Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari (LN) - Volume 18 - Chapter 5

Chapter Five: Ultimate Soup Stock 

It was afternoon on the following day. 
Glass and some of the others had taken Kizuna out hunting to boost her level a bit prior to our departure for the special chef’s place, and they had just returned. I was starting to feel like I’d only really been doing three things recently: fight, train, or cook. I really wanted to add someone to the party who could cook instead of me. Prior to our departure, I was in the kitchen, handing over my cooking duties to one of the other staff. That was when Kizuna, Raphtalia, and the others came to find me. 
I greeted them with a big yawn. I’d been up all night, but even I wasn’t entirely sure how—or why—things had come to that. 
“Mr. Naofumi, are you okay?” Raphtalia asked. 
“I’m fine, although I’d like to get some sleep while we travel,” I said. I hadn’t had a wink since yesterday. It had felt like a waste of time to do so. 
“Master, you smell nice,” Filo said. 
“I’ve been cooking some really difficult and long-winded dishes,” I explained. 
“Raph!” added Raph-chan. 
“Of course, Raph-chan has been helping out. S’yne’s familiar too,” I said. They had turned up in the night and helped out in all sorts of useful ways. Being covered in fur meant there were some tasks I’d been worried about leaving to her, but Raph-chan had been one step ahead of me. She had put on what was basically a sack and hood from which only her little paws protruded, protecting the food from her fur. 
S’yne ordered her familiar to help and had donned the same kind of outfit. S’yne herself had freaked me out by staying in the kitchen and sleeping with her eyes open. 
“I see . . . I’ll help out next time, okay?” Raphtalia said. S’yne didn’t say anything but gave a taunting victory sign, at which Raphtalia puffed up her cheeks belligerently. 
“What’s this, Raphtalia? Feeling like S’yne and Raph-chan have got one over on you?” I taunted. 
“No! Nothing like that!” she shot back at once. Hah, she was so easy to understand. Raph-chan was more attentive to my needs, that was true, but Raphtalia still did a lot to help out. She would periodically help out with cooking, and always lend a hand when things needed washing up. 
“There is some unique fantasy-world technology that helps out with things, like controlling the temperature too,” I said. Sometimes I did have to use firewood or charcoal to make adjustments, but they had a device here that was almost like a gas stove and operated on ofuda and made it pretty easy to control the heat when cooking. It was probably quite expensive to use, but this was L’Arc’s castle, and no one had bothered me about it yet. 
Whenever I was cooking, anyway—and it had been the same in Siltvelt and Q’ten Lo—any other chefs in the vicinity would come over, eyes sparkling, to look at what I was doing. Some of them did kind of give me dirty looks, but that was likely a case of trying to save face. I could see my presence impinging on the pride of those in the top-chef positions. 
After a little while, though, those types either just went away again or changed their tune and started taking notes. 
“I can’t wait to start eating!” Filo said. 
“I’m going to be trying all sorts of new things, so you’ve got plenty to look forward to,” I told her. 
“Great!” she replied. 
“Raph!” said Raph-chan. This scene, prior to our departure, was observed with slightly puzzled expressions from Kizuna and her allies, including Glass and L’Arc. Ethnobalt was back at the Ancient Labyrinth Library, performing some further searches with the intent of providing us with more information. He had practiced the use of life force and had developed skills much like Rishia, so he could fight well enough even on his own. He was the master librarian, after all. 
Itsuki and Rishia, meanwhile, were going to focus on reading ancient texts with Ethnobalt and aid the preparations in fighting the waves in the castle town and other countries. 
“Whatever are you making, kiddo?” L’Arc asked. 
“Just experimenting, really. I hope you’ll give me your thoughts after you’ve tasted it,” I said. I had my own culinary failures—of course I did. I was always experimenting and verifying things. “For example—and Raphtalia probably already gets this—I’m looking at the difference created in the final quality by the timing of imbuing life force into the dish. Stuff like that.” 
