Cooking with Wild Game (LN) - Volume 3 - Chapter 2.3

3

Currently, it was the middle of the evening. We had our chance encounter with Kamyua Yoshu this morning in the post town, and then Gazraan Rutim and Ama Min were waiting for us upon our return, leaving me seriously overloaded. And so, I threw myself into my cooking to temporarily avoid reality.

However, today’s menu was super simple. Excluding the baked poitan, it took less than an hour to finish.

In the metal pot, I simmered aria and tino. Then, I sat some extra aria and tino atop a pseudo-rubber tree leaf, for adding in later. I cut the aria into slices and wedges, and the cabbage-like tino into bite-sized pieces. Beside it I placed giba meat, with the three varieties of rib meat, roast, and shoulder meat. I tried to make the cuts around five millimeters thick, which was as thin as I could manage, and then arranged them in a neat circular shape.

Atop a wooden plate was a reddish, sticky liquid. It was a dipping sauce I had made using a fruit wine base. I heated up the fruit wine until the alcohol burned off, and then I fine tuned the flavor using salt and pico leaf. It had a nice, sweet flavor to it that I’m sure Donda Ruu would complain about.

“Alright! It’s finished, Ai Fa!”

Ai Fa looked back at me with a face that said, “What is?”

Well, I’m sure from the point of view of the people of the forest’s edge, it would look like I had just lined up some raw meat.

“This is called shabu-shabu. You use that boiling water to cook the meat, and then you eat it.”

The question mark floating above Ai Fa’s head still didn’t disappear.

Well, I guess it was simpler to have her experience it firsthand rather than trying to explain it. And so, I pulled out the secret weapon I had prepared for this day.

I had shaved down a nearly scentless grigee branch, making a pair of chopsticks.

“First, you put the meat into the pot like this.”

I heard a strange “Wha...!” sound, and when I turned around to look, for some reason Ai Fa’s face had turned red and she was covering her mouth.

“What? What is it? I don’t think I did anything embarrassing...”

“S-Shut up! What is with that gross way you’re moving?!”

“Hmm? This is just how you use chopsticks,” I said, clacking my chopsticks together, only for Ai Fa to go “Wha! Wha!” as her face grew all the more red... Apparently she was just embarrassed by the way she couldn’t suppress her own surprise.

“Moving on... You place the meat in the water like this and then slowly move it side to side, until all of the red is gone. Shabu-shabu. Shabu-shabu.”

“...What is that strange chant?”

“It’s a good luck charm, so that the meat will cook nice and tasty.”

Then, when the rib looked nice and properly cooked, I placed it atop Ai Fa’s wooden plate. And I grabbed some of the aria and tino flickering about inside the pot, too.

“The issue is, it’d be a little tricky to eat the three aria you need a day. Ah, anyway, eat up. If you’re not fond of it, we could switch over to a regular stew.”

She then muttered something inside her mouth. No wait, I knew what it was now: a chant of thanks for the forest’s blessings and towards me. Even then, Ai Fa still looked at the wooden plate with a bit of doubt.

Using her wooden spoon, she scooped up the meat and aria soaked in sauce and chucked it into her mouth.

“Shabu-shabu. Shabu-shabu... Well, how’s the taste?”

“...It’s soft.”

“Well, that makes sense, since it’s rib meat. Here, try out some leg meat next.”

“...It’s harder than it is in the soup.”

“Shabu-shabu. Shabu-shabu.” That was probably enough of that. “Lastly, there’s the roast.”

“...It’s soft.”

“No, um, now that the showdown with Donda Ruu is over, I’m not especially concerned with firmness. If it’s not to your taste, I could switch it over to a soup. What do you think?”

Ai Fa was deep in thought, a serious look on her face. In the meantime, I went, “Shabu-shabu” while boiling my own rib meat.

“You don’t have to worry about it so much. Why not just throw your thoughts out there?”

She still didn’t respond, so I went ahead and tossed my cooked rib meat into my mouth.

Ah, this is good.

After more than 10 days of nothing but steak and hamburgers, this sort of boiled meat felt entirely fresh, and I just couldn’t get enough of it.

We had eaten a meat soup at the Ruu house, but there really is a subtle difference between just heating something up and boiling it. Plus, this was shabu-shabu. The aria and tino flavored the soup slightly, then I threw in a bit of rock salt, and there was the fruit wine sauce, but those were the only bits of flavoring, so there was no deception here. But then, there was no need for that, as the giba meat was just that powerful. It was such a rich, direct meat flavor, flowing out more and more as I chewed, leaving me hesitating as to when I should even swallow.

