bright red skin was what felt the most novel to me. The surface was red, while the inner part was a grayish-brown. The nenon was orange, and the tau oil was brown too, which did a good job of darkening the color a bit.

“The tau oil’s color helps to cover it up, and we also boiled it right after cutting. As long as you don’t expose it to air for very long, it shouldn’t turn too terribly black,” I explained, figuring that they wouldn’t mind me simply telling them that. “The offal hot pot is delicious too. The earthy taste doesn’t bother me at all.”

“Yes, me neither. But some people can’t stand things that taste like dirt, and even this much would probably be enough to bother them, don’t you think?”

“Hmm, that’s true. Back in my home country, we had a vegetable very similar to reggi that we would steep in vinegar water, or we would lightly rinse it and then make sure to remove any scum that develops as it cooks. That way you don’t lose too much of the nutrition.”

“I see.”

“Even with a normal hot pot, you have to scoop away the scum as you boil it, right? Whether that scum is considered an off flavor or a source of nutrition comes down to the skill of the chef making the dish. In my opinion, there’s nothing wrong with removing as much scum as you can to make your dish as high quality as possible. But with reggi, I don’t think there’s any need to be that fussy about it.”

At that point, I sensed someone’s gaze on me and turned to find Mikel glaring in my direction from where he was sitting on top of his box. “Making a dish’s flavor and appearance as ‘high quality’ as possible is an obsession for chefs in the castle town. That’s why they steep reggi in vinegar water to prevent blackening, and they scoop out every last bit of black broth and throw it away.”

“Yeah, I figured as much. By the way, did you also use vinegar water to prepare it, Mikel?”

“I did. But the blackened, earthy vinegar water can be used to provide a strong flavor and color, so I kept it on hand to add to other dishes.”

“I see. So there was another way of dealing with it,” Reina Ruu said, her eyes wide with admiration. “In that case, we could just steep it in water without any vinegar and then reuse that water to boil it. That would allow us to retain all of the nutrition from the reggi.”

“Let’s give that a try later. Offal hot pot has a fairly strong flavor to begin with, so we might be able to use the earthy water from the reggi in that without having to worry about ruining it,” Sheera Ruu suggested.

Reina and Sheera Ruu were more passionate about cooking than anyone else among the people of the forest’s edge. Of course, everyone present had quite a bit of passion, but those two really stood out when it came to inquisitiveness.

However, that wasn’t to say that the others weren’t passionate enough, and almost as if to prove that, Rimee Ruu energetically interjected, “All done! So, what do you think? I’d say it came out super tasty!”

Rimee Ruu had primarily been working under my supervision, creating a dish that was entirely new. Mia Lea Ruu had been assisting Reina and Sheera Ruu, and when she heard Rimee Ruu’s words, she turned and remarked, “Oh my, what a splendid stew! It looks so tasty!”

“It is tasty! Come on, give it a try!” Rimee Ruu said as she diligently scooped the contents of the pot out onto a dish. It was a stew made using the pumpkin-like traip.

The moment she took a bite of it, Yun Sudra said, “Wow, this is fantastic! I never would have thought that a stew made with traip could be this good!”

“I’ve never managed to make anything this good with traip. Rimee, what did Asuta teach you, exactly?” Mia Lea Ruu asked.

“Heh heh heh! This is a cream stew! I just tried making it with traip!”

I had come up with a dish similar to cream stew for the northerners, so Rimee Ruu had been able to learn the recipe firsthand. Today I had given her some more detailed instructions on how to prepare it and helped her to understand how to integrate the traip.

By boiling traip in skim milk, you could make it into a kind of soup that could then be blended together with a completed cream stew, at which point you simply needed to adjust the flavor with salt and pico leaves. For solids, we kept it simple, with chatchi, nenon, and aria, and then we added two varieties of giba meat, cut from the ribs and shoulders.

“This is delicious. I tried some of the stew made for the northerners just the other day, and this is far better than that was,” Reina Ruu muttered, unable to hide her surprise.

