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Since it wasn’t actually rice, it was possible that there wasn’t a need to wash it in water to remove the bran. Even so, I tried washing it in two of my four tests to see what would happen. I wanted to know if doing so would reduce the shaska’s stickiness a little. It appeared to be significantly stickier than even glutenous rice, so that was the first issue I would need to overcome if I wanted to make it into my ideal substitute for rice.
As part of my efforts in pursuit of that goal, I made sure to carefully measure the amount of water I was using. My initial assumption was that I would need more water than Tatumai had used. His aim had been to have it all absorbed by the shaska, but you needed more than that in order to steam rice.
Back in my home country, one would typically use one-point-four to one-point-five times as much water as rice if measuring by weight. And since I was experimenting here, I decided to try using water in two different proportions, the first being one-point-five times as much weight as the shaska, and the other one-point-seven. I was also making two batches of each, one washed and the other not, and those were my four variations.
Getting the strength of the flames right was also going to be crucial, but all I had was my limited experience with cooking rice using a mess kit to help me figure that out. My old man had shown me how to cook rice in earthenware pots plenty of times, but since I was dealing with metal ones here, a mess kit would be a closer approximation.
Well, I went camping with my old man and Reina once a year, so I should be able to manage.
I lit one of the stoves in the kitchen while explaining my plan to Reina Ruu, Sheera Ruu, and Toor Deen, and then they did the same, following my lead. We were going to start slow, then increase the heat later. That meant using a medium flame at first until the heat permeated our pots, and once steam started coming out around the edges of the lids, we would build up to a strong fire. However, the steam made the lids rattle in a way that made me uneasy, so we put some weights that were sitting nearby on top of them. The shaska was probably dancing around inside the pots. Or maybe it was clumping together into a single mass because of the differences between it and the rice I was used to. Honestly, there was no way of knowing until we lifted the lids.
The other chefs were all standing around watching us as we worked. They probably had difficulty understanding what exactly I was trying to do, and not just the chefs seeing shaska for the first time, but Varkas and his apprentices too.
Eventually, two of the lids that had been rattling so intensely that it seemed like the pots were constantly about to boil over settled down, so we reduced the flames back down to medium strength. However, the ones where I had added more water were still rattling as hard as ever. Because of the extra water, they hadn’t fully run out of steam yet. That meant I had broken the ironclad rule to never turn the heat down until the pot stopped making noise, but that was why I had used more water in the first place.
“Okay, let’s go ahead and remove the lids from these two. Be careful though, because they’re gonna release a bunch of steam.”
After giving my fellow chefs from the forest’s edge that warning, I removed one of the lids myself, and just as expected, there was a big burst of steam. My comrades remained calm and collected, but the people around us made some surprised noises.
Once the steam settled down a bit, I peeked inside and found the white shaska dancing around in the boiling water. It at least hadn’t turned into one big mass, so I used a ladle to remove the excess water from the pot, placing it in an empty bowl. I wanted to take a look at it later.
“Asuta, why did you use so much water in these pots? I don’t understand what the point of that was if you were just going to remove it later,” Myme asked, her eyes sparkling with curiosity.
As I repeated the process with the second pot, I replied, “One of the things I’m trying to do is make the shaska less sticky. My hope was that whatever causes it to do that would dissolve into the extra water, but I’m not sure if it actually worked out that way.”
This was based on what my old man had taught me about how to prepare indica rice, which was used a lot in southeast asia. It started out less sticky than Japanese rice, but people would often twice-boil it to make it even less so.
In Japan, one would typically cook rice in a precisely measured amount of water in order to make sure that it would absorb as much as it needed to soften up without getting gooey. But in southeast Asia, it was often eaten as fried rice or served with curry, so people there had come up with ways to reduce its stickiness further.
