5. Taste
The butler of Leipas also sent over a slab of pork chops from a wild boar, which pleased me. Well! I had planned to use wild chicken and guinea pig meat instead of pork, but a slice of pork chop would have enhanced the stew. As for the reason for the vermicelli, it's because the other day Kurtz picked up a basket of ground potatoes from outside, which are super starchy and can be a little sweet when left for a while. Although it was usually a rough food for slaves, many orc tribes would stock up on this rich food to replace grain in times of disaster, and Kuz loved it raw, both to quench hunger and thirst, and it was so crunchy that I later found out it was a bit like a sweet potato, except that it had a very thick skin, and you needed a machete to break through the hard, thick skin to get to the crunchy roots inside.
Seeing these sweet potatoes reminded me of something I used to do when I was a child. At that time, my family was very poor, and it was difficult to afford to buy a lot of meat even for dumplings on New Year's Day, and there were many people in the family. When the water has been skimmed off, the purest groundnut starch will be left at the bottom of the jar. The wet starch is put into a small pot filled with small round eyes, and the starch flows down the eyes into the boiling hot water, turning it into vermicelli. You can have a nice meal of vegetable buns. For the New Year's Eve dinner, if there was little meat in the dumplings, some vermicelli would be added and they were just as good. When I grew up, perhaps because I was starved as a child, I became a cook. But since then, no dish has ever tasted as good as it did when I was a child.
In this new world, all the efforts I have been making are just to prove one thing: I am still alive! I was still the same person, but no one could understand the loneliness in my heart. I missed all those people and things that I was afraid I would eventually forget, and I wanted to try to remember them, which is why I couldn't resist making some vermicelli when I saw Kurtz eating ground potatoes, just to prove it to myself. So Kurtz and I made this bag of vermicelli, which was new to Kurtz, but because it was made from ground potatoes, it was usually a way of scolding the caravan for eating ground potatoes, which was a sarcastic way of saying he was a slave. A prisoner. A pariah or a destitute vagrant, so I was a little worried when I decided that this meal would be a pile of vermicelli cooked with meat.
"O Giga, do you think we can really do this?"
"Nah, Cuz, you go and get rid of those guinea pigs, we don't want those innards this time, there's too many guinea pigs for us to handle."
"Got it, Giga, you said those people need to know what we're feeding them ..."
"It's vermicelli! Vermicelli, Cuz, you have to remember it's a starchy essence that we've worked hard to extract from some plants, it's very tasty and nutritious." I hastened to brainwash Kuzzy, if those in the caravan knew I was treating them to ground potatoes, I would not have a good time. In human society, ground potatoes were given to slaves, and they were only used as food in times of calamity.
"All right! Vermicelli, is this stuff really edible?"
"Cuz!" I stretched my voice.
"All right! It's yummy, yummy! It's got to be. Giga, why don't we make a pot of broth? You see we have so much meat, it's more than enough to try and make a pot of soup, in fact I think we should add a bit of tree rice, that stuff is awesome." Kurtz's mouth hung on his chin as he tried to persuade me to change the recipe with a thin-skinned knife in his hand, peeling guinea pig skin in a lewd manner. I've been wanting to eat this for a long time, and now that I have this opportunity, there's no way I'm going to give it up, and besides, it's an absolute insult to me to question a chef's taste.
I was worried that if he stayed with us for a long time, Kurtz might slip up and try to distract him for a while before saying, "Oh, dear Uncle Anlu, this iron pot is too dirty. Can you fetch me a bucket of water and brush it for us?" I asked An Lu, the cook, pretending to be cute.
The fat man, An Lu, was a little reluctant at first, but with a twinkle in his huge toad's eye, he immediately agreed. Smiling, he said to me, "It would be an honour to serve you, as long as you two little ones promise me not to climb on the stove, as Lord Leipas has given me the task of looking after you two."
"I'll take care of myself, Uncle Anlu, and I'll keep an eye on Kuz, too, and take good care of him." I patted my little chest in reassurance, and it looked like fatty Anlu was a little skeptical, but didn't refuse. With his fat, round belly and two huge barrels in his hands, he walked slowly towards the lake not far away, muttering something.
The guinea pig is killed with a tap on the back of the head, but the blood will not come out and the flesh will look a little dark red. Hanging the incisors of the dead guinea pig on a thin rope, Kurtz took the meat cutting knife in his hand and quickly peeled off the fur, Kurtz was so skilled at this that before I could even see him move, he had already peeled off the complete skin to dry and said to me, "Giga, let's make a mattress out of this skin, it's moisture-proof and warm."