“I do have some idea what you mean,” Raphtalia said. 
“That’s why I can only let you taste it once I’ve made the very best I can. Otherwise, all this time will have been wasted,” I told them. What I really wanted to compare was how big a gap could be created between two versions of the same dish, one easy to make and the other more difficult. 
“So this is the stuff you are putting your all into, kiddo . . .” L’Arc, Kizuna, and all her other allies seemed to swallow in unison. I almost asked them if having to eat so much of my cooking really was such a problem. At the moment, they looked like they couldn’t wait to tuck in. 
“You say ‘putting my all into,’ but that’s the issue. After learning how to add life force, I performed some simple verifications of the technique, and since then I have been slacking off. So I’m trying to find a comfortable point between the two,” I explained. 
“I see,” Raphtalia said. 
“I’d really like you and Kizuna to both help me out and polish your own skills,” I told them. “Especially you, Kizuna. You might need this once we’ve gone back to our world.” 
“No way! I can’t hope to become as good at this as you, Naofumi!” Kizuna wailed. 
“I also doubt I can match your skills, Mr. Naofumi. Remember that time you recreated that dish for Fohl based just on his testimony?” Raphtalia said, striking at me unexpectedly from behind. There had been a time when Fohl had wanted to make a dish for Atla that their parents used to make. He hadn’t been pleased with his own attempts, but I had recreated it based on his description of the flavor. It sounded like that was weighing on Raphtalia’s mind a little, but . . . I wouldn’t know about that. 
“It’s not that hard. You’ll have to rely on Ethnobalt otherwise,” I told her. He was likely the only one among Kizuna’s allies who could consciously imbue things with life force. Glass and some of the others could apply it in battle, but they couldn’t use it when making things. 

“You’re good at taking things apart, Kizuna, so you should at least master its applications to sashimi and hot pots,” I said. Because Kizuna loved fishing, she also loved fish recipes and often made sashimi and fish stews. If she took the time to learn the skills, I was pretty sure she could make something very similar to me. It didn’t have to be anything too flashy. 
“Raphtalia, we have someone in the village who loves to cook, right? They managed to do this, with proper teaching,” I told her. I was talking about the person who handled all the cooking in the village. I mean, you would have to pretty much devote yourself to cooking in order to recreate what I was doing here, that much was true. I’d make the judgment in terms of them having reached a point that was good enough, but from which further progress would be difficult. 
“I’ll do my best,” Raphtalia said. 
“Good to hear,” I said. The chefs in L’Arc’s castle had also made similar dishes in the past. They were able to overcome certain differences in the recipes because they were specialist chefs. I’d imbued everything with plenty of life force, so the castle staff should be able to handle the rest of this. 
“Wow . . . there’s a whole row of big pots over there. Did they all have the same thing in them?” Kizuna asked. 
“No. I’m making bouillon, fond, and consommé. All using local ingredients, of course, so it’s a little different from the official recipe,” I reported. 
“They all look the same to me. How are they different?” Kizuna asked. I shook my head, appalled that Kizuna didn’t know the difference. 
“They all look like scalp to me,” L’Arc muttered. That was the name for something close to consommé in L’Arc’s nation. 
“You’re a king and you can’t tell the difference between some simple dishes?” I accused. 
“Shut it! Let me eat them and I’ll tell you the difference, but I don’t know what they look like when they are being made,” he retorted. I had to admit, bouillon, fond, and consommé did all look very similar. 
“That brown was already finished beforehand, wasn’t it?” Kizuna asked. 
“No, that’s fond de veau. The original recipe uses calf bones and sinews, fried until brown and then boiled. The Maillard reaction creates the color. This time I used parts from a similar kind of monster and browned them in the oven,” I explained. 
“So it’s a meat soup?” Kizuna asked. 