There was a story from out of the pages of history that my old man had told me about once. “Way before you were born, there was this huge rice shortage. Cold weather caused a ton of damage to rice fields all over Japan, and a lot of it couldn’t be harvested. Because of that, we ended up having to import a bunch of indica rice from elsewhere, but there was a problem with that. You can’t cook that stuff the same way you would cook Japanese rice. They’re totally different varieties of rice, so you have to approach them in different ways if you want them to turn out well.” Apparently, trying to cook indica rice like Japanese rice made it come out all dry. But most people in Japan hadn’t known that at the time, so they had ended up believing that indica rice simply tasted bad. “If they were gonna sell us all that indica rice, they should’ve taught us about twice-boiling. And if they had told us how to make tasty fried rice too, they would’ve gotten way fewer complaints,” my father had concluded.
Anyway, setting my old man’s opinions on the matter aside, that was what had led to me learning all about indica rice and twice-boiling. Of course, shaska was a very different beast, being more sticky than Japanese rice rather than less, but that was where I had gotten my inspiration from.
“The extra water looks all white and murky. Is that from the stuff that makes the shaska sticky?” Myme asked, pulling my attention back to reality.
As I buried the image of my old man’s big grin in the back of my mind, I nodded and said, “Yeah, probably. And I’m sure some of the shaska’s nutrients dissolved in there too, so if we start using shaska at the forest’s edge, I’ll try to find a way to use this broth in a different dish.”
“I see. I’m really looking forward to seeing what you do with shaska, Asuta.”
Then Reina Ruu chimed in. “Asuta, the steam has gone away and it’s stopped boiling now. Does that mean all the moisture is gone?”
“Oh, yeah. Let’s take them off the heat, then.”
Just like Shilly Rou and the others had done before, we grabbed the pots by the handles and moved them over to unlit stoves. Now the shaska needed to steam, which would take between fifteen and thirty minutes.
Polarth was wringing his hands like he could hardly wait any longer. “So, all that is left is to wait? Doing it this way seems to take quite a bit of time, but it does appear to be far easier than the ordinary method.”
“That’s true, but you do have to be careful to use the right amount of water, and to manage the flame properly,” I noted.
At this point, the chefs were all whispering to their acquaintances. That even included Varkas, who was conversing with Tatumai. Shilly Rou and Bozl were discussing something too.
Roy, on the other hand, had nothing to do and nobody to talk to, so he approached me and said, “Hey. I never expected that you would know how to work with shaska of all things. And you seem pretty passionate about it too, even though it’s got nothing to do with giba meat.”
“Yeah. If I can prepare shaska the way I want, it’ll really expand the range of giba dishes I can prepare. To be honest, it’s been a while since I’ve felt this excited.”
“Hmm. Then I’d love to have you show it off at that banquet at the forest’s edge.”
Polarth, who was standing a bit off to the side, reacted to those words with interest. “Ah. So you’re one of the chefs who’s been invited to the banquet at the forest’s edge? You’re Varkas’s apprentice, um...”
“My name is Roy. I was unable to become one of Varkas’s apprentices, though. Instead, I currently work under them,” Roy said with a bow and an incredibly serious look on his face. I didn’t think I had ever seen him interact with a noble before, or at least, I was sure it hadn’t been very often.
“I see,” Polarth replied, rubbing his plump cheek. “There is actually something I wished to convey to everyone from the forest’s edge about that. And since all of you who were invited to their banquet are here, I wonder if you and the others would be able to remain behind after we finish with this demonstration so you can listen in.”
“I can do that, and I’ll tell the others to stick around as well,” Roy said with another bow, then he quickly stepped away to speak to Shilly Rou and Bozl.
“What’s this about? Is there some sort of issue with the friendship banquet?” I asked.
“No, I wouldn’t say that... Or perhaps there is? Well, either way, this is something I would rather not have uninvolved parties overhear, so we’ll be discussing it in another room after this,” Polarth said, shooting me a smile. “Before that, though, we have shaska to try. You seem quite excited about it, Sir Asuta, so I find myself becoming quite eager to see how it turns out.”