It really was a bit quirky, and I got the feeling it was a bit tougher than pork, but since I cut it so thin there was no issue there. Even when I tried the toughest cut, the leg meat, it wasn’t too chewy at all, instead having a perfect texture.

“Man, this is delicious! Well, that’s what I think, but what about you?”

She still looked to be a little lost in thought, but Ai Fa still responded, “It’s good. It’s just... it feels a little slow, only being able to eat a bit at a time.”

“Ah, yeah, I can understand how you feel. I frequently get pretty tired of it in the back half, too, and just want to chuck it all in. Especially with pork... No wait, giba, which needs to be heated thoroughly till all the red is gone.”

“So why don’t you just do that from the start?”

“Eh? Hmm...No, well, that is one way to eat it. The benefit to doing it this way is that each and every bit comes out nice and piping hot, I guess. To be honest, I haven’t eaten this dish all that much myself.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah. I mean, we didn’t serve shabu-shabu at the shop, after all. And we didn’t eat out much, but my mom...” I said, suddenly hesitating without thinking, but now that I’d come this far, I had to finish my statement. “...When my mom was alive, she’d make it now and again.”

Based on what happened back at the post town I figured it was best to not talk too concretely about my old world, but was that really the case?

Ai Fa’s eyes narrowed just a bit, and she looked down at the boiling pot.

As I scratched my head, I threw a bit of firewood into the stove.

“...How old were you when your mother lost her life?”

“Hmm? I was seven. What about it?”

“So young...?” Ai Fa said. As she looked up, I could see the surprise clearly on her face. “So then, you haven’t eaten this dish ever since?”

“Ah, well yeah, probably. When it was just me and my old man, hot pots just seemed too lonely... Ah, no, but it doesn’t feel lonely with us two now, though, right?”

“...?”

“Gah! I dug my own grave there! No, you see, going with a hot pot is kind of a staple for family cooking, I guess... So when my family went from three to two, it just felt a bit lonely to me! Sorry for the gloomy subject!”

Ai Fa blinked in surprise, looking like she didn’t quite get it.

“I can’t say I fully understand. So you don’t find it unpleasant to eat this meal together with just me?”

“If I did, then I wouldn’t have made it, right?”

“I see. I’m glad... Now I don’t need to hit you.”

“That really is good!”

“...Hand me that,” Ai Fa said, sticking out her right hand.

“Eh? You mean the chopsticks? Didn’t you call them gross?”

“You made extras, though, didn’t you?”

She noticed, huh?

I had prepared an extra pair of chopsticks, hidden behind the ladle and plate meant for scooping scum.

“Well, I mean, I thought maybe you could use them, so I made them, but these are pretty tricky, you know?”

“It wouldn’t make sense for me to be unable to use them when you can,” Ai Fa said, her frown growing deeper.

And so, I gave a hurried lecture on how to handle chopsticks while making sure the aria and tino didn’t get overcooked.

“Oh, this is simple,” Ai Fa said while successfully grabbing a wedge of aria just three minutes later.

Hmm... Well, she’s got a good grip on it, so it’s fine, but she definitely didn’t have the proper form down. She had her first chopstick between her thumb and index finger, while the second was between her middle finger and ring finger, but she was handling them even more skillfully than I was.

It wouldn’t look perfect as a silhouette, but well, I guess I should just drop the matter for now.

“Right, then let’s get back to it! Be sure to keep eating the aria, alright? Well, if there’s extra though, we can just sauté it with the meat at the end.”

I saw Ai Fa nodding “Yeah,” out of the corner of my eye, then I added some more firewood and bit into some baked poitan.

“Asuta, where is this meat from?”

“That’s the roast. It comes from the back.”

“I see,” Ai Fa said, putting the meat in the pot, and then... “Shabu-shabu, shabu-shabu,” she started chanting.

I unwittingly spit out the poitan I was chewing and started choking.

“What are you doing? Don’t waste food,” she said while glaring at me, then continued on, “Shabu-shabu, shabu-shabu.”

While desperately holding back my laughter I told her, “If it’s too much of a hassle, you can just do it in your head.” Even so, I hoped from the depths of my heart that I could enjoy this sight just a little while longer.