Now that we had arrived, we first had to cleanse ourselves in the bathhouse. Since it was their first time using one, the Deen and Liddo hunters got all worked up like little kids, but Cheem Sudra had attended the previous banquet, so he was perfectly calm.
After our men and women had finished taking turns getting cleaned up, Polarth came to greet us, accompanied by two soldiers. “Ah, we’ve been waiting for you. There seem to be some unfamiliar faces among you, so allow me to introduce myself. I am Polarth of the house of Daleim, and I have been tasked with being the assistant mediator between the castle town and the people of the forest’s edge.”
Since it was their first time meeting him, the Deen and Liddo hunters looked serious once more and gave their names.
“Hmm, the Deen and Liddo are subordinates of the leading Zaza clan, correct?” Polarth asked. “Sir Gulaf Zaza has been very helpful to me in the past, and I am quite grateful to him.”
“We’re grateful to you too. I’ve wanted to offer you my thanks for some time now,” the Deen man said.
“Your thanks? Whatever for?”
“You lent us your aid back when that noble kidnapped Asuta, didn’t you? You helped us save him, and that is very much worthy of our gratitude.”
Polarth grinned bashfully. “That was nearly a year ago. Of course, I’ve found it extremely gratifying to have been able to forge such a strong bond with the people of the forest’s edge in that time. Now then, why don’t we head to the kitchen?”
Polarth led us to the massive kitchen that was the manor’s pride and joy, where there were around twenty other chefs waiting for us—even more than had been at the last study session. Those present included Varkas and his three apprentices; Roy, his unofficial assistant; Yang, the head chef of the house of Daleim; and Timalo, who was in charge of Selva’s Spear. The few who were seeing people of the forest’s edge for the first time seemed rather nervous, unsurprisingly.
For the time being, Ai Fa and the Deen hunter came inside while Cheem Sudra and the Liddo hunter stood watch outside of the door. As the person in charge, Ai Fa had been the one who had made that decision.
“Thank you for waiting,” Polarth said, speaking in his capacity as both a mediator with the people of the forest’s edge and an assistant to the officer in charge of external affairs, the latter being relevant because today’s session involved goods being brought in from other lands. “I am truly glad to have been able to gather so many chefs here today. It is my hope that all of you will be able to come up with some wonderful ideas about how to effectively utilize these new ingredients to bring even more prosperity to Genos. Our main focus will be the foodstuffs that were delivered to us the other day from the capital and Barud, as well as the hoboi oil that has arrived from Jagar and the shaska we acquired from Sym. I would now like to have Sir Varkas and Sir Timalo explain a few things about them to start us off.”
Unsurprisingly, the two of them had once again been given the role of teaching us all about the new ingredients. They had been the head and assistant head chef for the house of Turan back when it had been monopolizing all of the imported ingredients it could, so it made sense to have them do that. But while Timalo looked all fired up, Varkas appeared to be as unenthused as always. He had a rather strongly held belief that chefs whose skills he didn’t acknowledge shouldn’t be allowed to use rare and valuable ingredients.
“The majority of the ingredients from the capital are dried goods which can be very effective at adding depth to a dish’s flavor, and each of them has a variety of potential uses,” Timalo triumphantly began, paying no attention to Varkas as the man just stood there silently. At the last study session, the ingredients that had been delivered from the capital had been provided to us in relatively small quantities, so I hadn’t been able to do much more with them than using dried fish and seaweed to create a stock for black fuwano dipping soba. This time, though, in addition to those two making a reappearance, there were a bunch of other kinds of dried seafood that looked like crustaceans, shellfish, and octopuses. “You can add water to them and use them as normal ingredients, or you can create a broth with a rather unique flavor by boiling them. These ingredients all come from the ocean, so they go quite well with one another. However, they also tend to clash in flavor with a great many of the ingredients we usually work with, so whether any given chef is able to master them will be up to their own individual skills.”
Timalo was really energetic as he spoke. He greatly enjoyed both showing off his own skills and instructing others. Many of the people in the room with us were probably business rivals of his, but he never held back at all when it came to sharing his knowledge.
The first time we shared a kitchen and competed against each other at a big dinner, I remember him saying that he wouldn’t use any ingredients that I didn’t know how to work with. Maybe he thinks there’s no point in a competition if it isn’t on an even playing field.
Timalo had a ton of confidence in himself, but he was also rather fastidious, and fairness was important to him. That was something he demonstrated very thoroughly in the previous study session. As he continued to talk, I noticed Polarth looking quite pleased with him.
“Sir Asuta, I heard that you have only been using the dried fish and seaweed, so were you not interested in the other ingredients?” Timalo suddenly threw a question my way.