“That’s because I made it with lots of cream instead of just milk fat. You can tell how much richer it is, right?”

“The traip and karon milk give it a lot of sweetness, but the giba meat doesn’t clash with it at all. You didn’t use any sugar in this stew, did you?”

“Nope, no sugar or fruit wine. The sweetness comes from the traip and karon milk alone.”

Everyone looked surprised to hear that, especially Mikel and Myme, the latter of whom immediately said, “This really is incredibly good! I’ve never seen anyone handle traip this well before! Isn’t it amazing, dad?”

“I think if I were to see this dish being served at a restaurant in the castle town, it wouldn’t surprise me at all,” Mikel said with a light sigh, glancing over at Rimee Ruu. “I’m stunned. I never would’ve imagined a girl even younger than Myme could come up with something this impressive.”

“Oh, I just made it like Asuta told me!” Rimee Ruu said, actually squirming in embarrassment for once. I took that as proof of how happy Mikel’s words had made her.

After everyone had sampled the stew, Reina Ruu whispered to me, “Um, you said you wanted to have the Ruu clan take full responsibility for selecting and preparing all the soup we sell in town, didn’t you? So are you not planning on selling this dish?”

“Huh? Yeah, that’s right. I came up with this so we could have it for dinner here at the forest’s edge.”

“Then...could we have permission to sell it?”

I was taken aback. “Of course. I don’t mind. But you were finally just about to stop selling myamuu giba so that the only recipes you’d be using would be your own. Are you sure you want to borrow another of mine?”

“I think it would be good to use rainy season vegetables as much as possible during this time of year. Besides, we’re not foolish enough to do something stupid like stubbornly trying to be your rivals,” Reina Ruu remarked with a mature smile. “After all, we still aren’t done taking lessons from you, Asuta. And I don’t think any of us would be able to create such a wonderful dish using traip on our own yet, so yes, I would like to keep borrowing your skills.”

“Then what about the offal hot pot and that original stew you came up with?”

“I’d like to sell those as well, on alternating days. The townsfolk do seem to really enjoy them.”

Well, in that case, I certainly had no objections.

“All right then. I already taught Rimee Ruu the basic method for making it, so why don’t you all keep experimenting with it until you get it to your liking? To be honest, it’s not a dish I’m all that familiar with, so deciding how much traip and other stuff we were going to use was pretty much guesswork on my part.” After saying that, I turned toward Mikel. “Also, there’s something I want to discuss with you, Mikel. Could you teach Reina and Sheera Ruu how to get stock from kimyuus bones?”

“From kimyuus bones? But you already know how to get a fine stock from giba bones, don’t you?”

“Yes, but I get the feeling that kimyuus stock would suit this dish better than giba. Giba bone stock has a pretty quirky flavor to it, so I’m worried that it may ruin the overall taste.”

“Hmm...” Mikel muttered as he thought about my request.

In the meantime, I turned back toward Reina and Sheera Ruu. “Honestly, I’ve been wanting to use kimyuus stock in cream stew for a while now. It should make the dish quite a bit tastier, I think. Even the stew we just had felt incomplete to me.”

“Even that didn’t feel complete to you?” Reina Ruu asked. Neither she nor Sheera Ruu were able to hide their surprise. And then they turned toward Mikel in sync. “Mikel, if you know how to work with kimyuus bones, would you be willing to teach us?”

“Now that I think about it, Myme’s used boiled kimyuus bones in some of her own recipes, hasn’t she? And one of those dishes also uses karon milk, so I’d imagine it shares a lot of similarities with cream stew,” Sheera Ruu noted.

“If you want to make a first-rate stew, it’s only natural to prioritize the stock over what’s on the surface. The reason your stews have turned out so good is the excellent stock you’ve gotten from giba and vegetables,” Mikel replied, patting Myme’s small head with his hand. “If you want to learn how to work with bones, try watching her cook in the morning. If you take a little time to talk with her too, picking up on how it’s done should be no problem for you.”