The guinea pig meat needed to be soaked in cold water for a while to remove the earthy smell, and the delicate boning knife I was holding was one of a trio of knives Fred had given me, along with a small skinning knife curved like a bull's horn and a bayonet as sharp as a **. of a sheep. The three knives lay in a calfskin knife holder, which I had kept in good condition.
The bright red guinea fowl meat was chopped into fist-sized squares and the pieces were piled up in a copper basin gradually forming a small mountain of meat. I also had seven wild pheasants that I had thought I could smoke over the fire sometime and make just a little wax for Kurtz to try, but now I had to change my mind and contribute them. Adding some chicken to the guinea fowl meat would taste extra tasty.
At this time, the cooks from the dance troupe returned from the lake carrying huge wooden barrels and pots, and the food in the dance troupe had always been much finer, more varied and tastier than that of the merchants. Many of the merchants who had some money in the troupe would occasionally offer some coins in exchange for food from the troupe's cooks, and Fred once treated me to a box of sweet japonica rice. Their large wooden pots were filled with tender hairy capers, washed clean and with water droplets on the leaves. The cooks were not very old, but each of them was strong enough to carry at least two wooden buckets of water without too much strain, and as they walked over to the stove, laughing and joking, they saw that only Kurtz and I were cooking, and the leader, a tall, fair-skinned woman with a few freckles on her face, probably in her thirties, stared at me with her turquoise eyes and asked, "Anlu! Why isn't that fat guy here? Who told you to come here to play, little ones?"
"Uncle Anlu has gone to the lake to get some water. We are here to prepare the food for dinner, by permission of Master Leipas, and my partner Kuz and I are going to treat everyone in the caravan to a stew, and look, here is the guinea pig we caught, very fat and tender." I straightened up, carrying a bloody guinea pig hind leg in one hand and smiling at the woman in front of me, even though I didn't even know what her name was.
"You have a lot of nerve? Are you the apprentice of the Kuru witch doctor?" The woman's words were not sure if they were a question or a compliment, and when she finished she walked noncommittally to the other cauldron and placed the barrel in her hands on the floor.
All I could do was nod at the air, it looked like she just needed to know that Kurtz and I weren't here to make trouble and didn't even want to talk to me much, which is probably kind of the pride of a cook!
"Is he the kid that the old orc in the caravan picked up?"
"I thought he was small?"
"Not bad looking!"
The women chattered as they passed me by, and others glanced at me now and then, looking like they were aware of my existence. Perhaps because the women were more or less surprised that the caravan had sent two children to cook, they were very curious about me and Kurtz. One of the women, who smelt of onions, even came up to me and stared straight at me, making me a little nervous. Only later did I get a hard look from the strong woman and move back over there unhappily.
The dinner for the dance group was very generous, also because it was a very early camping day, as there would be a long panoramic road into the Pai plateau ahead. Before that, there would be two days of rest and recuperation at this lush lake. I saw a slightly blond woman pouring water from the lake into a cauldron, rolling up her sleeves to reveal her pale, round arms and stacking whole pieces of cleaned lamb from a large wooden pot into the cauldron, while someone else built a fire below and someone else sprinkled some tender green wild onions into the soup pot.
The women of the brigade knew how to appreciate fuel, as it was difficult to get enough dead wood or hay on the grasslands after walking out of the mountains, so some dried rhinoceros dung was also good fuel, but these were also scarce and it was necessary to waste as little heat as possible. So everyone got busy and moved very quickly. Everyone had a clear division of labour and worked well together. Seeing the joyful smiles on their faces, you can tell that the life of the troupe makes them feel happy, and I think to myself: there is probably no lack of joy in any corner of the world, it is mainly a matter of finding it.
Kurtz was happy, still staring at the guinea pigs with their skins cleaned and drooling over the pork chops and pheasant chunks in the copper tub, but when he saw me looking over he withdrew his gaze and began to cook the skins in peace. When travelling, many humans like to sew sleeping bags out of guinea pig skins.
I asked, "And what kind of sleeping bags do orcs like?"
"The wolf orcs like to sleep on cow skins, and most of these warm guinea pig skins are sold to human travellers and traders for 100 white loaves of bread a sleeping bag." Kuz told me triumphantly, then shook the bloody guinea pig skins in his hands and hitched them to a wooden pole off to the side. "My grandfather says there's enough guinea pig skins to make you a sleeping bag, Giga!"
