“Umm...” I uttered as I got my thoughts in order. “I wouldn’t say I wasn’t interested. But just like you said, these ingredients have strong flavors that make them well suited to being the core of a dish, and at the forest’s edge, our custom is to always use giba meat for that. And, well, I believed those flavors would probably clash somewhat.”
“Hmm. At the previous banquet, you utilized giba meat and dried maroll together, did you not? I was quite impressed with that dish... Still, I suppose creating a recipe like that cannot be easy, even for one such as you.”
Timalo was referring to the giba and maroll okonomiyaki I had presented to the observers. It actually hadn’t been that hard to come up with the concept, since I had based it on a pork and shrimp mix I was familiar with, but it would probably be very difficult to pair ingredients that were more like crustaceans and octopuses with giba meat.
On top of that, at the forest’s edge it was seen as improper to dispose of the ingredients we used to make stock. And besides, I didn’t really see a need to bring any more kinds of animal protein to the forest’s edge in the first place.
“So, Sir Asuta, if you were to not use giba meat, you wouldn’t find it difficult to work with ingredients like these?” Varkas finally interjected after having been completely silent so far.
“Yeah,” I replied. “Personally, I find it easier to bring different kinds of seafood together without other meats. For example, seafood curry would probably be quite tasty.”
Though Varkas was still standing there expressionlessly, I could see his body swaying a bit as if he were dizzy. “You would use these ingredients in that curry dish? Just imagining it is making my chest feel tight with anticipation.”
“Ah, sorry, but I don’t have any plans to make something like that for now.”
Setting aside my personal preferences, the people of the forest’s edge didn’t have any interest in dishes that didn’t use giba meat.
When he heard my response, Varkas gave a disappointed sigh and said, “I see.”
Timalo paid him no heed and went back to his explanation. “You should each take some of these dried ingredients back with you and check their tastes on your own. Though they are terribly expensive, I guarantee that their strong flavors justify their prices.”
After that, Timalo launched into an explanation on how to rehydrate the dried ingredients and how to get a delicious stock from them, while a scribe made notes about the steps as he spoke. Once he had finished explaining all of that, we moved on to the ingredients the Black Flight Feathers had brought from Barud.
“At present, these are the ingredients we have enough of to spare. Tinfa, lemirom, buleh beans, and dried aneira.” Tinfa was like napa cabbage, lemirom was akin to broccoli, buleh beans were similar to red beans, and aneira was something like a flying fish. Timalo seemed to have experience with using all of them, so he once again launched into an exultant speech on how they could be utilized. Tinfa and lemirom could be boiled or sautéed, while buleh beans were best boiled just like tau beans, according to Timalo. “Sir Asuta, you’ve already tried these ingredients, correct? Were you able to come up with any good ways to use them?”
“Ah, yes. Tinfa doesn’t have a strong flavor, so it should be fine to use it the same way you’d use tino. As for lemirom, it’s got a fairly strong grassy flavor to it even after it’s been cooked, so I get the feeling it would be well suited to pairing with milk products like karon milk or gyama dried milk, or with highly sour ingredients like tarapa and mamaria vinegar.” The kind of recipes I was thinking of that used those sour ingredients were things like mayonnaise, ketchup, and other dressings.
With a very serious look on his face, Timalo nodded and said, “I see. It seems you have a complete understanding of the unique taste of lemirom as well. When I cook with lemirom myself, I generally employ milk fat.”
“Oh, milk fat would be good too. I really love using it,” I replied without thinking, a broccoli and butter stir-fry coming to mind.
Timalo blinked, looking a little like that had caught him off guard. “I see. I admit, I wasn’t expecting you to be so positive about preparing them that way, Sir Asuta. After all, our cooking methods are very different.”
“That’s true, but I’d imagine we’ve got plenty of overlap on the fundamentals.”
Timalo seemed to be having trouble figuring out what sort of face to make, but ultimately he settled on an awkward smile. “So, what about the buleh beans? They remain rather tough even if you sauté them, so I believe the only way to cook them is to boil them.”
“Yeah. The other thing I was thinking was that I’d like to mix them with sugar and use them as an ingredient in a dessert.”
“A dessert?! That’s...quite the novel idea.”
Unfortunately, the ingredients from Barud were in short supply, just like last time, so we were only going to get enough to do a few experiments with them. If I could get my hands on a sufficient amount eventually, though, I really wanted to teach Toor Deen and Rimee Ruu how to make something like sweet red bean paste with them.
That just left the dried aneira, but they were fairly similar to the seafood that had come from the capital, so I didn’t really have anything to say about them. Varkas didn’t so much as open his mouth either, so we ended up moving right along to the next ingredient.
“Next up is hoboi oil, correct? With your permission, I would like to say a few things about it in place of my master Varkas,” Bozl said as he stepped forward from the crowd. He was one of Varkas’s apprentices, a man from Jagar with a robust build. Smiling widely, he looked out over the crowd with his bright green eyes. “Just the other day, I was finally able to learn how to make hoboi oil from a fellow southerner. It isn’t all that different from reten oil, so I don’t believe you would have much difficulty making it from hoboi seeds you buy personally.”