“Thank you, Mikel!”

“Like I said, I’m just repaying my debt to the Ruu clan,” Mikel replied, still looking as sour as ever. At least for now, that settled things in regard to the traip stew.

Now we only had a few more dishes to show off, all of which were meant for our people to have for dinner, like the onda stir-fry and the simmered traip with minced giba meat. And then, finally, we had the desserts, which had been Toor Deen’s and Yun Sudra’s sole focus during the latter half of our study session. Their experiments with traip had ended up producing quite a few different treats.

Since traip had a strong taste, there were all sorts of ways that it could be used. You could knead it into a fuwano dough base or blend it with karon milk cream. You could also prepare a sweet traip sauce as a topping for chatchi mochi or steamed pudding. It really was every bit as versatile as the cocoa-like gigi leaves.

“So tasty! Teach me how to make this!” Rimee Ruu remarked.

In our group of nine, we had three girls with serious sweet tooths, and this was getting them really fired up.

Mikel, on the other hand, was grumbling, “I see. So that’s the girl who’s skilled enough to make a noble want to keep summoning her to the castle town. I wouldn’t be surprised if you get an offer to become their personal chef.”

He must have heard about that from Myme. Of course, his comment made Toor Deen shrink in on herself even more than Rimee Ruu had moments ago.

“By the way, what sort of noble was it? It’s not always a good thing to have someone too high up set their eyes on you.”

“Um, it was the granddaughter of the lord of Genos. She’s still only five or six years old.”

Mikel let out an astounded sigh. Now that I thought about it, Odifia was a direct descendant of the house of the duke. She was the first child of her father Melfried, so the person she married could easily become duke at some point down the line.

“Toor Deen, it sounds like you’ve caught the eye of a future duchess,” I commented tactlessly, causing Toor Deen to both go pale and blush at the same time. “Oh, I don’t think you need to worry about it so much. As long as Melfried’s around, Odifia won’t do anything too reckless. But I wouldn’t be surprised if ten years from now you’ll be getting called to the castle town every month to make desserts for her.”

The thought of a fifteen- or sixteen-year-old Odifia interacting with a twenty-one-year-old Toor Deen was one I really enjoyed.

“P-Please stop,” the young chef said, weakly clinging to my arm.

“Sorry about that. Still, all of these desserts are delicious. I think this baked traip cream sweet is my personal favorite.”

“I love the chatchi mochi! Ah, but the fuwano one was really good too,” Rimee Ruu said.

“I don’t think I could possibly choose between them. Right now, though, what I want most is to show everyone how good they are as soon as I can,” Yun Sudra added.

Then, Reina Ruu turned my way with a cheerful look. “It looks like we’ll be able to make all kinds of delicious meals even during the rainy season with what you three have taught us. Asuta, Mikel, Myme, thank you all so much for today.”

“Yeah. I’d say it turned out real well for our first study session. Now we should be able to have meals we can be satisfied with, even if we can’t use tino or tarapa.”

“Indeed. We have a number of people in our household who were born in the brown month, so I’m glad that we’ll still be able to make better food for them than we used to,” Mia Lea Ruu added with a smile.

“Huh. So, what I’m hearing is, it’s already the twenty-first of the brown month, but you still have a lot of birthdays to celebrate before it’s over. Is that right?”

“Yes. For some reason, they’re all clustered together in the back half of the month. We have five birthday banquets ahead of us—for our clan head, Jiza, Ludo, Vina, and now even Kota.”

It was definitely unusual to have that many in the span of less than ten days.

As I was marveling over that little fact, Rimee Ruu came over and tugged on my sleeve. “By the way, Ai Fa’s birthday is real soon too! Did you know that, Asuta?”

“Oh, I only heard that it was in the red month. Do you know the actual date, Rimee Ruu?”