"I need a sleeping bag?" I was a little surprised, even in the harsh winters of the Dwarven country of New Ciachis I didn't need to wear an extra fur coat, the fire poison in my body made me prefer colder places. The warm, damp southeastern trade winds have been keeping me uncomfortable of late, and I never thought I would need a warm sleeping bag at night.
Kurtz thought about it and couldn't understand why I, who had never been afraid of the cold, would need a sleeping bag, but still stubbornly stated, "Master said it was for you, surely you can't be wrong!"
With all the ingredients ready, I began to cut up the wild onions and purple-skinned ginger that I had collected, called brain boom, and Kurtz brought over the two clay pots that were once Uncle Fred's wine jars, only I had asked for them after the wine had dried up, one containing white animal fat and the other half a jar of honey. When I opened the jar, Kurtz looked at me a little dazed: "Why do you have honey? You didn't eat any of that honey you were given to drink?"
"I'm not afraid of bitterness, so naturally I kept it. It's scarce as hell. See, I'll tell you a little secret, when you're stewing meat, put a few drops of honey into the pot, just a few drops, and the meat will taste delicious!" I proudly shared my secret with Kurtz, who had gone to the deepest bear cave in the mountains to find this jar of honey, and came back with a solid slap on his back from a sleeping earth bear. So sometimes I think that camaraderie is priceless.
The dung from the thunder rhino burned with a faint grassy aroma and the whole jar of creamy lard gradually melted away in the pan, and as it warmed up, it began to smoke profusely. Kurtz, who had never seen cooking like this before, stood at the edge of the cauldron straining his neck to see into the pot and shouted to me urgently, "Giga, it's smoking, it's going to be mushy!" Kurtz speaks orcish when he's anxious.
I greeted Kurtz and the two of them poured the whole pot of meat into the large iron pot, which slid along the rim into the bottom and was fried in the hot, boiling oil, making a loud noise. After that, Kurtz started to stand on the potting bench, wielding his shovel and frying the meat as I had instructed him to do, while I carried small pots of various colours, adding chopped brain boom and wild ginger and some herbs that tasted like wild peppercorns to the pot, and finally adding some honey to the pot before I decided to stop when I saw the look of distress in Kurtz's eyes.
By the time the cooks from the dance troupe noticed that we had started cooking, Kurtz and I had already broken the meat, removed the fishy bits and thrown in all the seasonings. Then two large buckets of water were poured into the pot next to us. I left Cuz to stoke the fire while I went to work on the vermicelli.
Uncle An Lu had already fetched the water back and, seeing us doing a good job, was happy to be left alone, moving over to the dancing troupe of cooks who were watching and getting close to the two young cooks with their lowly, nasty old faces. The young woman with the eyes of a bell and the face of a sword even said, "What's the matter, Fatty An, is it that you can't do your job as a cook anymore? Hey, I heard you used to raise guinea pigs in the country, is that true?"
"Feck! Which one of you is talking about me behind my back? What's so bad about my cooking? The caravans have always cooked like this, dried meat and vegetable soup with black bread!" Anlu glanced back at me and when he saw me concentrating on washing the vermicelli, he lowered his tone twice and said, "Kuzi and Giga are the merchant's witch doctor father's men, and these two boys are usually very hardworking. They're good boys. They caught a bag of guinea pigs in the pasture and offered to make a pot of meat for the caravan. I helped them fetch water, but they're too small to carry it!"
The afternoon sun warmed up the camp, and not far from the stove were mountains of sacks of grain, on which many people were leaning in the sun at this time. The cooks watched the fire as they gradually came together and began to talk. The fat man, Uncle An Lu, was very talkative, a little lewd but very articulate, sometimes throwing out a dirty little joke without thinking, and the women didn't mind too much, laughing and swearing.
The scent of lamb is beginning to waft from the dancing cauldron and it may not be long before the meat is cooked. On the other side of the stone slab, thin pastry was already being cooked, the white flour slowly turning brown on the hot stone slab, giving off the characteristic aroma of wheat flour. There was no such luxury as white flour in the caravan, only the dancers of the dance troupe could afford it.
Cuz pouted, blackened stick in hand as he struggled to get the cow dung fully burnt, and the stockpot of our guinea fowl meat began to give off an alternative aroma, one that I remembered not having smelt for I don't know how long, and which now wafted through the air, sending a tingling thrill through my bones. Kurtz obviously smelled this scent too, which could waft far away, and the fire burned extra hard.
I then threw the whole bundle of vermicelli into the pot under Kurtz's sad eyes. It was as if I could see the bottom of Kuz's heart at this point: Giga, can we not put that in ...
Braised pork and vermicelli stew!