I had decided on a direction to take. I would popularize soybeans and potatoes, currently used as livestock feed, as food for humans. If soybeans were presented as edamame and potatoes as french fries, I doubted that anyone would consider them livestock feed. This was my first-aid.
In the meantime, I would hunt gagd and normalize eating it. Luckily, the people here didn’t seem to have an aversion to eating meat. My guess was that if it tasted good, people would eat it. As long as it tasted good, people had no problems eating pigeons that symbolized peace or killer whales that ruled the sea.
“Let’s start by making edamame. Even I can cook up something like that.”
“Shall I prepare some soybeans, then?” Mister Milon offered.
I was just thinking about getting some at the market, so him taking care of that would be great.
“If you don’t mind. Green, unripe ones in their shell. It’s fine if they’re sold by the branches, too. I’ll also need salt and water. Oh, is salt valuable here?”
“It’s far from free. The soybeans are cheap, though.”
So salt cost a considerable amount. Of course, salt in modern day did seem too cheap, in a way. In any other time in history, it was a precious commodity; wars had been started over sources of salt. On the other hand, I couldn’t boil edamame without salt. Some expenses couldn’t be avoided.
“That’s fine. We’ll need a good amount of it. Specifically, we’ll need about 40 grams of salt for every 300 grams of soybeans.”
They didn’t use the metric system in this world, so the actual quantity and units of measurement Mister Milon heard must have been different.
“I can get that, no problem. In fact, I can pull that much from my kitchen,” he said with a laugh.
With a long-term production plan in mind I knew I had to properly stock up, but this was just a test run.
Soon, at Mister Milon’s orders, one of the employees from the shop brought over some edamame on their branches. It was the same girl who had welcomed us when we first arrived.
“Here they are, Dad!”
“Call me ‘Boss’ when we have customers. How many times do I have to tell you, Millia?”
“Sorry!”
A heartwarming exchange. It seemed that the girl was Mister Milon’s heir.
“What am I going to do with this one? She’s nearly sixteen and has no prospect for a marriage. Where did I go wrong?”
Mister Milon chuckled with humility, but it was clear as day how much he cared for his daughter. I was willing to bet that he would be bawling at Miss Millia’s wedding.
“Why doesn’t she give it a try while she’s here? It’s an easy dish to cook.”
“Dish? I thought you were making medicine.”
“Hermits don’t believe that pills should be hard to swallow.”
I gave a bogus response to Mister Milon’s question. I couldn’t very well have called edamame a medicine.
The three of us (plus the dragon) moved to the kitchen. This really wasn’t a difficult dish. I was sure that they would be able to cook it themselves after watching me do it once. In fact, they didn’t even need to recreate my process faithfully. I only remembered it from a life hack show that was playing on NHK (Japan’s national TV station) a few years back. This was just a method of boiling the beans that made them plump. Edamame that was simply boiled tasted fine, too.
I took the edamame shells off of their branches and massaged some salt into them after cutting off both ends. I boiled the water in a pot, put in the salt and 300 grams worth of edamame, then let it cook for three to five minutes. I had used a liter of water in the pot, rubbed in ten grams of the salt and used the other thirty grams in the pot. Once they were boiled, I drained them in a colander before fanning the steam away. That was it.
“How easy. You call this cooking, Eiji?”
“To be honest, you don’t even have to be this exact with the ratio.”
I decided to give Tiamat something more to roll her eyes about. Milon and his daughter stared at what they only knew to be livestock feed. The fresh edamame shone a vibrant, verdant green.
“The shell is inedible, so try pushing the beans out with your fingers, like this.”
I popped out a few beans onto a plate and ate them myself. It didn’t taste too bad. Being in early summer helped too, as that was the harvest season for edamame. A little bit later in the year and it would have been off-season. In other words, I was just in time arriving before midsummer, when beriberi would be at its worst.
Tiamat chucked some edamame into her mouth. While they were still in their shells.
“I told you, you can’t eat the shells.”
“Don’t sweat it. Totally edible.”
“Thanks for the input, Miss Dragon!”
“Hm. Delicious. Perfect amount of salt.”
“Is that so...?”
Was she really tasting them? I doubted it.
After watching our little comedy routine, Milon and his daughter timidly reached for the edamame. Animals ate it, after all, which meant that it at least wasn’t harmful to the human body. What was bothering them was their reservation of eating what they considered to be for livestock. Often, people discover some foods they can really enjoy once they get past the preconceptions they have about them.
“Ooh! These are quite...!”
“It’s so good!”
Their eyes widened. As it was only seasoned with salt, its taste was simple, and therefore approachable. More complex and deep flavors required a developed palette to appreciate. Take it from me, who had a palette so cheap that I didn’t find foie gras or truffles particularly tasty.
“There are soybeans grown especially for edamame that are selectively bred for it.”
“Those taste better than these, then?” Mister Milon asked with much enthusiasm, as he popped one bean after another into his mouth.
Of course, this wasn’t a dish one should be concerned with table manners while eating.
“I would think so.”
I couldn’t give an educated answer, as I was neither a farmer nor a foodie.
“I bet we could sell these, Dad!” Miss Millia said, with a beaming smile.
All right, let’s calm down for a second.
This wasn’t a tasting for a new food product.
“For now, I need you to eat a lot of these. What do you think?”
After clearing my throat, I got us back on track.
“This will treat my lethargy?”
“That’s right. Really, I would like you to eat about 600 grams of it every day...”
The recommended daily value for vitamin B1 is about 1.4 milligrams. I remembered that there was about 0.24 milligrams of it in 100 grams of edamame. That adds up to 600 grams a day, if edamame was going to be his sole source of vitamin B1. While brown rice has about half the vitamin B1 per gram as edamame, it would feel more natural as rice was something people ate every day. It would be rather difficult to eat 600 grams of edamame each and every day.
“That’s a bit much. I wouldn’t mind a day or two. It tastes good.”
“Thought so...”
That was the hole in my plan. Unlike beans or potatoes, there was no way that people could eat enough of it every single day.
“Can’t you just cook them differently?” Tiamat interrupted.
She was chomping on the edamame, still in their shells. Despite the good point she just made, it wasn’t convincing at all. She could eat 600 grams or even a kilogram every day, I was sure.
“That’s true. But I don’t know how else to cook them.”
I was a bachelor, living with my parents. I could count on my fingers how many dishes I knew how to cook. Oh, how would I ever impress my future husband?
“How useless. That’s hardly news, though.”
“Well excuse me!”
“We can come up with changes to the recipe! It’s soft, so we can do a lot with it!”
Miss Millia pounded her chest. There’s someone who knew the shortcut to a man’s heart.
“Mister Eiji! We can sell these here, right!?”
Her eyes were gleaming with excitement. It seemed her interest was business, rather than a relationship.
“Keep them affordable, please. They are to treat people with beriberi, after all.”
“Don’t worry, sir! We’ll throw our profit margin out the window!” she declared.
But would they really? There was little I could do, even if I had my doubts. I had no distribution route nor method of advertisement. In this department, I really needed the help of a merchant.
“Don’t go too crazy,” I chuckled.