“Of course! Ai Fa was born on the tenth of the red month!”

The red month was the one that was coming up after the brown. That meant that there were only around twenty days left until my clan head’s birthday.

“We’ll have to have a feast at the Fa house too, then. Thanks, Rimee Ruu.”

“No problem! You have to make sure you celebrate with Ai Fa, though, okay?! By the way, when’s your birthday, Asuta?”

That was a difficult question for me to answer. “Well, the method for keeping track of the date in my home country is different from how you do things on this continent. We didn’t have a thirteenth month every three years, so I doubt it’s even possible to make the calendars match up.”

“Huh?! Then what’re you gonna do? Are you gonna be seventeen forever?”

“No, that doesn’t sound like it would be very workable. I was thinking of making my birthday the day I arrived at the forest’s edge.”

That would mean that my birthday was the twenty-fourth of the yellow month. Fortunately, Ai Fa had made sure to remember the date.

“I see! I was born in the yellow month too, so we match! That makes me kinda happy for some reason!”

“The yellow month comes after the red and vermilion months. Even ignoring the fact that we had a gold month this time, it still hasn’t even been a year since you showed up at the forest’s edge,” Reina Ruu said admiringly. “And yet, you’ve managed to cause so much change in our lives. It makes me feel the need to thank the forest once again for bringing us together.”

“I feel really blessed to have met all of you too.”

With that, it was about time to wrap things up for the day. Everyone aside from Mikel got to work cleaning up. Mia Lea Ruu had said that she would take care of the washing, but I decided to go ahead and help her out with that.

“Every one of our households is sure to have a lively dinner tonight! Are you going to give lessons like this one to the women of the clans that live near you as well?” she asked me.

“Yeah. We’ve got prep work to do for tomorrow anyway, so they should already be gathered at our house. My plan is to teach them everything I can using the Fa clan’s dinner as an example.”

“We’ll have to find time to teach our branch houses and subordinate clans too! You’ll be coming here again the day after tomorrow, right?”

“Yeah. Things with the Sauti seem to have mostly settled down, so I should remain available for the time being. It would be nice if I could stop by every other day like I used to.”

“That would certainly make us happy! Just make sure to take care on your way back.”

After that, we said our farewells and started heading over to our wagon.

However, before we could depart, Mikel called out to me, “Hey. Have you met with that Shumiral man recently?”

“Shumiral? No. The Ririn clan is located pretty far away, so I haven’t seen him since I recovered from my illness. Do you think there’s something going on with him that we should know about?”

“No, never mind. If anything is going on with him, I’m sure they’d tell the Ruu clan right away on their own.”

Thinking back on it, it was none other than Shumiral who had brought me and Mikel together. They were both currently staying at the forest’s edge, but I had still never seen the two of them together. Actually, had Mikel ever even met Shumiral?

“He visited our house once, but all I told him was that there was no point in trying to get a guy like me involved in anything and sent him away. I always thought he was an odd fellow, but I never expected him to change gods and ask to marry into the forest’s edge.”

“Yeah. I never would have imagined that you and Shumiral would both end up living at the forest’s edge back then.” Figuring this was a good opportunity, I decided to press on with the conversation. “Um, Mikel, I’m not sure if I should say this...but I’m really happy that you and Myme are living at the forest’s edge now. You might not be allowed to remain here as guests for years on end, but I hope that you’ll stay for as long as you can.”

“Hmph. Well, hoping doesn’t bother anyone, I suppose, so you can go ahead and hope away to your heart’s content.”

That was pretty much the reaction I’d expected from Mikel. But even so, my heart felt a bit lighter now that I had shared my wish with him. I was also confident that Reina, Sheera, and Rimee Ruu had become a lot more attached to Mikel after this study session.

“All right, I’ll be going now. I’ll be back again the day after tomorrow, so I hope I’ll be able to count on you then too.”

Pulling up the hood of my rain gear, I stepped outside into the light drizzle that was still falling.