“That’s right. There are all sorts of varieties of it. Those using fish or other fowl can still be a ‘fond’ but have a different name,” I said, pointing to a white fish fumet de poisson and chicken fond de volaille. “There’s a boar monster that has a similar quality to the meat, so it might be closer to a fond de gibier? The flavor is more like a fond de veau, however, so that’s what I’m calling it.” After this, I was also planning on further simmering the fond de veau and creating a glace de viande to check what that did to the experience rate. 
“You’re getting far too specialized for me,” Raphtalia said, seemingly giving up already. I’d only said all this because they asked about it! 
“The next step is to turn them into things like stews. You’ll find they taste completely different from the more easily created ones,” I said. These things were a pain to create even back in Japan, but the extra effort paid off in flavor. Stew had been one of my brother’s favorite dishes. I’d rarely bothered to make one of the fancy ones, though, due to all the extra work they took. 
“You’ve been cooking instead of sleeping, huh?” Kizuna said. 
“Pretty much. There are some things you can overlook when cooking and some things that you absolutely have to do. These elements here are the stuff you can’t slack off on, but that also seems to really increase the experience they offer, so it’s definitely not wasted effort,” I stated. 
“Kiddo . . . look at you, doing all this for us . . .” L’Arc said. I did a double take. L’Arc, Glass, and Kizuna were all looking at me quite intently. I wondered if I’d said anything out of place. 
“Anyway, the one that takes the most work—and is the most important—is the bouillon. You can’t get anywhere without that. Raphtalia, Kizuna, I need you both to learn it. Everyone back home can make it!” I said. It was made with careful preparation of the chicken bones and beef sinew, which were then stewed along with the vegetables. You had to start on a high heat, turn it down low as soon as it boiled, and make sure to scrape off the scum and fat that floated to the top. Once the stewing was finished, a careful straining completed the dish. It could then be used as the base for all sorts of dishes, so it was worth learning—a soup stock that could be used in lots of different recipes. Of course, once you got into things like the ratio of ingredients, there was no end to it, so it also tended to reflect my personal tastes quite strongly, but I had tried to arrange this one to suit the tastes of L’Arc and the others. 
“It looks so clear and beautiful,” Filo said, her eyes glittering as she looked at the bouillon. “Like you could just drink it like this.” 
“It’s a stock, not a finished dish,” I warned her. 
“Okay,” she said. 
“You start here and then proceed to making the fond de veau and consommé,” I said. Making these was mainly a fight against scum and turbidity. “Bouillon is like the ultimate soup stock.” 
“If you say so,” Kizuna said, a little cowed by my proclamation. She was going to be making this soon, in any case. 
“Kizuna, Raphtalia, you both still just lack experience. I’ll teach you some recipes that use bouillon for a small number of people, so make sure you learn them later,” I told them. Just making ten liters of bouillon used a considerable volume of ingredients—sometimes an equal volume of beef sinew and chicken bones. 
“What! I’m the Hunting Hero! I don’t handle the cooking part!” Kizuna complained. 
“And I’m the Shield Hero!” I retorted. Not the Stewpot Hero! If anyone called me that, I would kill them with cookery! 
“Seeing how the sausage actually gets made, I can understand why your food is so deadly delicious,” Glass murmured, her eyes distant. 
“I just need you to learn this stuff. You too, Glass,” I replied. 
Then we started out toward the town with the famous chef. It wasn’t a nation we could reach using Return Dragon Vein. In order to make getting around easier once we were there, we were taking a big mirror with us to place there once we arrived. The mirror vassal weapon had skills that allowed me to move via mirrors. However, I couldn’t help but feel—instinctually, almost—that this cluster of skills had another purpose too. The only way to work that out would be with some repeated experimentation. 
In any case, taking a mirror with us meant we’d be able to move around in a similar way to S’yne’s needles. 
That night, Kizuna and the others ate too much again. It felt like less of a burden than overeating, however. I had been careful to select foods that offered a bit more of a compromise.